Neil Adams is a lecturer in contemporary dance at the Victorian College of the Arts. A graduate of Rusden College (now Deakin University) and a founding member of Tasdance, Neil made 23 works for the company and performed in over 50 works between 1981 and 1990. Neil has been a Lecturer in Contemporary Dance at WAAPA and Shanghai Theatre Academy and has been commissioned by many Australian contemporary dance companies as both choreographer and teacher. In 2000 he won the PUC Award for Outstanding Choreography from Arts Alliance WA for Triptych. In 2004 Neil won the AICD Sir Robert Helpmann Award for Professional Choreographers with his work Vapour Trail. In 2009 Neil presented his PhD research at the Time Transcendence Performance Conference, Monash University and at the Dance and Cognition Symposium at Macquarie University. In 2010 Neil presented his paper Performing the Past in the Present at the World Dance Alliance Global Event: In Time Together, in New York City.
As an audience researcher, Anja specialises in behind-the-scenes enrichment programs in the dance industry. She is currently completing her PhD in Performance Studies (Queensland University of Technology) which explores how open rehearsals affect spectator-dancer relationships in the context of mainstream ballet and contemporary dance companies. Through her research, Anja has worked with The Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, and Expressions Dance Company. She has presented her research findings at Australian and international dance and performance studies conferences.
As a performer and maker, Anja has had the pleasure of developing and performing a character over a period of 8 years, with director and co-performer Kari, in an environmental-focused street theatre act entitled Frog-On. This act’s performance credits include Woodford Folk Festival, a residency at the Eumundi Markets and numerous Brisbane City Council public events. Anja has worked with many artists, including Tiina Alinen, Keith Hawley, Avril Huddy, Vanessa Mafe, Grant McLay, Courtney Scheu, and Jordin Steele.
As a dance educator, Anja has coordinated and lectured into dance subjects at Queensland University of Technology, including dance history, analysis, world dance, commercial dance, music theatre skills, and dance audience studies. She also enjoys working in school and community contexts.
Valerie Alpert MFA (Ohio State University) is the director of VADCO/Valeria Alpert Dance Co. She has performed, choreographed and taught nationally and internationally, utilising digital technology in her art form. Alpert teaches at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois, and is pursuing a PhD at Texas Woman's University.
Mary Elizabeth Anderson researches the ways in which paradigms of performance training are informed by perceptions of space and experiences of place. A PhD graduate from Wayne State university in Detroit, Michigen, she is now an assistant professor of theatre there. Currently she is at work on a book examining site-specific performance in Australia, based on fieldwork conducted in the Central Desert and Tasmania.
Linda Ashley started working at Auckland University of Technology in 2005. Her personal research interests include choreography as theoretical practice and cultural diversity in dance. Since 2003 the generic notion of cultural diversity has also included auto-ethnographic research on the ageing dancer.
Linda Ashley (M.A. University of London): Senior Dance Lecturer and Research Stream Leader at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. Linda has extensive academic, choreographic and performing experience in dance. Currently, she is completing doctorate studies at the University of Auckland. Publications since 1996: Dance Sense (Northcote House Publishers, 2nd ed., 2005); Essential Guide to Dance (3rd ed., Hodder & Stoughton, 2008); and Dance Theory & Practice for Teachers: Physical and performing skills, (Essential Resources, 2005). She completed the New Zealand Ministry of Education curriculum materials development contract to produce the video Dancing the Long White Cloud (2002).
Don has directed, performed and choreographed projects all over the world. His performance experience ranges from early work with the Australian Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater to guest appearances with the Kibbutz Dance Company, Nucleodanza (Argentina) and Australian Dance Theatre. He was a house choreographer with Nederlands Dans Theater before founding the dance theatre ensemble Human Veins in Australia. He has PHD and Masters in Arts awards from the University of Melbourne. He supervises postgraduate research at the Victorian College of the Arts of the University of Melbourne and the Melbourne Institute of Experiential and Creative Arts Therapy .
Dr Christine Banbinskas is senior lecturer in performance studies at Victoria University. Her research interests include performance improvisation, incidental movement and sites of/for performance.
Keith spent his early years in Wauchope, NSW and from an early age, was involved in Scottish and ballroom dancing. After graduating from teacher training college he took up an appointment as a music teacher in Sydney. At the age of twenty seven Keith took his first modern dance classes with Gertrude Bodenwieser at her Sydney studios. He went on to dance with the Bodenwieser Ballet and had a number of works created on him by Bodenwieser including the male role in Central Australian Suite and the last work Bodenwieser created, a solo called The Heretic. After Bodenwieser's death in 1959, Keith, along with Margaret Chapple, took over the running of the Bodenwieser Studio in Pitt Street, Sydney. Over the course of the next few years, Bain taught modern, primitive, jazz, and ballroom dance classes at the Bodenwieser Studio. He also choreographed several works including Primitive Suite for Ballet Australia in the 1960s, and danced in many Ballet Australia productions.
Keith was founder the Australasian Teachers Contemporary Dance Association (COA), the Society of Dance Artists (SODA) and Dancers' Picnic (forerunner to the Australian Dance Awards). Keith was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee Medal for services to dance and theatre (1977) and received an OAM in 1988. Keith has received Australian Dance Awards for Services to Dance Education (2003) and for Lifetime Achievement (2011).
Dr Sruti Bandopadhay is one of the foremost Manipuri dance artists of India and was awarded the top grade in Manipuri Dance by National Television, India. She is currently a Reader in Dance at Rabindra Bharati University, and received the Visiting Lecturer Fulbright Fellowship to teach Manipuri Dance and Survey of Indian Dance at the World Arts and Culture Centre, UCLA in the United States.
Fiona Bannon (PhD) is Chair of DanceHE, the representative body for Dance in Higher Education in the UK. Beginning her career in community dance in the UK and Australia (NSW) she later joined the University of Hull as a lecturer in dance becoming the Head of the School of Arts and developing School of Arts and New Media. Now at the University of Leeds she works with students exploring collaborative practice, choreography, improvisation and works with doctoral candidates in arts practice as research. Current research includes the preparation of a manuscript, Approaching collaborative practices: ethical considerations in performance and dance. Fiona is part of the team currently exploring the re-launch of World Dance Alliance-Europe.
Dr Karen Barbour is a senior lecturer in The Faculty of Education, The University of Waikato, New Zealand. She is committed to fostering qualitative dance research, specifically in feminist choreographic practice, contemporary dance, site-specific dance and digital dance. Karen has published in academic books and journals including Cultural Studies–Critical Methodologies, International Journal of Arts in Society, Brolga and Emotion, Space and Society. Karen is editor of Dance Research Aotearoa (http:www.dra.ac.nz), author of Dancing across the page: narrative and embodied ways of knowing (2011), and of edited book Ethnographic worldviews: transformations and social justice (Rinehart, Barbour & Pope, 2014).
At the age of 14 Phoebe was accepted into a Quantum Leap program at QL2 Centre for Youth Dance in Canberra and this is when her love for contemporary dance began to flourish. She trained with Jacqueline Kornmann in Echuca, Victoria, attending several Australian Youth Dance Festivals, numerous workshops in Melbourne and seeing a plethora of professional dance performances. In 2012 Phoebe completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) and a Diploma of Education at Queensland University of Technology, and worked as a volunteer at Ausdance Victoria alongside former Education and Training Manager, Dr Katrina Rank. Phoebe spent one year teaching dance full-time at St. Francis Xavier College, Beaconsfield in 2013 and attended Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (USA) in 2014.
Irina Baronova, born in Petrograd, was one of the three legendary 'baby ballerinas' who made such an impact on dance audiences in the 1930s and 1940s. Her talent was clear from the beginning and the family soon moved to Paris where Baronova continued her training with Olga Preobrajenska. In 1932 when just thirteen years of age she was engaged by George Balanchine as ballerina for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. She continued to dance with the de Basil Ballets Russes companies until 1939, coming to Australia on tour with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet in 1938 – 1939. Baronova left de Basil in 1939 and soon after began a new stage of her career in the United States. From 1941 she appeared with (American) Ballet Theatre in North and South America and worked in Hollywood in the 1940s before retiring to devote herself to her family. She came out of retirement at the urging of Dame Margot Fonteyn to serve on the technical committee of the Royal Academy of Dance and to teach and coach. Baronova lived the last eight years of her life in Australia, in the hinterland of Byron Bay, where she completed her memoirs which were published in 2005 as 'Irina: ballet, life and love'.
Kathy has enjoyed 30 years of employment in the arts and cultural sector in wide-ranging roles such as arts and events manager, producer, educator and trainer, practitioner and community development arts worker.
She is currently Executive Director, Ausdance National.
Previously, she was Executive Producer for Shaun Parker & Company, and Faculty of Education Programme Manager at the Royal Academy of Dance, Australia, where she managed teacher training qualifications and the Academy’s Continuing Professional Development Programme. In 2016 she organised and produced the RAD’s inaugural Dance Teaching for the 21st Century: Practice and Innovation International Conference.
She was the founding director of FORM Dance Projects (formerly known as Western Sydney Dance Action), development manager at the Walkley Foundation for Journalism and has held various positions within the public and not-for-profit sectors as an event producer and project manager. Her skills include project and program management and development; marketing, sponsorship and fundraising; research; and community development.
Kathy trained in classical ballet and contemporary with professional experience in Australia and the UK as a dance artist and community arts facilitator. A BA in Dance (UWS), Graduate Diploma in Arts Management (UTS) and an MA in Dance Studies from the University of Surrey UK equipped Kathy to produce and present new work by independent dance artists and facilitate professional development and mentorship programs for dance artists and teachers. She has also lectured in creative arts education and performance studies at the University of Western Sydney.
Narelle Benjamin has worked with many Australian and international choreographers and companies. She won The Age Performing Arts Award for Best Performer in 1994 and the Hepzibah Tintner Fellowship in 2006. She has worked on award-winning films as choreographer, director and dancer and won the award for best short film in 1999 at the Sydney film festival and an Australian Dance Award for Dance on Film for Restoration. Narelle has choreographed two works for The One Extra Company, Inside Out (2002) and Out of Water (2004); Gossamer for Sydney Dance Company’s Directors Cut season (2006); The Dark Room for The Australian Ballet’s Bodytorque (2007); Figment for the Sydney Festival (2008); Lulie (2007) and Pixel (2008) for Theatre of Image; In Glass with performers Kristina Chan, Paul White and video artist Samuel James for contemporary dance festivals Spring Dance (2010) and ‘Dance Massive’ (2011). Narelle’s work ‘In Glass’ won the Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance in 2011.
is an ‘agrégé’ in philosophy and was formerly a student at l’École normale supérieure (ENS) where he is currently a doctoral candidate, preparing a thesis on philosophy and dance, under the supervision of Renaud Barbaras (in the doctorate program SACRe de PSL at the Archives Husserl and CNSMDP). His research, at the intersection of philosophy and dance studies, focuses on the concept of movement in 20th century continental philosophy and the history and poetics of contact improvisation. He teaches art philosophy in the Licence pluridisciplinaire de PSL* (lycée Henri-IV) and has been exploring contact improvisation for several years.
Agrégé de philosophie et ancien étudiant de l’École normale supérieure, Romain Bigé est actuellement doctorant contractuel à l’ENS où il prépare une thèse en philosophie et en danse sous la direction de Renaud Barbaras (dans le cadre du doctorat SACRe de PSL aux Archives Husserl et au CNSMDP). Ses travaux au croisement de la phénoménologie et des études en danse portent sur le concept de mouvement dans la philosophie du XXe siècle et sur l’histoire et la poétique du contact improvisation. Il enseigne la philosophie de l’art dans la Licence pluridisciplinaire de PSL (au lycée Henri-IV) et poursuit depuis plusieurs années une exploration du contact improvisation.
Melissa Blanco Borelli, a Lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Surrey, teaches courses on identity politics, dance and culture, choreographing writing, and Latin American film. She has a PhD from UC Riverside’s program in Dance History and Theory (now Critical Dance Studies) and is currently researching the Cuban mulata dancing body and comparative social dance histories in New Orleans and Havana.
Jacob Boehme is a Melbourne born and based artist of Aboriginal heritage, from the Narangga (Yorke Peninsula) and Kaurna (Adelaide Plains) nations of South Australia.
