Contributors

Dr Linda Caldwell teaches in the doctoral dance program at Texas Women’s University and is an editor of The Journal of Laban Movement Studies. She is exploring alternative formats for doctoral dissertations in the performing arts and presenting workshops on interactive distance learning in dance through Laban Movement Analysis.

Beatriz Calvo-Merino is a cognitive neuroscientist trained at University College London (UK) and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). She currently works at City University London as a Research Fellow in her project ‘Ways of seeing: Neurocognitive mechanism for seeing movements’.  Her PhD work with Prof Patrick Haggard investigated neurocognitive mechanisms involved in action observation, expertise and dance, using neuroimaging methods. Her latest research focuses on sensorimotor mechanism for aesthetic perception of dance. She has established collaborations with the dance community (Royal Opera House, Laban Dance Centre). Her work has been published and disseminated in high impact factor peer-review journals as well as artistic meetings and public engagement activities.

Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM is director of Mirramu Creative Arts Centre and artistic director of Mirramu Dance Company. She founded Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide and was its artistic director from 1965-75. She has had many teaching positions in Universities around Australia, and as a performer, choreographer, teacher and researcher, Elizabeth travels internationally on a regular basis, particularly in recent years to Taiwan, Japan and West Africa. She has received many awards for her work, including an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship (1994) and the Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to contemporary dance in Australia (1995). Elizabeth recently completed a PhD at the University of Western Sydney.

Marja Cantell is an Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, Community Health Science and Kinesiology at the University of Calgery. She specailises in Psychology, Human Movement Science and Dance Movement Therapy.

Amanda Card lectures with the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney in the area of movement and dance studies - particularly the history of social & theatrical dance in Australia, intercultural performance, and theories of embodiment as they apply to performance. Her most recent publications include: ‘Do try this at home: dance manuals, myopia and misrecognition’, in A World of Popular Entertainments, an edited volume of critical essays, edited by Gillian Arrighi (2012); ‘Feeling for dancing in the archives of the dead’, in Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia, edited by Glen McGillivray (2011); ‘Tethering the Flow: dialogues between dance, physical culture and antiquity in Interwar Australia’, in Dancing naturally: nature, neo-classicism and modernity in early twentieth century dance, edited by Rachel Fensham and Alexandra Carter (2011); and ‘Together in Isolation: new moves across time and place’, in Shaping the Landscape: Celebrating Dance in Australia, edited by Julie Dyson and Stephanie Burridge (2011).

Annette lives in the creative enclave that is Denmark, a small town on the Great Southern coast of WA. From this vibrant home she works as a community dance artist and as the State’s Regional Contemporary Dance Facilitator for Ausdance WA. As a community artist Annette has created a number of works for Denmark. Over the past three years she facilitated moveMENt, a men’s contemporary dance ensemble and has created two site specific community works, Our Secret River in 2010 and its sister project Solace+Yearning: Between Kwoorabup and Denmark in 2012. Annette won the 2011 WA Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Community/Regional Dance.

Dr Mark Carroll is a lecturer and researcher at the Elder Conservatorium, and is Co-Director of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. Mark has extensive experience as both a scholar and classical and pop music performer. His research activities range from music and politics (Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe [Cambridge: CUP, 2003]) to Percy Grainger (Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger, with Malcolm Gillies and David Pear [New York: OUP, 2006), and studies in contemporary popular music. Carroll works closely with The Australian Ballet, and was Chief Investigator for a large Australian Research Council Linkage project that brought together the Elder Conservatorium, The Australian Ballet and the National Library, in order to trace the profound impact of tours to Australia by the acclaimed Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet) dance companies during the 1930s. Mark is series editor of the Ashgate Library of Essays on Music, Politics and Society.

Kristina Chan has performed throughout Australia, Canada, UK, USA, Asia, Israel and Europe over the past 12 years. She has worked with Australian Dance Theatre, Chunky Move, Sydney Theatre Company, Theatre of Image, West Australian Opera, Opera Queensland, State Opera South Australia, Tasdance, Stalker Theatre Company, Michelle Mahrer, Stephanie Lake, Bernadette Walong, Tanja Liedtke; and Deborah Hay (Solo Commissioning Laboratory 2010 in Bundanon). Kristina has taught for Australian and international dance companies, universities, dance institutions and secondary schools around Australia and in Germany for Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt. Kristina has been working with Narelle Benjamin since 2003 and has performed in her works Inside out, Out of Water and In Glass which premiering at Spring Dance Festival 2010 in Sydney. Kristina has been awarded two Australian Dance Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer for both of Tanja Liedtke’s full length works: 2006 for Twelfth Floor and 2008 for construct.