Jacob is the founding Creative Director of YIRRAMBOI First Nations Arts Festival 2017. With a 20 year history working in Cultural Maintenance, Research & Revival of traditional dance with Elders and youth from urban to remote Indigenous communities across Australia, Jacob combines dance (Diploma in Dance, NAISDA 2000), puppetry (Masters in Puppetry, Victorian College of the Arts 2007), and playwriting (Masters in Writing for Performance, Victorian College of the Arts, 2014) to create multi-disciplinary theatre, dance and ceremony for stage, screen, large-scale public events and festivals.
Jonathan Bollen lectures in Drama at Flinders University and reviews performance for RealTime. He is co-author of Men at Play: Masculinities in Australian Theatre since the 1950s (2008). His research on dance, gender and performance has been published in The Drama Review and several anthologies, including Dancing Desires (2001) and Multimedia Histories (2007).
Karen Bond is a professor in dance at Temple University (Philadelphia USA). She worked in Australia in higher dance education from 1976 to 2000, developing Australia’s first Masters Coursework in Dance at Melbourne College of Advanced Education. Her research focuses on participant meanings of dance in education, therapy and performance.
Georgie Boucher holds a Phd in Theatre Studies from the University of Melbourne; her thesis was entitled Subjects in-between: art beyond identity. She has given lectures on feminism and popular culture at both the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, and tutors in Theatre Studies, Cultural Studies and a Feminist Theory subject entitled Nymphs, Sluts and Madonnas.
Shaaron Boughen BA (Hons) Dance, London. MA Dance, LSCD University of Kent, was Dance Discipline Leader at QUT until 2010 and has worked extensively as a performer, teacher, choreographer and designer in the UK and Australia. Particular areas of interest include investigating the live body in digital spaces, interdisciplinary practices and reversioning processes across multiple performance platforms. Shaaron is the Queensland dance reviewer for The Australian newspaper.
Erin Brannigan is a Lecturer in Dance at the University of New South Wales and works in the fields of dance and film as an academic and curator. She was the founding Director of ReelDance in 1999 and has curated dance screen programs and exhibitions for Melbourne International Arts Festival 2003, Sydney Festival 2008 and international dance screen festivals. Brannigan writes on dance for the Australian arts magazine RealTime. Her publications include Moving Across Disciplines: Dance in the Twenty-First Century, Platform Paper No. 25 (Sydney: Currency House, 2010) and Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). She has published articles in Senses of Cinema, Writings on Dance, Brolga—An Australian Journal About Dance and International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media.
Eleanor Brickhill, an independent dance artist for over 35 years, has performed in Australia and the UK with companies including Sydney Dance Company, English National Opera and Dance Exchange. Recent research projects have been with Critical Path, Fit (2005) and Friction (2007). She has written for and about dance performance, conducted research on Auslan, and is currently passionate about Argentine Tango and language studies.
Hahna Briggs is a Dunedin-based dance practitioner working in improvisation, and community, contemporary and integrated dance. Appointed the 2013 University of Otago Community Dance Caroline Plummer Fellow, Hahna has a Dance Studies MA and was a University of Otago teaching fellow 2011–12. She co-founded Aha Dance Collective and Pretty Gay Productions, and has performed for Dance Lab (University of Otago), WEAVE Movement Theatre (Melbourne), Lyne Pringle and Suzanne Cowan.
Peter Brinson was the author of many books, television programs, articles and dance reports. He has been a dance advocate and consultant all over the world. In the 1980s he was head of post-graduate and community studies at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London. With Peggy van Praagh as mentor Brinson began his career as dance producer, animateur and scholar in the early 1950s. In 1964 he founded and directed The Royal Ballet's Ballet for All company, researching and creating all the programs for what became a unique pioneering effort in making ballet accessible to wider audiences. In 1971 Peter was appointed Director of the UK & British Commonwealth Branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation where he initiated the Gulbenkian Workshops for Choreographers and Composers in London, and later, a ground-breaking series of studies on dance education and training. In 1963 he and Peggy a co-authored book they called The Choreographic Art and their association continued to develop after van Praagh's relocation to Australia. Peter Brinson's first visit to Australia was in the summer of 1975-76 when he conducted a course in dance history and criticism at the University of New England at Armidale in Northern NSW. Peter's course–in association with the choreographic workshops–was the beginning of serious dance scholarship in Australia.
Alan Brissenden (b1932), who has been commenting on Australian and international dance since 1950, currently writes and reviews for The Australian, Dance Australia, The Adelaide Review and Radio Adelaide and edits Brolga: An Australian journal about dance, the scholarly journal of the Australian Dance Council (Ausdance). His publications include Shakespeare and the Dance (1981), the Oxford World’s Classics edition of As You Like It (1993), Australia Dances: Creating Australian Dance 1945 –1965 (2010, co-author) and numerous contributions to scholarly journals, essay anthologies and reference books, including The International Encyclopedia of Dance (1998) and The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2001). An Honorary Visiting Research Fellow of the University of Adelaide, in 1996 Alan Brissenden was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to the Arts.
Adam Broinowski has made solo and group shows, a feature documentary (Hell Bento!), and worked with many Australian companies, touring through South America, Europe, UK, US, Asia and Australia. While based in Tokyo for 5 years, he was a core member of Gekidan Kaitaisha, performing in company and transcultural productions (including the Bye bye series, 2001-2005; Bodies of War, 2003; Dream Regime, 2004~2005). He was a Monbukagakusho research fellow at the University of Tokyo (2003-2005) and is a PhD candidate at University of Melbourne/VCAM.
Varnya Bromilow is a writer based in Fremantle WA. She has worked for STRUT dance, Performing Lines WA and Ausdance WA and in 2012 completed the first Oral History of WA Dance. She is a co-editor of Seesaw, a new WA arts web magazine and the founder of Time Capsule, an oral history service. When she's not doing any of the above. Varnya can be found tending to her children, guinea pigs and wolfhounds.
Carol Brown is an internationally established performer, choreographer and currently Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at The National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, University of Auckland. Her work evolves through collaborative research with artists and scholars from other disciplines, in particular architecture, music and media design. Formerly choreographer in residence at the Place Theatre, London, Carol has received numerous awards including a Jerwood Award for Choreography, the Ludwig Forum International Prize for Innovation and a NESTA Dream Time fellowship.
Josef is a dancer, actor and producer. He has been a principal dancer with Sydney Dance Company and The Australian Ballet and is a regular guest actor in the Logie Award winning, Dance Academy (ABC TV). He is co-Founder of, Cinemoves—a forum for dance & movement on film, and an Associate Producer & cameraman on the documentary, Art During Siege (ABC TV). Josef was the originator of the Johnny Castle role in the world-wide smash hit, Dirty Dancing—The Classic Story on Stage, which he played throughout Australia and New Zealand, on London’s West End and in the Pre-Broadway tour throughout the USA.
MA PhD received her MA in musicology from the Ludwig Maxmilian University, Munich, Germany. A scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service supported additional study at New York University. In New York she participated in choreographic workshops at Dance Theatre Workshop under the direction of Bessie Schönberg. Renate served as associate lecturer and lecturer at different German and British universities before becoming a senior lecturer at the University of Northampton. Her PhD. (Middlesex University London) concerns the relationship between music and movement in dance and film. Her main research interests are choreomusical relationships and choreographic processes and she has published widely in both her native language and English.
Associate Professor Ralph Buck is Head of Dance Studies, University of Auckland. His research and teaching focus on dance education, curriculum, dance pedagogy and community dance. Ralph is currently the elected dance nominee, Executive Council, World Alliance for Arts Education; Chair, Education and Training Network, World Dance Alliance; Dance advisor, UNESCO International Advisory Committee, Second World Conference on Arts Education. Ralph’s teaching and leadership has been recognised by the University of Auckland Distinguished Teaching Award, 2008; Faculty Award for Leadership, 2010; and the 2006 Excellence Award for Equal Opportunities. His research in dance education is published in international journals and he has delivered keynote addresses and master classes in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Columbia, Sweden, Finland, Singapore, New Zealand and Fiji.
Vera Bullen was a senior tutor in Dance Studies at The University of Auckland from 2006-2008. She taught ballet, history, kinesiology, research proposal and safe dance practices subjects. In 2009 she went to Seattle, USA, to write a conditioning book for performing artists and undertake Pilates teacher training. Vera holds an MCPA from The University of Auckland, an MA (Dance Studies) from the Laban Centre in London and BA (Dance/Drama) from the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a member of IADMS (International association for Dance Medicine and Science) and PAMA (Performing Arts Medicine Association).
Marinda is an active, dedicated and passionate lecturer whose joy is training and supporting students in their programs of study while keeping up with legislation and furthering education at all levels.
She has been a senior lecturer in auditing and taxation at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, a unit coordinator for Taxation Law and Advanced Taxation Law at the University of New England, Armidale, and she is currently a facilitator at Canberra Institute of Technology teaching business and management. Merinda also works as a business consultant for Lucrum Logic and as an accountant and office manager for Harmonie German Club Inc.
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.
Dr 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 Australian universities, 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 numerous 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 dance artist and creative producer. Between 2009 and 2011 Annette co-facilitated moveMENt, a men’s contemporary dance ensemble. She has also created two site-specific community works, Our Secret River in 2010 and its sister project Solace+Yearning: Between Kwoorabup and Denmark in 2012. In 2013 Annette supported Aboriginal artist Joey Williams in the creation of the performance, Songlines and was artist-in-residence with lighting designer David Nile at North Albany Senior High School. In 2014 Annette performed the solo re-working of Solace+Yearning as part of the National Regional Arts Showcase and exhibited My War? at the Vancouver Arts Centre.
In 2015 My War? became a full-length performance created with young people that premiered at the Albany Entertainment Centre. The Creation of Now also premiered that year as part of Brave New Works festival. In 2016 Annette was commissioned with Perth International Arts Festival and the City of Albany to create The Snake Run Project, an ambitious work that celebrated the 40th anniversary of one of the oldest skate parks in the world.
Following a residency with Tasdance in Launceston, Tasmania, Annette presented a solo installation at Brave New Works Festival 2016, called The Index.
As an arts manager/consultant, Annette has worked with West Australian Ballet, STEPS Youth Dance Company, Buzz Dance Theatre, STRUT Dance Inc., Festival of Perth, Women’s Art Library (London) and Denmark Arts. Between 2009 and 2013 Annette was the state’s regional contemporary dance facilitator for Ausdance WA creating the ground-breaking Future Landings model for animating regional communities through dance.
Annette is regularly invited to speak at conferences throughout Australia and in 2012 her work was featured in the British publication Animated. Annette won the 2011 West Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Community/Regional Dance and was shortlisted twice in 2013. In 2012 Annette was short-listed for an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Youth or Community Dance for Future Landings.
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.
Philip Channells began his dance training in 1998 at The Northern Rivers Conservatorium of Arts in Lismore before joining the CPA (Adelaide College of the Arts) and Link Dance Company (2003) at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts. Enmeshed in this training has been a commitment to developing disability arts, which he’s dedicated 15 years. He spent the first eight years of his career in Australia, gaining an understanding of contemporary dance, community cultural development and disability cultural practices, before moving to the UK in 2007. Philip worked with Candoco, StopGAP and Corali dance companies, Scottish Dance Theatre, East London Dance and Adam Benjamin (co-founder of Candoco Dance Company).
In Australia Channells has worked with Elizabeth Cameron-Dalman (The Universal Lake), Kay Armstrong (Leda), Dean Walsh (Back from Front – 1st stage development), Phillip Adams (Amplification and Self-encasing Trilogy #1: Endling) Michael Whaites, Ingrid Voorendt (Trees I’m Climbing) and Marc Brew, No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability, Tutti Arts and dFaces of Youth. He spent 10 years working with Restless Dance Theatre where he was Artistic Director (2009 – 2012). He directed Next of Kin – no ordinary status family (2010) for the Youth Ensemble and mentored Andrew Pandos in Debut 3 – the dancers direct. He was one of eight choreographers at the Australian Youth Dance Festival (2012) and showed inPerspective #1 at Australian Dance Theatre’s ‘Rough Draft’ and Ausdance SA’s ‘Choreolab’ (2012). Commissioned by DansiT in Norway, Philip choreographed and directed PERFECT (im)PERFECTIONS – stories untold for the Multiplié Dansefestival (2014) and the Sum of Us All at Zodiak – Centre for New Dance (2014).
He has acted as a Peer Advisor for the Australia Council for the Arts, sat on a selection panel for the Dancehouse (Melbourne) residency program ‘Housemate’ and was a dance judge at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2010 & 2013. Philip is the first dancer to be appointed by Bundanon Trust as Ambassador for the Artist in Residence program and with Gavin Webber (Animal Farm Collective) co-founded The Corner Dance Lab, a week-long dance residency program in Federal NSW.
Philip has presented his work at the Bundanon Trust, Sydney Opera House, Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art, National Dance Forum, Dance Your Heart Out, Arts Activated Conference, Don’t DIS my ABILITY, Dance Symposium NSW, Goldsmiths University of London, Global Dance and the Child International/World Dance Alliance Dance Summit Taipei, World Alliance for Arts Education Global Summit (Finland), Zodiak – Centre for New Dance (Helsinki) and ITAK – Regional Dance Center of Eastern Finland, and the Australia Week Celebrations in Port Moresby.
Through the JUMP National Mentoring program 2013 he worked closely with emerging artist Matt Shilcock for the first stage development of O s t e o g e n u i n e and was a personal assistant to Jianna Georgiou, Associate Artist of Dance Integrated Australia. In 2014 he will mentor Katina Olsen on the Perfect (im)Perfections project in Trondheim, Norway. He continues to act as a mentor for the DirtyFeet ‘Right Foot Project’ in Sydney and Studio Aperio in northern NSW.
Philip is fiercely committed to developing disability arts through redefining an artistic practice that integrates people from diverse backgrounds and life experience.
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 MA works as a senior lecturer in dance education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand within teacher education. She has been for many years a choreographer, teacher and researcher both in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Her research has centred on choreographic practice particularly in relation to site-specific work, dance education, and dance and disability. She has a long association with Touch Compass Dance Company who have provided a base for some of her research interests. Her recent publications are to be found in Research in Dance Education, The Arts in Society and Dance Research Aotearoa.
Lee Christofis has been a leading dance critic and arts commentator in Australia for more than 40 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 20 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 was the Curator of Dance at the National Library of Australia from 2006 to 2013, and received an Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance in 2009. In the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours List he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to the performing arts, particularly to dance.
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.
Julia is a dancer choreographer and director. She danced with The Australian Ballet, Australian Dance Theatre and was a founding member and co-director of Etcetera, a visual performing group. Her choreographic credits include productions for Belvoir Street, Sydney Theatre Company, The Australian Ballet, Australian Dance Theatre, Etcetera, Tasdance, State Opera of South Australia and SA Youth Opera, Sidetrack Performance Group, Freewheels, Death Defying Theatre and Flying Fruit Fly Circus. Julia worked at NIDA for 15 years with esteemed movement teacher Keith Bain OAM and then on his retirement she became Head of Movement for the Acting Department and Head of the post-graduate Movement Studies course. Since leaving NIDA in 2009 Julia has worked as a freelance writer, director & choreographer. She was instrumental in the editing, publishing and launch of the book Keith Bain on Movement (2010) and is currently acting Head of Movement at WAAPA.
I'm the Australian Dance Awards nominations coordinator (10 hrs/wk). I work with the selection panel and manage the nominating and voting procedures. I compile the citations for the shortlist, am responsible for updating the ADAs website and I work closely with the host Ausdance organisation that is producing the event each year. I have been involved in the dance industry for many years. I was a BA (Dance) student at Adelaide University and worked at Ausdance NSW 2007–2009. I have been with Ausdance National in Canberra since 2006.
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.
Li was born into utter poverty in Mao’s communist China and at the age of 11 he was selected to train in Madame Mao's Beijing Dance Academy. The 7 years of harsh training regime at the Beijing Dance Academy taught him discipline, resilience, determination and perseverance. Li’s astounding drive and relentless hard work made him one of the best dancers China has produced. When he was 18, Li was awarded one of the first cultural scholarships to go to America, and subsequently been offered a soloist contract with the Houston Ballet. Two years later, Li defected to the West where would soon be acknowledged as one of the best dancers in the world. In 1995, Li and his family moved to Australia where Li danced his last three and half years as a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet. Li made a successful career transition from ballet to finance in 1999. He is a senior manager at one of the largest stockbroking firms in Australia.
Matthew Day is a choreographer, dancer and dramaturg working across various artistic mediums and cultural contexts. Matthew is invested in conceptual choreographic practices that are intensely physical and push the boundaries of dance and performance. A teenage ballroom dancing champion, Matthew went on to study dance and performance studies at UWS, NSW (2003/2004) and at the VCA, VIC (2005) before collaborating with students at the SNDO, Netherlands (2006-2009). Matthew has had residencies at Critical Path, Lucy Guerin Inc., Chunky Move, Legs on the Wall, Campbelltown Arts Centre and the Bundanon Trust, where he worked with Deborah Hay on her Solo Commissioning Project. Matthew is currently engaged on a number of upcoming projects with the infamous Phillip Adams BalletLab. Matthew’s minimalist and durational solo works Thousands, Cannibal and Intermission constitute his acclaimed TRILOGY project and each explore the body as a site of continual becoming and infinite potential. These works have been presented in Next Wave, Sydney Fringe, Brisbane Festival-Under the Radar, Dance Massive, Melbourne Festival and in 2013 will begin to tour internationally.
Alexander Dea is an ethnographer-performer living in Central Java documenting, with video and audio, the last remaining masters of classical performing arts. He also makes new works with Asia’s contemporary and classical artists, Didik Nini Thowok, the late Ben Suharto, Ramli Ibrahim, and others. He writes on dance activity both traditional and modern.
Professor Kathie Debenham PhD, CLMA, Utah Valley University, has
developed programs and curricula in university, secondary and primary school
settings, and directed companies of children/youth, university, and professional
dancers. She has presented the Laban/Bartenieff work at numerous regional,
national, and international conferences in dance and in the humanities.
Pat Debenham is a CLMA and Professor of Contemporary Dance and Music
Theatre at Brigham Young University. In addition to workshops and
choreography that have been presented internationally, he has published in
Research in Dance Education, The Journal of Dance Education, NAHE
Interdisciplinary Journal and Contact Quarterly. Pat’s professional work
demonstrates how Laban principles can be woven into and through all aspects of
a dance curriculum.
Dr Elizabeth Dempster is a performer, choreographer, writer and critic. She is senior lecturer in dance at Victoria University and a member of the boards of Writings on Dance and Dance Exchange. Her research interests include practice-based performance, critical, analytic and choreographic dance writing; modern and post modern dance practice and theory; improvisational technologies and performance; philosophies of the body and feminist methodologies.
Ann Dils is Professor in the Department of Dance, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a member of UNCG’s Women’s and Gender Studies Coordinating Council. She served as editor (2006-2008) and co-editor (2003-2005) of Dance Research Journal and co-edited the collections Intersections: Dance, Place, and Identity (2006) and Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader (2001). She is co-director of Accelerated Motion, a web-based dance preservation and curriculum project. Dils recently reconstructed the Cocteau/Milhaud 1920 farce Le Boeuf sur le Toit and is currently writing an article about audience reception and the presentation of reconstructed dance.
Ausdance CEO January 2013 – October 2016, previously holding the position of Ausdance ACT Director in 2005 – 07. I am a Graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and hold a BA (History and Political Science) from ANU. I was a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly (2001 – 04), being the youngest woman ever elected to a parliament in Australia, at that time. Serving as a cross-bench member allowed me to gain an understanding of the diversity the Canberra community and a rich insight into political processes. I have volunteered on a range of boards for organisations such as the YWCAs of Australia and Canberra, and Canberra Arts Marketing. Currently I am Deputy Chair of the World YWCA Nominations Committee.
Geneviève Dussault, MFA, lecturer at the University of Quebec in Montreal dance department since 1984, teaches movement analysis, rhythm and dance history. Her master’s research at York University, Toronto (1991) carried out a comparative analysis of Bharata-Natyam and baroque dance forms. She is a certified LMA practitioner (Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies -1996) and, as a dancer and choreographer, she has worked on films and performed in Canada and Europe with the support of Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec.
Geneviève Dussault, MA, est chargée de cours au Département de danse de l’Université du Québec à Montréal depuis 1984. Elle enseigne l’analyse du mouvement, le rythme corporel et l’histoire de la danse. Détentrice d’une maîtrise en danse de l’Université York de Toronto (1991) portant sur l’analyse comparative du Bharata-Natyam et de la danse baroque, elle est aussi certifiée en analyse du mouvement du Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (1996). Elle a œuvré en tant que chorégraphe-interprète en danse contemporaine et baroque et s’est produite au Canada et en Europe grâce à l’appui du Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec.
Clare Dyson is a choreographer, researcher and choreoturg. She creates collaborative dance, theatre and site-specific performance and has toured her works throughout Australia and internationally. Clare has been artist-in-residence with several institutions in Australia and received fellowships and residencies internationally including Cité des Arts in Paris, Tanzfabrik in Berlin and Djerassi in the US. In 2006 she won an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance for Churchill’s Black Dog and her work The Voyeur was nominated for best Independent Dance at the 2010 Australian Dance Awards, touring throughout the US. Clare is currently a lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology and researches audience engagement and reflective practice in the creative industries.
Alison East lectures in Dance Studies at the University of Otago, teaching Choreography, Somatics and Community Dance. In 1989 she established New Zealand’s first contemporary choreography qualification at Unitec, Auckland, which spawned a new generation of New Zealand dance artists. Her research concerns Ecodance pedagogy, Trans-locational Dance Education and Trans-disciplinary research.
Rodney Stenning Edgecombe lectures English literature at the University of Cape Town, and holds one of its Distinguished Teacher Awards. He took his MA with distinction at Rhodes University, where he won the Royal Society of St George Prize for English, and his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded the Members' English Prize, 1978/1979. He has published 11 books-the most recent being on Thomas Hood-and 332 articles on topics that range from Shakespeare to nineteenth-century ballet and opera.
Monte Engler, an accountant specialising in Self-Managed Superannuation, is involved with research,administration and compliance in the field and works for the University of Adelaide and SuperGuardian Pty Ltd. Ausdance SA’s Treasurer, he is also finishing his Masters of Commerce (Accounting) degree.
Shona graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts School of Dance with a Bachelor of Dance in 1994. She went on to gain a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) Psychology at Deakin University in 2000, and a MPsych/PhD (Industrial/Organisational Psychology) from the University of Melbourne in 2007. Her PhD comprised a case study of an effective contemporary dance education program and its participating youth. Shona has taught dance at Deakin University, the Victorian College of the Arts and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. She has also been involved in a number of dance related research projects at Edith Cowan University, Australian Dance Theatre, and Flinders University.
Rachel Fensham is Professor of Dance and Theatre Studies at the University of Surrey (UK). Her publications include The Dolls’ Revolution (2005) and To Watch Theatre (2009) and articles in
Discourses in Dance, New Theatre Quarterly and Youth Studies Australia. She conducted an Australian Research Council project, Transnational and Crosscultural Choreographies: the politics of Australian dance, 1970-2000 (2005-09) and is currently collaborating on an Arts and Humanities Research Council project, Pioneer Women of British Modern Dance.
Catherine Ferri, MA, teaches movement analysis to dance teachers within the framework of the national teaching diploma in France and is certified by the National Dance Centre, France, in Analyse fonctionnelle du corps dans le mouvement dansé/ (Functional analysis of the dancing body). She trained as a dancer with l’École Supérieure des Grands Ballets Canadiens, le Groupe de la Place Royale, and with the Limon company. After studies at New York University, particularly Effort analysis with Janis Pforsich LMA, she created dance works for the International Sound Symposium and founded Neighbourhood Dance Works—an open-ended multidisciplinary company. Her master’s research at the Sorbonne (University of Paris IV) centered on the question of dynamic placement in the training of professional dancers. Since her move to Paris, Godard’s approach to movement analysis, focussing the relationship between perception and movement, has provided the principal thrust of her research and teaching.