Chey Chankethya graduated with a BA at the Royal University of Fine Arts in 2005. She has performed nationally and internationally for the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, such as ‘Millennium 2000’, and Angkor Wat Exposition in 2006. Her choreographic works, both classical and contemporary, include Dilemma (2002), Falling in Love (2003), Golden Deer (2004), Preah Khan Reach (2005) and Water and Thunder (2006). In 2006, she was awarded a Choreography Arts Management Fellowship at the University of California (UCLA). She teaches classical dance at the Secondary School of Fine Arts and is the leader of Trey Visay (Compass), a dance ensemble consisting of nine young Cambodian dancers.

Ananya Chatterjea is a dancer, choreographer, dance scholar, and dance educator. She is Artistic Director of Ananya Dance Theatre and Director of Dance and Professor in the Department of Theater Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota. She works at the intersection of artistic excellence and social justice and is the recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Artist Fellowship in Choreography.

Sue Cheesman is a senior lecturer in Dance Education in the School of Education at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Previous experience includes adviser for research into developing ideas in dance and choreographer/educationalist for Touch Compass Dance Company. Her enthusiasm and passion for dance knows no bounds.

Lee Christofis has been a leading dance critic and arts commentator in Australia for more than 25 years. He is a long-time advocate for dance, has served eight years as Ausdance National Vice President and is an Honorary Life Member of Ausdance. Lee is a recipient of a Victorian Award for Excellence in Multicultural Affairs for MAMAS, the Multicultural Arts Marketing Ambassadors Strategy which he designed and delivered in conjunction with the Australia Council. After twelve years in early childhood education and welfare, Lee joined the School of Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne where he taught twentieth century dance history, arts criticism and arts management. He has been the Curator of Dance at the National Library of Australia since 2006 and received an Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance in 2009.

Haya Cohen is an arts practitioner whose practice-led research is undertaken through a multi-disciplinary approach that includes creative arts practice, anthropology, biology, social sciences and philosophy. Presently, Haya is completing her PhD and is teaching at Griffith University. Her body of work ties notions of embodiment, communication and subjectivity to the processes of making fibres and textile. Making yarns and fabric become a methodology for both correlating academic research and producing experiential-based research that increase bodily possibility. Haya has exhibited across Australia and overseas. She has promoted contemporary art and community through her involvement in community art projects and performance.

Ray Cook, who began his career as a dancer in Australia, is one of USA's foremost dance notator. He recently retired from Vassar College, now devotes his time to recording as many masterworks as he can and to staging those already recorded. He is currently recording Alvin Ailey's Revelations and in September goes to Taiwan to record Lin Hwai-min's evening-length work Legacy. He has also written a book on the history of choreography.

Professor Roger Copeland holds a chair in Theatre and Dance at Oberlin College. His books include the widely used anthology, 'What Is Dance?' (Oxford University Press, l983) and 'Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance' (Routledge, 2004). He has just finished writing and directing his first feature length film 'The Unrecovered', a fictional narrative about the psychological aftermath of 9/11.

1943—2009. Hilary Crampton was a dance performer, critic, advocate and educator. She was in the inaugural graduating year of the Bachelor program at the Laban Centre in London, and she also attended each of the four Armidale choreographic seminars from 1969 to 1976. She was closely involved in the subsequent founding conference of the Australian Association for Dance Education (now Ausdance) in 1977. Hilary was on the board of the Green Mill Dance Project in the 1990s and dance critic for The Age newspaper until 2009. She was forthright in her advocacy for dance and dance education, and received the Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance in 2006.

Debra is an Australian-trained manipulative physiotherapist with many years of experience in dance education and the assessment and treatment of dance related injuries. She has a private practice in Sydney, lectures at both secondary and tertiary levels and has presented papers at numerous conferences. Debra was the convenor of the Safe Dance sub-committee for Ausdance NSW.

Ojeya Cruz Banks works as a lecturer and choreographer for the Dance Studies program at the University of Otago in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her research includes dance anthropology, pedagogy, postcolonial studies, and contemporary indigenous choreography. She was selected for the 2008 Professional Choreographer’s Lab at the Jacob’s Pillow School of Dance and the 2011 Pacific Dance Choreographic Laboratory.