Catherine Ferri, MA, intervenante en formation de professeurs, Pôle d’enseignement supérieur spectacle vivant (PESSV) Bretagne–Pays de la Loire. Formée à l’École Supérieure des Grands Ballets Canadiens, le Groupe de la Place Royale et avec la Cie Limon, et primée pour son travail fondateur au Canada atlantique avec sa compagnie Neighbourhood Dance Works, Catherine a étudié l’analyse du mouvement de manière multidisciplinaire à New York University. Elle obtient sa Maîtrise à la Sorbonne (Université Paris 4) où elle approfondit la question du placement dynamique du danseur. Certifiée (CND Paris) en Analyse fonctionnelle du corps dans le mouvement dansé, Catherine développe et enseigne l’analyse du mouvement depuis 1997 pour la formation des professeurs de danse.
Russina-born Tamara Tchinarova began her dance training in Paris with emigre ballerinas from the Imperial Russian Ballet. She danced professionally in Europe with the touring Ballet Russes companies that emerged in the 1930s and she came to Australia in 1936 on tour with the Monte Carlo Russian Ballet. Tchinarova returned in 1938 with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet. At the conclusion of the Covent Garden Russian Ballet tour, along with a number of her colleagues, Tchinarova elected to stay in Australia. She made an especially important contribution in the 1940s to newly developing Australian companies, which included the Kirsova Ballet, the Polish-Australian Ballet and the Borovansky Ballet. During her time with the Kirsova Ballet she created a number of roles, including that of Satana in Kirsova's three act ballet Faust, which premiered in November 1941. She was a principal dancer with the Borovansky Ballet in the mid 1940s and worked with Borovansky to restage ballets from the Ballets Russes repertoire. In Australia she met and married actor Peter Finch and worked with him on a number of films before leaving Australia to make her home in London. Tamara has also pursued a career as a dance writer and has been published in a range of dance magazines, notably the Dancing Times.
Lynn Fisher's MA thesis from the University of Western Australia examined the social and economic history of dance in Western Australia from I890 to I940. Formerly a lecturer in dance and a dance journalist, she is an Honorary Life Member of Ausdance WA and Chair of the Board of the Graduate College of Dance in Perth.
Peter Fraser performs in improvisation, site-specific performance and dance. He has performed with De Quincey Co Bodyweather performance ensemble for over 20 years—in desert inhabitations, durational performance, outdoor and theatre-based works. He has worked with a wide range of groups and in self-devised solo and duo works. He has studied with dancers Ros Crisp, Min Tanaka and Deborah Hay whose solo, I think not, he has performed. Peter is a co-director of, and performs with, the Environmental Performance Authority ecological performance group. Recent projects include Sounds like movement, with instrument builder and musician Dale Gorfinkel, investigating the relationship of movement and materials, such as paper (‘Festival of Live Art’, Melbourne 2014); authentic movement/improvisation as part of a research group led by Shaun McLeod; the body/city project About Now for ‘Performing Mobilities’ (PSI Conference, Melbourne, 2015); eXchange—six short solos by six performers, presented at Taipei Art Festival; performing in Xavier Le Roy’s Temporary Title ‘exhibition’ (Carriageworks, 2015) and a Kathakali/Western performance investigation led by Arjun Raina. Peter recently completed a performance MA, Now and again: strategies for truthful performance, Monash, 2014.
Aastha Gandhi is an independent performance researcher and a performer, currently pursuing studies in Law. She is a practitioner of Guru Surendranath Jena’s style of Odissi dance. She researched on Odissi dance, its historiography, practice and problems within the established parampara, for her M. Phil dissertation (2006–2008), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her subsequent research work has been published in Conference Proceedings of WDA Global Summit, Dance Dialogues: conversations across cultures, artforms and practices, Brisbane (2009) and World Dance Alliance’s Journal of Emerging Dance Scholars (2013). Her current area of research engages with city space and its evolving metaphors of performance, seen in contestation with the established laws.
Sally is a lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Melbourne. She danced in London and New York and was a founding member of Danceworks in Melbourne. She is an occasional guest performer with Russell Dumas’s Dance Exchange. She is a co-editor with Elizabeth Dempster of Writings on Dance journal and is a regular contributor to local and international arts’ and humanities’ forums. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The Drama Review, Dance Research, Performance Research, the Journal of Intercultural Studies, Forum for Modern Language Studies and elsewhere. Her translation into English of Poétique de la danse contemporaine by Laurence Louppe (Contredanse, 1997) was published in 2010 (Dance Books, UK).
Tony Geeves worked overseas for 25 years as a professional dancer and has taught extensively since 1974 at primary, secondary and tertiary levels.Since his retirement from full-time dancing in 1982, Tony has obtained a Certificate in Anatomy, Neuroanatomy and Physiology, a Teaching Diploma and an MA in Dance/Movement Therapy at New York University. Tony has lectured and given workshops at universities in Oslo, Stockholm and New York, and addressed the 4th Dance Medicine Congress in Finland and the Healthier Dancer Conference in the UK. He lectured in dance at the Queensland University of Technology and received an Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance in 1997. Since 2005 Tony has been Director of Pilates & Physio on Collingwood in Brisbane, and he also supervises Masters students for the Brisbane branch of the Melbourne Institute of Experiential and Creative Arts Therapy (MIECAT).
Professor Gene Moyle has worked across a dynamic mix of fields including the performing arts, elite sport and the corporate sectors. A graduate of the Australian Ballet School, QUT Dance and after having danced with the Australian Ballet Dancers Company and Queensland Ballet, Gene pursued further studies in psychology completing University degrees including a Masters and a Doctorate in Sport and Exercise Psychology.
During her career Gene has developed a broad experience base cultivated within established and start-up small-through-large public and private organisations operating across Australia, New Zealand, North America and the United Kingdom. Positions within these companies have included both consulting and internal roles across departments such as learning and development, human resources, health and welfare, and safety within the energy, employment, mining, transport, engineering, construction, allied health, education, training, Olympic sport and performing arts industries.
Gene has focused on the application and research of performance psychology and performance enhancement, particularly within the performing arts and elite sports domains. She has significant experience working with and leading multidisciplinary teams in high-performance settings and possesses specific expertise in the area of career development and transition. Gene has supported a number of Olympic Winter sports programs across three Olympic cycles (Torino 2008, Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014), and has worked extensively within the elite sporting system at both State and National level.
Gene has worked in senior executive and management roles across a range of industries and has held multiple positions on boards and advisory committees. She is currently a board member of the Queensland Ballet, a member of the Queensland Board of the Psychology Board of Australia (AHPRA), member of the National Committee of the APS College of Sport and Exercise Psychologists, a National Executive Committee Member of the Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare, a Performance Health Advisory Panel member for the Queensland Academy of Sport, and an industry mentor and panel assessor for Arts Queensland and the Australia Council for the Arts.
She joined QUT Creative Industries faculty in the role as Head of Discipline—Dance in November 2012 and commenced as the Head of School in the new School of Creative Practice in January 2017.
Patrick Germain-Thomas, professor in economics and management at Novancia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Paris, completed in 2010 a thesis in sociology under the supervision of Philippe Urfalino, entitled ‘Policies and market forces in contemporary dance in France (1975–2009)’. In June 2010, Editions L’attribut published a book based on this thesis, Contemporary dance: a successful revolution? His current research is pursuing new lines of enquiry, specifically around matters of cultural action, (audience involvement, conferences, courses and workshops) which are programmed to support choreographic performance seasons.
Patrick Germain-Thomas, professeur d’économie et de gestion à Novancia, Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Paris, ai soutenu en 2010 une thèse en sociologie intitulée « Politiques et marchés de la danse contemporaine en France (1975-2009) » effectuée sous la direction de Philippe Urfalino. Un livre issu de cette thèse a paru en juin 2012 aux éditions de l’Attribut : La Danse contemporaine, une révolution réussie ? Il poursuit ces travaux de recherche, notamment à travers la préparation d’un nouveau terrain d’enquête portant de façon spécifique sur les opérations d’action culturelle (sensibilisation, conférences, stages et ateliers) accompagnant la programmation des spectacles chorégraphiques.
Dr Shreeparna Ghosal completed a PhD in English Literature under Prof Malabika Sarkar, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She is secretary of the Centre for Studies in Romantic Literature, and freelances as a corporate trainer of business communication and soft skills in the management and IT sectors. She studied Bharatanatyam under Guru Smt Thankamani Kutty, Kalamandalam Kolkata, and has also taught there. She has her own institution of Creative Bharatanatyam called Nrtyaadhar. Ghosal is a performer, teacher and choreographer, a committee member and coordinator of 'Dhitang' Dance and the Child Movement, West Bengal Chapter, and a committee member of World Dance Alliance, West Bengal Chapter.
Renee Glass completed a Bachelor of Psychology (Hons) in 2001at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) and, having studied piano performance through the Trinity College of Music, took the opportunity to combine her strong interests in psychology and the arts by joining the Conceiving Connections project in 2002. She gained an Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) and is currently a PhD student in the MARCS Auditory Laboratories at UWS. Renee’s research interests include the investigation of cognitive, affective and physiological processes involved in the arts. Currently she is investigating audience response to contemporary dance and developing a scale that will measure such responses.
Stephanie Glickman is an independent choreographer and dance teacher who has a Masters degree in research focusing on Melbourne-based choreographers. She writes about dance for the Herald Sun (Melbourne) and is a presenter for Dance Dialogues , an Ausdance-supported weekly radio program for 3CR.
Joseph Gonzales is Head of the Dance Faculty at the National Academy of
Arts, Culture and Heritage, ASWARA, Ministry of Information, Communication
and Culture, Malaysia. He is one of Malaysia’s leading dance educators, a
prolific and versatile choreographer, dance advocate, author, professional curator and a perennial student. Joseph completed his PhD in 2011 and was elected to the Executive Board of the World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific as Vice-President South-East Asia the same year.
After graduating from the WA Academy of Performing Arts, Paige worked Australia-wide as a professional performer with companies and individuals including WA Ballet, Meryl Tankard Company, Fieldworks Performance Group, Sue Peacock & Dancers and 1D339 Dance Group. She founded Paige Gordon & Performance Group (Canberra) and has been creating work since 1993. Paige received the Canberra Critics Circle Award in 1993 and 1994 and was invited to participate in the 1995 Australia/NZ Japan Choreographic Course. In 1996, she received the Green Room Award. PG & PG developed a national reputation, performing at the National Festival of Australian Theatre, the Festival of Contemporary Arts and was part of the Made to Move seasons in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Paige returned to Perth in November 1998 to take up the position of Artistic Director of Buzz Dance Theatre.
Lesley Graham has been active in dance and dance education for over 30 years. She is employed by the Tasmanian Education Department.
Lesley holds a Masters in Dance Studies and was a dancer with Tasdance (Jenny Kinder). Teaching positions include Lecturer in Dance Education, QUT and UTas. For the past two years she has taught into the Salamanca Arts Centre Space Dance Certificate IV and Diploma of Dance Teaching and Management courses and currently lectures into the UTAS Masters of Teaching (Arts Education) and B Ed. Primary courses.
Lesley was the Education Consultant on Lagaw Gub Torres Strait Island Dance Kit (featuring the dance of Dennis Newie and St Paul, Moa Island—unpublished). Lesley has recently developed the Education Resources for Bangarra Dance Theatre in partnership with Education Services Australia and was recently engaged to write online support material for the ABC Splash project including a dance 'digibook'.
Lesley is actively involved in community projects, assisting on the Mkono Kwa Mkono project, with Kickstart Arts and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and recently received an award for her contributions to the African Australian community.
She actively mentors artists working in schools through the AIR project and less formal partnerships. In her position of Curriculum Area Leader—The Arts at Ogilvie High, she has developed formal partnerships between the school and MADE, Kickstart Arts, Salamanca Arts Centre, Second Echo Ensemble, DRILL performance and Tasdance to allow access for these companies to professional studio spaces and for the community to professional artists.
Lesley writes for The Mercury and Dance Australia, and she has just completed a term of four years on the Ausdance Australian Dance Awards panel.
An English lecturer at the University of Melbourne from 1964 – 2006, Robin has published widely on both dance and English literature. He was dance critic for The Australian 1986 – 92, The Age 1992 – 98 and editorial adviser to Brolga from 1994 – 2006, after which he became co-editor. He was also co-editor of The Critical Review. With Shirley McKechnie and Kate Stevens, he was one of three scholars whose research projects, funded by the Australian Research Council, resulted in the publication of Thinking in Four Dimensions: Creativity and Cognition in Contemporary Dance (Melbourne University Press, 2005). First trained as a musician, Robin worked with Laurel Martyn and Ballet Victoria for many years and both choreographed for that company and served on its board of directors.
John Haag has worked in Australia and overseas in a wide range of performance roles. He has also worked as illustrator in places such as QNPWS and QAC. In the last five years Jon studied animation and recently formed Moco, a company that explores motion capture as a tool in live performance. John is currently a Masters Research (performance studies) student at QUT (2008).
Bree Hadley is a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts and Creative Writing in the School of Media, Entertainment, Creative Arts, Performance Studies at Queensland University of Technology. Her interests as a performance theorist and practitioner converge around issues of the body, identity, performativity and politics, and her writing about performance has appeared in Australian Stage Online, Australasian Drama Studies and the forthcoming collection International Faust Studies.
Marc lives in Ghent, Belgium and, apart from being a critic, is also a dance photographer. He travels extensively, especially, to follow the Russian ballet. He contributes to magazines such as Dance View and Danceviewtimes, Ballet Alert (Washington DC), The Dancing Times (London), Dance Now (London), Dance International (Vancouver), Dance Magazine (USA), Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Ballet (Moscow), BALLET2000 and BallettoOggi (Turin), and Brolga (Australia). His photographs have been exhibited and published in those magazines, in theatre programmes and in many other publications about dance. Selections of Marc Haegeman’s photographs and articles are available on his website For Ballet Lover Only.
Lynette Haines is a teacher for the South Australian Education Department (DECS) and a private dance studio teacher. She lectures in Dance at the University of South Australia, and also works with children and young adults with Downs Syndrome. Lynette has also worked as the Education Officer for Ausdance SA, providing ‘in school’ dance programs and professional development for teachers. Lynette holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Human Movement, first class Honours in Health Science and has a Bachelor of Education (Specialisation) in Secondary Dance. She also holds the Theatrical Teaching Diploma of the Commonwealth Society of Teachers of Dancing, the Teaching Certificate of the Royal Academy of Dance and is a fully registered member of the Royal Academy of Dance.
Stephanie Hanrahan completed her PhD at The University of Western Australia in the area of attributional style in sport. After a short stint at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Dr Hanrahan joined the academic staff at The University of Queensland as a lecturer in 1990. She was a UQ Teaching Excellence Award winner in 1997 and is currently an associate professor holding a joint appointment with the Schools of Human Movement Studies and Psychology.
Nicole Harbonnier-Topin, PhD, professor of movement studies in the dance department of University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) since 2004, where she was also responsible for launching the UQAM graduate program in somatic education. She is certified in Analyse fonctionnelle du corps dans le mouvement dansé (AFCMD) “Functional analysis of the dancing body”) Paris, 1997 and obtained her doctorate degree in Adult Education from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), Paris, 2009. Her thesis develops an original perspective on dance teaching from the point of view of activity analysis. She worked in France as a dancer, as choreographer, and, as a dance teacher’s instructor, she has worked with several institutions in France.
Professeure Nicole Harbonnier, PhD, est professeure en « étude du mouvement » depuis 2004 au Département de danse de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Après une maitrise portant sur l’étirement du danseur (Paris 8, 2000), elle obtient un Doctorat en Formation des adultes (Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers 2009). Sa thèse pose un regard neuf sur l’enseignement de la danse à partir de l’analyse des activités. Certifiée en Analyse fonctionnelle du corps dans le mouvement dansé du Centre National de la danse à Paris (1997), elle a été interprète, professeur de danse contemporaine et formatrice de professeurs de danse dans plusieurs institutions françaises.
Harry Haythorne (1926–2014) was a dancer, ballet master and guest artist with companies around the world and was assistant artistic director of Scottish Ballet and artistic director of the Queensland Ballet and Royal New Zealand Ballet. Between 1955 and 1959 he was chairman of the British Dance Notation Society, an organisation formed to promote the understanding and use of dance notation systems. He was a lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts, the National Theatre Ballet School and the Christine Walsh Dance Centre. At the 2001 Australian Dance Awards, Harry was awarded Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer for his performance in Sydney Dance Company's Tivoli.
Helen Herbertson has been crafting performance for over three decades for intimate non-theatre venues, traditional theatrical settings, large-scale outdoor sites, theatre and opera performances, educational projects and touring programs. She has been active in the development of Australian dance, dancers and choreographers through a variety of advisory and leadership roles such as Artistic Director of Danceworks (1989-97), Artistic Director of Dancehouse (2001-03) and Deputy Chair of the Dance Fund, Australia Council (1998). Helen's choreographic work has received many awards, including an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance (2003). Her individual awards include the Kenneth Myer Medallion for Outstanding and Distinguished Contribution to the Performing Arts. Helen is Graduate Coordinator, Dance at the University of Melbourne.
Felecia Hick is an independent dancer/choreographer whose works include Waiting (2002), a Dance Australia Critics’ Choice, Hunger (2005), an Australian Dance Award nomination, and mute, stark, rich (2007), a collaborative dance film funded by ArtsSA. An Australia Council grantee, Felecia has lectured at the Elder Conservatorium (2000-07) and currently teaches at Adelaide private studios.
Duncan Holt, MA, DC, FMCA, SFHEA (Panel Chair) a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy is a freelance lecturer and researcher in Dance in the UK. In industry he performed with Cycles Dance Company (UK), as well as companies in Canada and Australia and was Dance Artist in Residence at Theatr Clwyd, Wales. Postgraduate student research supervision includes site-specific choreography and current developments in Thai dance. Recent publications include work on ‘touch’ in dance and auto-ethnographic studies in career structures. His current research concerns aspects of men in dance, youth dance and his second career as a McTimoney Chiropractor.
Associate Professor Christina Hong is Assistant Dean, Teaching & Learning, Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology. She has established specific expertise in the fields of arts education curriculum, assessment and leadership. Christina has previously held academic leadership and management responsibility as a Head of Department (school and higher education sectors) and as a National Co-ordinator for the Arts, for the New Zealand Ministry of Education.
In 2007, Christina was a Visiting Scholar at Texas Woman’s University, (USA) and in 2008 participated on the Institute for Management and Leadership in Higher Education at the Graduate School of Education, Harvard University.
Alison Houston has been a journalist, writer, sub-editor and editor for over 27 years.
She has edited reference books, autobiographies and novels, as well as reporting for, sub-editing and editing regional newspapers and bi-monthly specialist magazines.
As a journalist, she has worked across Queensland, NSW and Victoria. Starting out as a reporter, she covered everything from general news to police rounds and court, feature stories to local and state government issues, before moving into editing copy and designing pages across more than 20 publications.
She currently works as a freelance editorial consultant and journalist for the International Arts and Health Conference, the Seniors Newspaper group and ABK Publications.
Avril Huddy is a lecturer in contemporary dance at QUT, having graduated in 1993 with a BA majoring in dance. Avril was a co-founder and co-curator of the Crab Room and Cherry Herring Performance Spaces in Brisbane, and has worked extensively as an independent dance artist. She spent five years with Dancenorth (1997-2001) returning in 2005 as acting tour manager and rehearsal director.
Jennifer Jackson is a lecturer at Surrey University and teaches choreography at the Royal Ballet School. She is a former dancer with the Royal and Salders Wells Royal Ballet, and co-founder of the Ballet Independents Group (BIG). Her choreography includes commissioned work for ballet companies, fringe theatre, and vocational students, including In the Reveal (2007) and Retrieving the Sylph (2005).
Erica Rose Jeffrey believes in the power of movement connected to positive social change. Involved in multiple communities, she has worked internationally as a performer, choreographer, educator, arts leader and facilitator. The first dancer to be selected as a Rotary World Peace Fellow, she completed a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland. Erica Rose continues to investigate the connections of dance, empathy and peace as a PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology. She is also currently the Program Coordinator for Dance for Parkinson’s Australia and was instrumental in bringing the program to Australia.
I was Ausdance National's publications and communications manager for more than a decade. I led digital publishing projects and managed the technical and editorial direction of its digital communications, marketing and information services. I worked with the Ausdance Network, advocacy partners and the dance sector across Australia and internationally to ensure Ausdance's information services respected and met the business and career needs of dance professionals.
Originally from Brisbane, I was a founding member and co-curator (with Clare Dyson, Avril Huddy and Brian Lucas) of Brisbane’s CRAB Room performance space. For many years I was an artistic collaborator on site-specific performance works with choreographer Clare Dyson. I have a BA (Visual Arts) from QUT and Master of Information Studies (Internet Communication) from the University of Canberra.
Phakamas Jirajarupat completed her BA (Hons) and MA in Thai Classical Dance at Chulalongkom University, Bangkok, Thailand, in 1998 and 2000 respectively. She is a lecturer in the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Rajabhat Suan Sunandha University, Bangkok and is an expert in Thai Royal Court Dance and Thai Folk Dance. She is also a guest lecturer at Bangkok Patana International School, Bangkok, Thailand.
Brisbane born Evan Jones studied dance with Elsie Seguss, achieving R.A.D. Solo Seal, 1968. Further dance studies at Rosella Hightower’s Centre de Danse International in Cannes, France was followed by professional dancer engagements with Marseille Opera Ballet; Roland Petit’s Ballet Nationale de Marseille; Gerhard Bohner and Morley Wiseman at Staatstheater Darmstadt; Fred Howald, Egon Madsen and William Forsythe at Ballett Frankfurt. He served as ballet master with artistic director Andris Plucis, Staastheater Darmstadt and in 1997 was appointed lecturer in ballet at QUT. Evan has a Master in Education degree and has published on intrinsic motivation, assessment, reflective practice and embodied literacy.
A performer and teacher, Aadya Kaktikar has more than two decades of performance and teaching experience in the Odissi Dance form. Her book Odissi Yaatra—The journey of Guru Mayadhar Raut, captures the culturally vibrant years of the 40s, 50s and 70s in the field of Odissi dance. Illustrated with rare photographs, the book documents the people and processes involved in the classicisation of Odissi dance post India’s Independence. Working at the cusp of education and performance her practice, research and teaching focuses on expanding the vocabulary of traditional Indian dance forms both in pedagogy and practice.
Dr Jondi Keane is an arts practitioner, critical thinker and senior lecturer at Griffith University. Over the last 25 years he has exhibited and performed in the USA, UK, Europe and Aus, most recently he produced the READING ROOM exhibition at the Slought Foundation, Philadelphia (April 2008) and Tuning Fork: Shopfront at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art (Nov 2008). He has published on embodiment, experimental architecture and practice-led research in a range of journals including Ecological Psychology, Janus Head, Interfaces, Text as well as in Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text (2009) from Continuum Press and a volume on Arakawa and Gins from Rodopi Press.
Sela Kiek began working as a dancer/teacher/choreographer after graduating from WAAPA and Adelaide University. Moving to the United Kingdom in 1996, she continued to further her experience of dance, performing and lecturing there until 2004. She continued to pursue her interest in site specific dance throughout this time, creating works for community and professional dancers in various sites, from historic buildings to neglected public places. Sela completed a Master of Philosophy researching site specific performance in 2003 and is undertaking her PhD at Deakin University, investigating audience/ performer spatial relationships in dance created for non-traditional performance venues.
Associate Professor Jenny Kinder is a leading figure in Australian contemporary dance, and since her retirement at the end of 2020, an Honorary Principal Fellow at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne.
Prior to her role as Head VCA Dance, Jenny was the founding Artistic Director of Tasdance, Australia's first dance-in-education company. She led the company from 1981 until 1995, delivering a School Residency Program to primary, secondary and district high schools throughout Tasmania, presenting a highly innovative repertoire of contemporary dance works to schools and regional communities. In 1991 and 1993, in collaboration with director Tim Newth, Tasdance presented Illuminations, a large-scale community performance at Launceston’s Cataract Gorge.
From 1977-1981, after 3 years working at Rusden State College (now Deakin University) in the Physical Education Department, Jenny joined Shirley McKechnie in the Department of Drama and Dance where she contributed to the development of the first dance-major in a Bachelor of Education course in Australia.
In the 1960s Jenny performed with the Contemporary Dance Theatre under Shirley McKechnie’s artistic direction in Sketches on Themes of Paul Klee, Sea Interlude, Earth Song, The Lonely World Part 2, The Other Generation, The Finding of the Moon, Canon for Four Dancers as well as Graeme Murphy’s Ecco Le Diavole and Ian Spink’s Starship, and many other works.
In recognition of her work as Artistic Director of Tasdance and as Head of VCA Dance, Jenny was awarded Outstanding Achievement in Dance Education at the Australian Dance Awards in 2005.
Ann Kipling Brown PhD is Professor Emerita in dance education from the Arts Education Program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. She works extensively with children, youth and adults and leads classes in technique, composition, and notation. Her research and publications focus on dance pedagogy, the integration of notation in dance programs, the application of technology in dance education, and the role of dance in the child’ and adult’s lived world.
Geoffery Z. Kohe is a Lecturer in Sport Studies and Sociology in the Institute of Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Worcester, UK. His research interests include the socio-cultural, historical, and political aspects of the Olympic movement, moral pedagogy, politicizations of the body, sport tourism, and historiography. His current projects include the centennial history of the New Zealand Olympic Committee, research on apologies and public history, and the biopolitics of streaking.
Alexandra is Reader in Dance at Middlesex University in London. Previous appointments include Senior Lecturer and Chair of Dance Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She received her doctorate from the University of Cambridge and trained professionally in dance in Düsseldorf and at John Neumeier’s Academy of the Hamburg Ballet. She is the author of Performing Femininity: Dance and Literature in German Modernism (2009), the editor of Dance and Politics (2011), and contributor to a range of international dance and arts journals.
Sunil Kothari, is a dance historian, scholar, author and critic with more than twelve publications to his credit. Honoured by the President of India with the civil honour of Padma Shri, he is the former Professor and Chair, Department of Dance, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata and Dean and Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Sunil is a Fulbright Professor and visiting Professor Department of Dance, New York University, USA, and was the South Asia Vice-President of World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific (2000-2008) and Vice-President, WDA AP India chapter.
Susan Kozel combines dance and philosophy in the context of new media: in other words she works with bodies, ideas and technologies. She has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Essex, UK (1994), and a long history of various movement techniques (from ballet to butoh) but currently works primarily with phenomenology as a methodology and improvisation and a movement practice. Susan’s current position is Professor of New Media at MEDEA Collaborative Media Initiative, Malmö University.
Donna Krasnow is a Professor in the Department of Dance at York University and heads the modern division at the Canadian Children's Dance Theatre. She is on the Board of Directors for the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science. She specializes in dance science research, concentrating on dance kinesiology, injury prevention, conditioning for dancers, and motor learning and motor control, with a special emphasis on the young dancer.
Melbourne based choreographer and dancer, Stephanie Lake, graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2000 and worked with Lucy Guerin, Chunky Move and BalletLab before performing and touring extensively to festivals worldwide. She is an award-winning choreographer with commissions from companies including Sydney Dance Company and Chunky Move. Stephanie has made several large-scale public dance works involving nearly one thousand participants, worked on several music video clips including Unashamed Desire, Missy Higgins and worked in collaboration with artists Robin Fox and David Rosetzky. In 2013 Lake presented DUAL at Dance Massive and will premiere A Small Prometheus at Melbourne Festival as well as a new commission from Chunky Move. She is currently honorary Resident Director of Lucy Guerin Inc.
Janet Lansdale is Emeritus Professor, University of Surrey, UK, where she was formerly Head of Performing Arts, and Research Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK. She has published five books on conceptual issues in dance, dance analysis, dance history and interpretation in dance.
Lucky is a Sydney-based dancer and choreographer, originally from Ghana, West Africa. Lucky’s work draws on his traditional culture of rhythm and dance as well as his understanding of contemporary movement practices. Lucky’s dance and choreographic practice looks for ways to negotiate what it means to draw on a rich history of traditional dance while innovating within a contemporary context. His methodology for developing dance work focuses on the collaboration between live percussion music and movement and is often informed by themes of social justice and the reinvigoration of past cultural forms such as cultural games and social activities.
Lucky’s works include Calabash (2012, 2013) Meeting Point (2013, 2014), Long Walk, which debuted at the Attakkalari India Biennial 2015 and Jamestown, which premiered at Sydney and Melbourne Fringe Festivals 2015.
As a dancer Lucky has worked with contemporary and cultural artists such as Annalouise Paul as part of Mother Tongue and Marrugeku and Stalker Theatre’s project Listening to Country Dance Lab.
In 2015, Lucky was invited as part of Critical Path’s Facilitated Program to participate in the 2015 FACETS program at Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts in Bangalore, culminating in a performance of the work at the Attakkalari India Biennial 2015. As part of the program, Lucky got to work with nine other choreographers and a team of international mentors including International Choreographer Philippe Saire, Curator and Media Artist Margie Medlin, Director and International Choreographer Jayachandran Palazhy, Lighting Designer Jonathan Roberts, and Sound Engineer Martin Lutz. Lucky then performed Long Walk to a Sydney audience as part of Critical Path’s Interchange Festival 2015.
In Sydney, Lucky has been part of choreographic labs and residencies including: at DirtyFeet Choreographic Lab (2014), Campbelltown Arts Centre, Dance and Education Program Mentorship (2013 and 2014), and Blacktown Concession Residency, Blacktown Arts Centre (2014).
Lucky has also taught, choreographed and performed as part of a number of community cultural art and development projects including Dancing in Harmony at STARTTS and Dance Africa Dance, which have focused on showcasing the artist talent of the African community in Sydney. In 2013 and 2014, Lucky has also received a number of nominations and awards as part of the Celebration of African Australians National Awards for the Best Contemporary Dancer and The Most Outstanding Troupe of the Year.
Lucky is the founder and Director for the TUUMATU Creativity, Dance and Music Festival an annual event hosted in every December in Accra, Ghana—a Festival seeking to celebrate local talent and bring independent artists together.
Shelley Lasica has been making and performing dance in Australia and abroad over the past 25 years. Her work, which is often located in non-theatre spaces, includes solos and ensembles, and is firmly based in a discourse that seeks to engage dance with other visual and temporal art forms. In Australia Shelley’s work is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.
Larry Lavender is Professor of Dance and Faculty Fellow in the Lloyd International Honors College at the
University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Larry teaches courses in choreography, dance history and criticism, creativity theories and practices, and animal studies in the arts.
Valerie Lawson is a journalist and author, and one of Australia’s leading dance writers. She was the foundation editor of Good Weekend, arts editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, dance writer for the Herald for 15 years and dance critic for The Australian Financial Review. She has written articles for the souvenir programs of the Australian Ballet and many visiting dance companies. Valerie was awarded a BPhil (Hons) in dance history from Durham University in 2002, and in 2012 was the Nancy Keesing Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales where she researched the dance collections of the library.
Garry Lester, PhD, works in the field of movement-based performance practice and education, with more than 35 years experience as a teacher, choreographer, performer and academic. He is a descendant of the Wonnarua people of the Hunter Valley and has recently worked as Traditional Indigenous Dance project officer for ArtBack NT and as principal writer for the NAISDA Dance College course reaccreditation process. His articles have been published widely in 'Brolga—an Australian journal about dance', and his monograph, ‘Regarding Margaret Barr’ is awaiting publication.
Nina Levy is a freelance writer and teacher who also lectures in dance history at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). She is co-principal of Classical Dance Studio, a private dance school in Perth. A graduate of the University of Western Australia and WAAPA, Nina is a former director of Buzz Dance Theatre, and became communications manager for Ausdance WA in 2007 and more recently online editor of Dance Australia magazine’s website. Her reviews and articles appear in Dance Australia and the West Australian.
Julie-Anne Long is an award-winning independent dance artist based in Sydney. Since graduating from the Victorian College of Arts in the early 1980s she has performed and choreographed on a wide range of projects with companies such as Human Veins, One Extra, Theatre of Image, Flying Fruit Fly Circus, Bell Shakespeare Company, Open City and Dance Works. From 1991 to 1996 Julie-Anne was Associate Artistic Director of One Extra Company with Artistic Director Graeme Watson.
She has worked in a variety of dance contexts as mentor, dramaturg, curator and producer including Acting Director of dance research organisation Critical Path (2006/2007) and Dance Curator at Campbelltown Arts Centre (2009/2010). Julie-Anne was awarded an Australia Council Dance Fellowship in 2007, which encompassed research, development and the realisation of a body of work entitled 'The Invisibility Project'.
Julie-Anne has a PhD from University New South Wales and is currently Lecturer in Dance and Performance in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University.
Ann-Maree Long is currently working towards her passionate dream, of a career based around the performing arts in literature. She is a descendant of the Butchulla tribe of Fraser Island and possesses a deep passion for Indigenous art and culture. Ann-Maree is currently in her third year of studies at QUT within the Creative Industries faculty. She is majoring in Dance Studies and Journalism, Media and Communication with the intention of graduating to become an Arts writer for First Nation and/or non-Indigenous artists around the globe. Ann-Maree is currently working as an intern for BlakDance Australia Ltd, in order to obtain new skills to aid her further in identifying herself and others as proud First Nation Australian artists.
Alys Longley is a writer, performance maker and a senior tutor at the University of Auckland where she specialises in teaching Performance Writing, Research Methodology and Interdisciplinary Creative Practice. Her doctoral research melds poetic writing and choreographic practices. Read her PhD thesis Moving words: five instances of dance writing.
Julian Louis is an Australian theatre director, dramaturg and divisor. He is a graduate of CSU Theatre Media, NIDA Director’s course, and he trained with Phillippe Gaulier.
Julian has worked across a range of theatre sectors including physical theatre, children’s theatre and community art projects. Julian is Artistic Director of NORPA (Northern Rivers Performing Arts), one of Australia’s most exciting regional theatre companies based in Lismore, Northern NSW. NORPA creates site-specific, high quality devised theatre that connects to the region through its process, and by staging works outside the conventional theatre model. NORPA presents an annual season, made up of original productions, national and international touring works and community cultural events.
For NORPA, Julian has conceived and directed Railway Wonderland (2012/2015), performed on Lismore’s disused railway train station and commissioned My Radio Heart—a co-production with Urban Theatre Projects. Current works also include devisor and director for Dreamer, collaborator/outside eye on Cockfight—a dance theatre work with THE FARM and co-director on Bundjalung Nghari: Three Brothers with leading artists including Rhoda Roberts, David Page and Frances Rings.
Julian’s practice focuses on devised theatre and infusing movement or dance language into narrative based work. Twitter @NORPAOz
Brian is a Brisbane-based performer, choreographer, director and writer. Trained in both dance and theatre, he has a reputation for creating and performing provocative, powerful and intelligent works that bridge the divide between the two forms. In addition to his solo practice, Brian has worked with many of Australia’s most well-known performance makers. He was a recipient of a two-year Fellowship from the Australia Council and was President of Ausdance National until September 2016. He was Associate Director of QL2 Dance, where he has facilitated the Soft Landing mentoring program. Until 2011 he was a member of the Dance Board of the Australia Council.
For the past 25 years, Olivia has worked as a performer, maker and lecturer of dance. After graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1992, Olivia performed with companies and independent choreographers/directors in Australia and overseas including Rosalind Crisp, Sue Peacock, and Peter Sellars (Salzburg Festival). Olivia has created over 20 dance works, both funded and commissioned, including for the Asian Young Choreographers Project in Kaohsuing, Taiwan, and was the recipient of a Creative Development Fellowship from Arts WA in 2003. Recent performance work includes dance generated in and for particular sites with About Now (Peter Fraser and Shaun McLeod). Olivia taught at WAAPA, Perth from 1999-2006 and has taught at Deakin University since 2007. Olivia’s PhD, from Deakin University, was conferred in April 2013.
Brisbane independent choreographer Vanessa Mafé-Keane graduated from Stuttgart Ballet School and danced with The Queensland Ballet. She spent the next 10 years in Geneva, where she danced with Le Ballet du Grand Theatre, touring regularly throughout Europe, later becoming a freelance artist with Vertical Danse-Compagnie Noemi Lapzeson and co-founding member of an experimental performance group Co M-S-K. Vanessa obtained her MFA at QUT where she continues to choreograph works that explore collaborations between video, installation and sound. Vanessa teaches at several institutions including QUT, the Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts and Expressions Dance Company.
Linda is a Vocational Education and Training Consultant working for C & L Communications Consultants Pty Ltd. She has been working in the area of training and education for over 20 years. Her commitment to industry focussed training and extensive experience in developing training programs for community broadcasting in the 1980s led to her appointment as Executive Officer of the industry training body for the arts and cultural industries in Victoria. Since 1993 she has undertaken a wide range of projects for private organisations and government agencies.
Paul H. Mason is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Macquarie University. He commenced his postgraduate research in psychology, working on Australian Contemporary Dance with MARCS Auditory laboratories. He is currently pursuing his passion for ethnomusicology and dance anthropology by performing fieldwork on practices of fight-dancing in Indonesia and Brazil.
Nerida is an award-winning choreographer, performer and producer working internationally in both dance and theatre and is the Artistic Director of Phluxus2 Dance Collective. Her work includes the machine that carries the soul, The Opposite of Prompt, chinese whispers/broken telephone, Boiling Point, de-generator, The Paratrooper Project and new work in development #angel-monster for Phluxus2 Dance Collective, The Rat Trap and The Backup Service for Polytoxic Dance Theatre, ChoreoFUNK and Polarity II for Expressions Dance Company, The Wizard of Oz and Caligula by The Danger Ensemble, Black Diggers and Macbeth for Queensland Theatre Company, Salon by Timothy Brown and the critically acclaimed Don’ts for Dancers. Highlights include performing at the American Guild Festival, the Australian Korean International Creative Exchange Program, Undisciplining Dance Symposium New Zealand and the development of choreographic incubator THE indepenDANCE PROJECT. Nerida is currently studying a Doctorate of Creative Industries at QUT investigating choreographic innovation. In 2016 Nerida has an exciting year of creating a new major work and working on projects at home and abroad.
Shirley McKechnie AO (1926-2022) had a career in dance that spaned seven decades, all ‘firsts’ in terms of achievement—founder of one of the first contemporary dance school in Victoria in the 1950s; founder of one of the earliest contemporary dance touring companies as director, choreographer and performer (Australian Contemporary Dance Theatre 1963–73); founder of the first tertiary dance degree course (Rusden Campus, 1975); a driving force behind the Armidale choreographic seminars (1974–76) and a founder of the Australian Association for Dance Education (Ausdance, 1977). She was a member of the Council of the Victorian College of the Arts (1974–88); assisted with the founding of the first dance education company (Tasdance, 1981); the founding chairperson of the Tertiary Dance Council of Australia (1985–86); interviewer and researcher for the National Library of Australia (1980s–90s); guest artist, The Australian Ballet (Nutcracker, 1992); National President, Ausdance (1992 – 94); founder of Green Mill Dance Project (1993 – 97); first Australian Research Council grant for choreographic research (Unspoken Knowledges, 1998–2000); Professor of Dance (VCA, 1998); elected as Honorary Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities (1998). Shirley is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the VCA/University of Melbourne and continued as a consultant and a leading advocate for dance in Australia until her death in September 2022.
Vahri McKenzie is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University. She engages in practice-led research, and publishes traditional research with a creative arts focus. Vahri’s Early Career Researcher study of WA choreographers explored how complex dance vocabularies offer new ways of considering knowledge, informing perspectives on the links between memory, music and movement. Her article in Brolga—an Australian journal about dance #41, adds to the chapter that will appear in Pil Hansen (ed.), Performing the Remembered Present: the Cognition of Memory in Dance, Theatre, and Music, part of Bloomsbury’s 'Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues' series. Vahri’s recent creative projects include Only the Envelope, a live art installation that combines research methodologies to investigate the ways we share personal information in the public sphere; and the forthcoming work of short fiction ‘Beer-n-Bubs’, which will appear in MidnightSun’sCrush: Stories About Love.
Shaun McLeod is a dancer, choreographer and academic who lectures at Deakin University, Melbourne. He is interested in the affective situation of dance improvisation and performance, as well as exploring alternative audience/performer relationships. As a dancer he danced with Australian Dance Theatre, Danceworks and One Extra Co. His work The weight of the thing left its mark was presented as part of Dance Massive 2011 (Melbourne). He recently completed a practice-led PhD on the engagement of Authentic Movement for performance. The performance component of this PhD, entitled Witness, will be presented by Dancehouse (Melbourne) in August 2016.
Jeff Meiners EdD is a lecturer and researcher at the University of South Australia. He has taught extensively in schools, universities, as leader of a dance education team in London, and with Ausdance to support dance development. Jeff works with the National Advocates for Arts Education, government and education departments plus overseas projects and as movement director for children’s theatre. Jeff was the Australia Council Dance Board’s Community Representative (2002–7), 2009 Australian Dance Award winner for Outstanding Services to Dance Education and dance writer for the new Australian national curriculum’s Arts Shape paper. Jeff’s doctoral research focuses on dance in the primary school curriculum.
Elizabeth Melchoir M.Ed is a dance lecturer in the School of Primary and Secondary Teacher Education at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She also works as a dance facilitator providing professional development and support to teachers in primary and secondary schools and coordinates the Wellington Dance in Education Networks. She is a member of the Educational Advisory Board for DANZ and of Footnote Dance Company.
Nina teaches English as a second language to migrants and has studied various forms of dance. She has studied, performed and taught Middle Eastern dance for many years and researched Pavlova as part of a Diploma of Languages (Russian) at Macquarie University.
Michelle Potter is an independent writer, historian and curator with a doctorate in Art History and Dance History from the Australian National University. She was founding editor of Brolga. An Australian journal about dance, inaugural Curator of Dance at the National Library of Australia (2002–2006) and Curator, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (2006–2008). She is the recipient of two Australian Dance Awards: Outstanding Achievement in Dance on Film (2001) and Services to Dance (2003). She has been widely published and her most recent book is Dame Maggie Scott. A life in dance (Melbourne: Text, 2014).
Dr Josephine Milne-Home is Teaching Fellow and Academic Psychologist, College of Arts, University of Western Sydney. She is Chair of the Australian Psychological Society’s College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists and member of the ARC research project team ‘Intention and serendipity: investigating improvisation, symbolism and memory in creating Australian contemporary dance’.
Motohide Miyahara is the Director of the Movement Development Clinic at the School of Physical Education University of Otago. He trained as MA in dance movement therapy at Antioch University New England and PhD in Kinesiology at UCLA and incorporates dance into interventions for young people at the clinic. He has participated in dance and opera performances in Japan, USA, Germany and New Zealand. His last performance was in the opera Outrageous Fortune, choreographed by Shona Dunlop MacTavish in 1998.
Anny Mokotow worked as a dancer, performer and theatre-maker in the Netherlands and Europe. She completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne on dance and dramaturgy and has a Master of Creative Arts from the University of Melbourne which examines dance and interdisciplinary practice. Anny works as dramaturge and lectures in theatre and dance. Her interest in the historical developments of 20th century dance and its social and cultural implications in relation to interdisciplinary practice and postmodernity forms the basis of her academic research.
Andrew Montana is a senior lecturer and researcher in art history at the Australian National University. A PhD graduate of Melbourne University, he is the author of many articles on art and design, most recently the chapter ‘Exhibiting art for ballet and theatre: a cultural legacy’ for the interdisciplinary, illustrated anthology The Ballet Russes in Australia and Beyond (2011). He is currently preparing a cultural biography of the lives and work of Loudon Sainthill and Harry Tatlock Miller.
After drama and movement classes at the National Theatre, Moreland began his dance training at the Borovansky Ballet Academy and was a foundation member of The Australian Ballet. During the 60s & 70s he performed in Londons West End and choreographed his first work for the London Contemporary Dance School, and then many works for the London Festival Ballet. He worked as a freelance choreographer in England, Europe and the United States, returning periodically to Australia to create works for The Australian Ballet and for Sydney Dance Company. In 1983 he was appointed artistic director of West Australian Ballet in 1983 and led the company until 1997. He has been a freelance choreographer since then and in 2012 was the recipient of an Australian Dance Award, along with collaborator, Daryl Brandwood, for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance
Andrew Morrish began performance improvisational work, part time, with Al Wunder's Theatre of the Ordinary in Melbourne in 1982.
In 1987 he co-founded the improvisational movement theatre duet Trotman and Morrish with Peter Trotman. Together they performed 14 self-funded seasons in Melbourne in addition to numerous other one-off performances (including the Greenmill Dance Festival, Melbourne in 1994, 1995 and 1997). They also performed in the United States, most notably in the New York Improvisation Festival in 1995 and 1997. In 1999 they performed in 'Antistatic' at the Performance Space (Sydney) and in 'Dancers are Space-eaters' at PICA (Perth).
In 2000 he moved to Sydney and based his teaching and solo performance practice at Omeo Dance Studio. In 2002 he relocated his work in Europe and now teaches and performs extensively in France, Nederlands, Germany, Switzerland and the U.K.
He is also often invited to work with individual and small groups of performers to mentor their improvisational development. Artists with whom he has worked in this way include Samir Akika Company, (Munster- dance/theatre), Ulrike Quade (Amsterdam-puppetry), Mischa van Dullerman, Anat Geiger and Klaus Jurgen (Amsterdam-theatre/dance), Antje Pfundner (Hamburg-dance), All Audreys (Hobart-theatre, Jens Biedermann (Lucerne theatre/dance) and Bronja Novac (Goteberg) with Suzanne Martin (Berlin) and Katherine Eriksson(San Francisco) in dance and performance.
He has developed, and continues, long term collaborative relationships with Tony Osborne (improvisation) in Sydney, Crosby McCloy (writing and performance improvisation), Sten Rudstrom (performance improvisation) in Berlin, and Martha Rodezno (improvisation) in Paris.
He has been a Research Associate at University of Huddersfield since February 2006, and was appointed as an Honorary Research Fellow in December 2008. In Huddersfield he regularly collaborates with John Britton and Hilary Elliot on a variety of research and performance projects relating to improvisational performance.
In October 2006 he facilitated a research project on improvisation for 14 artists and a team of 4 researchers in 'Precipice' at the Australian Choreographic Centre, Canberra. In collaboration with Peter Trotman and Tony Osborne he also facilitated Precipice in 2007.
In 2008 he facilitated the Huddersfield Improvisation Project (HIP), 3 days of directed reflective practice for experienced improvisers, which led to a research report completed in 2009.
He has been a member of Neil Thomas' Urban Dream Capsule, an extended 'live-in' installation in store windows, which initially appeared in the 1996 Melbourne International Arts Festival. Between 1996 and 2006 it ran 14 times in Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Oceania.
Skye Murtagh is the director of SDM Communications, an Adelaide-based consultancy specialising in the preparation of written collateral for individuals and businesses as well as the development/execution of public relations campaigns. A qualified journalist, Skye has been engaged as a freelance writer for several publications and has worked closely with a range of South Australian artistic companies across the fields of contemporary dance, film and music.
Sarah is an Australian performance maker who devises new media dance, instigates inter-disciplinary practices and invests in multi-platform processes and production outcomes. She is interested in revealing multi-facetted dramatic analogies through contemporary performance to connect ideas, people and cultures whilst honoring difference. Sarah's new media choreographic practice is grounded in the art of designing movement to communicate concepts and stories of the world; contemporary concerns, age old mythologies and futuristic prophecies. Sarah began the new media dance production company Heliograph Productions, in collaboration with lighting designer, Nic Mollison. With this company she produced, choreographed and performed in numerous productions. As an independent artist, Sarah has created work for companies and groups all over Australia.
Joshua I. Newman is Associate Professor of Sport Management at Florida State University. He lectures in the areas of sport and physical culture, qualitative research, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy. Broadly speaking,his research, teaching, and supervision interrogate intersections of late capitalism, identity, and cultural politics of the moving body.
April Nunes Tucker, MPhil, MA (Dance) works as a Lecturer in Dance at University of Bedfordshire, UK. Her PhD looks at the relationships involved in dance performance from a phenomenological perspective. April’s teaching and research interests lie in choreography, sitespecific performance, improvisation and the influences of somatic practices such as yoga on contemporary dance technique.
Patrice O'Brien has been involved in dance education as a teacher in schools and at tertiary level for the past 25 years. Currently, Patrice teaches dance in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland. Prior to this, she was both a national and regional facilitator of dance education in secondary schools. Patrice has served on writing panels for the development of the dance curriculum and NCEA dance standards. She was instrumental in the development of the scholarship standard for dance and the acceptance of dance as a University Entrance subject. In addition, she has wide experience as a developer of resources for dance education and NCEA assessment. Patrice is heavily involved in dance professional development. She has been a director of ADEN, the Auckland Dance Educators’ Network since its inception in 1996 and also runs Contemporary Dance Unzipped annually, a four-day professional development workshop for teachers of NCEA dance. Patrice strongly supports the idea that all students have a right to an education in dance.
Trevor Patrick practices as an artist in the field of theatre as an occasional writer, dancer, performer and performance-maker from his home base in Alpine Victoria. He has received numerous state and national awards for his work and has taught and performed in Australia and overseas for 30 years. His continuing focus is on the development and expression of the dynamic imagination through the body.
Annalouise Paul is an independent choreographer, dancer and actor. She trained at the Laban Centre, London, in contemporary dance and with flamenco maestros in Spain.
For nearly thirty years, she has created intercultural dance theatre that explores identity and transformation, challenges the boundaries of contemporary and traditional dance expression, and uses live music.
Her research and works have been supported through Australia Council, Arts NSW, DFAT, Critical Path, Bundanon Trust and Greater London Arts.
Her company Theatre of Rhythm and Dance (TRD) was established to present Australian intercultural arts performance and TRD won the 2013 Australian Arts In Asia Award (Dance) and NSW Premier’s Export Scholarship for its inaugural international tours in India.
In 2015 Annalouise began a new collaboration with Maya Dance Theatre in Singapore and was invited to co-curate ‘Speak Local’ for Critical Path and guest edit for CRITICAL DIALOGUES online magazine.
She gave Performative Presentations on Mother Tongue and choreographic research DANCE DNA at World Dance Alliance Conferences in France 2014 and Singapore 2015.
Lee trained at the VCA School of Dance Melbourne and has worked as an independent dancer/choreographer and secondary schools teaching dance for many years. Since 1998 Lee has been living on the far South Coast of NSW where she runs the youth company fLiNG Physical Theatre in the Bega Valley. The company’s work has since created a solid interest in contemporary dance and physical theatre in the region, and has become the State’s first professionally funded youth dance company. Its program includes visiting professional artists, training for young people aged 10 to 24, workshops for the community and professional touring opportunities for fLiNG’s performance company.
Indigo Perry is a writer and performance artist. Her book Midnight Water: A Memoir (Picador) was shortlisted for the National Biography Award. She is a Senior Lecturer in Writing & Literature in the School of Communication & Creative Arts at Deakin University.
Associate Professor Maggi Phillips PhD (1944–2015) was coordinator of Research and Creative Practice at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, a position in which she enabled daily access to the integration of artistic innovation and research. Her life path crossed many disciplines and worldviews, from dancer to a world literature doctorate, from circus ring to university boardroom. She led an Australian Learning and Teaching Council grant, Dancing between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Post Graduate Degrees in Dance and has been published in a number of international journals advocating the validity of artistic knowledge.
Jo Pollitt is a dancer, choreographer and writer whose practice is grounded in performance improvisation and creative arts research. As the director of the response project, initiated in 2000, Jo works with performers as authorities in revealing traces of lived experience and physical imagination. Her response work is focused on the development of improvisation as a performance form and on the integration of embodied methods for writing like dancing through an investigation of timing, structure and disruption on the continuum of creative process.
Jo holds an MA in Creative Arts and has worked with various companies and artists including Tasdance, STRUT, Jennifer Monson (Syd/Melb/New York) and Rosalind Crisp (Perth, Berlin, Sydney). Jo was co-director of the 1999 Hobart Fringe Festival and was dance curator of Boiler Room—a national improvisation festival in 2002/03.
Her choreographed works include Room; Re-render for Chrissie Parrott; Check Point Solo for Rhiannon Newton performed at Judson Church, New York and Under the Radar Festival, Brisbane; the Beast trilogy with Paea Leach and Divided. She has created work by commission for PICA, LINK dance company and KATH—The Sydney Opera House, and she has been published in journals and magazines, led multiple workshops on writing for dancers, and written several dance scripts. She is an Australian Dance Awards panellist and honorary life member of Artrage.
Jo lectures in improvisation at WAAPA, works as a dramaturg and mentor for artists nationally, reviews for The West Australian, fronts the writing/dancing project co-works with Paea Leach and is the co-creative director of both BIG Kids Magazine and the Mother Artist Network. 2015 sees her embarking on her PhD with the working title 'Attention, Momentum and Compression: A danced document of embodied fiction'.
Dr Joan Pope was a founding member of Ausdance in Western Australia. Her specialisation has been in Dalcroze Eurhythmics as a private teacher, and for many decades was a part-time lecturer-tutor in Music through Movement with various tertiary organisations, including the Kindergarten Training College, WAIT, Curtin University, UWA, ECU and Notre Dame. She is currently the President of Dalcroze Australia and recently gained her PhD with historical research on the topic of teachers of the Dalcroze method in Australian and New Zealand in the 1920s. Her practical skills as a creative presenter and as an examiner have led to many invitations from all over the world to teach Dalcroze Eurhythmics. In 2001 Joan was awarded an OAM and Centenary of Federation medal for services to children, community and the creative arts.
Deborah Price PhD is Research Degree Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Education and Wellbeing at UniSA. Her research, teaching and scholarship span inclusive education and wellbeing, advocating codesign approaches, valuing the diverse voices of young people. Current research contributes to broad themes of social justice and equity, with a focus on disability studies and special education; alternative education; culturally and religiously responsive pedagogies. She has led research projects supported by national competitive grants and was a Chief Investigator on the Engagement and Wellbeing research node involving collaborative research in northern Adelaide to engage students in wellbeing curriculum and raise student university aspirations. She led the Youthworx South Australia initiative with local councils and organisations focused on re-engaging youth in learning and employment through creative film-making.
Katrina trained at The Australian Ballet School and performed with The Dancers Company, the Victorian State Opera and Northern Ballet Theatre (UK). In 1994 she was awarded a Bachelor of Education in Dance and Drama and has worked extensively in community dance. In 1996 she began her PhD research involving untrained dancers in the study of narrative applications in dance performance, and was awarded her doctorate in 2000. Katrina was a Caroline Plummer Fellow of Otago University, New Zealand in 2007, and in 2009 was artist in residence at Darebin, delivering a dance-film YoursTruly, an installation project for dancers with disabilities.
In her role at Ausdance Victoria, Katrina designs and delivers specialist education and training programs, resources which offer professional development opportunities for teachers, students and trainers.
Dianne is a performer, choreographer, camera operator, video editor and educator. She works in both live and screen contexts. She was a founding member of Outlet Dance in Adelaide (1987–89) and a member of Danceworks from 1990–95. Dianne completed a Master of Arts in Dance on Screen in 2001 and her dance video works have screened internationally. From 2004–2006 she was artistic director of Dancehouse and has worked as a lecturer in contemporary dance and dance video at Deakin University since 1996. She is currently a PhD candidate in screendance and performance improvisation.
BA (ANU), BA (Theatre – UWS) Neil has a multi-disciplinary background, from tertiary studies and long experience in a wide variety of arts activities.
While at Ausdance National (May 2015–October 2016) Neil supervised many things including the 2015 and 2016 Australian Dance Awards ceremony. He assisted in collecting Safe Dance IV surveys and collated and wrote the draft of Safe Spaces for Dance: the Ausdance studio policy pack.
Sarah Rubidge is Professor of Choreography and New Media at the University of Chichester. A practitioner-scholar, she specialises in developing large-scale choreographic digital installations that focus on the use of the haptic senses as the primary medium of understanding. Her artistic research also draws on the liminal histories embodied in old buildings. Along with her collaborators Sarah has created works which can accommodate improvisational choreographies (formal and informal) that become integral choreographic elements of the installations. In her academic writing she addresses the interweaving of the philosophical and scientific ideas that are embodied in both her work and that of other artists working in this field, advancing understandings of the intricate interplay between artistic and philosophical practices.
Priscilla earned a scholarship at age 15 to study full-time at Scully-Borovansky and was soon invited to join the Borovansky Ballet company. After 18 months performing in Australia and New Zealand, Priscilla trained at the Royal Ballet School in London and was offered a contract with London’s Festival Ballet. Margaret Walker invited Priscilla to join Dance Concert in Sydney after she returned to Australia, which began a new era of folk and character dance. n Canberra, Priscilla spent 12 years developing a dance course at St Clare’s College, providing in-service workshops for teachers and teaching ballet and character at Dell Brady’s Ballet School. Priscilla has taught dance and movement to student teachers at Signadou College and to singers at the Canberra School of Music. She is married to former dancer Larry Ruffell, and they have two children and five grandchildren.
Following early dance training in New Zealand, Larry studied at the Royal Ballet School in London before joining the Royal Ballet Company in 1959. He was appointed soloist three years later, taking on many classical and character roles, before retiring from dance in 1967, and coming to Australia in 1969. Larry pursued a commercial marketing research role in Sydney for some years before moving to Canberra as administrator of Canberra Opera Society in 1976. He was general manager of the State Opera of South Australia for two years before returning to Canberra to manage Human Veins Dance Theatre. Several other administrative roles followed, culminating in management with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra for twelve years before retiring in 2008. He is married to Priscilla, and they have two children and five grandchildren.
Emery Schubert is an Associate Professor in the Empirical Musicology Group School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales, co-editor of Acoustics Australia and secretary of the Australian Music and Psychology Society (AMPS). His key research areas are in music perception and cognition, with specialisation in continuous measurement of aesthetic and affective responses to music.
Marianne was a professional dancer and dance teacher in the USA, UK and New Zealand. She was a member of Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians from 1982–85 and worked with One Extra Company in 1988. She has taught and performed throughout New Zealand and has presented papers on dance research internationally for Ausdance, CORD (Congress on Research in Dance) and SDHS (Society of Dance History) She has an MA (Performing Arts) and an MA in History (University of Auckland).
Liz is a researcher, tutor and administrator at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. Her research interests include critical age studies, dance, gender studies, and socially marginalized populations. She completed her doctorate degree at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia, and her academic publications are in these areas.
Her work as project manager for Centre for Social and Community Research has included project management of the 'Science@' series of secondary school learning resources in the Rockingham and Kwinana region. Liz is currently principle researcher on a project investigating outcomes of Intensive Family Services in Western Australia.
Working in video and photography, and with a strong performance background, Anne Scott Wilson's oeuvre is an exploration into memory, motion and imagination. Drawing on anachronistic ballet training, she uses her own body as an experimental site. Her practice considers the relationship between death and embodiment, light and motion and the yearning for something more. She has received several grants from the Australia Council and Arts Victoria for international residencies at Banff in Canada and Liverpool UK and has been awarded a residency at Can Serrat, Barcelona Spain and from Australian National University to be included in an international residency as part of The Ethnographic Film Festival, Nuoro, Italy. Her work is held in public and private collections in Australia and overseas. She is represented by Arc One Gallery in Melbourne and Conny Dietzchold Gallery in Sydney, Hong Kong and Cologne. Her moving image artworks have been exhibited at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Athens Film Festival and Melbourne Urban Screens Festival. She has recently been a finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize and the Substation Contemporary Art Prize. Her work has been curated by Asialink and Experimenta internationally, as part of the Asia Pacific Media Arts Biennial in Singapore and ‘Contemporary Australian Drawing #5’, Florence Italy. She has been selected as a guest curator at Centre for Contemporary Photography and continues to curate exhibitions including ‘Finitude’ at University of Tasmania in 2015.
www.annescottw.com
Catherine Seago is a lecturer in Dance at the University of Winchester and Artistic Director of EvolvingMotion. Her research areas are interdisciplinary collaborative processes, and physical knowledge and codified techniques in choreographic language. She has studied at University Surrey Roehampton UK, at Sarah Lawrence College and MCDS, USA, as a Fulbright Scholar.
The Fondue Set are three women who have been making work together for over ten years, creating a distinct style, dance language and identity. They are an ever-evolving entity, always active in exploring their movement language, and seeking opportunities to work with new people and processes in order to shift the parameters of their work. Much of their unique dance language has come from an interest in exploring issues such as the ‘awkward body’, the moments in between, before, or just after, mistakes and humour, and they have placed their work in various foyers, nightclubs and bars in the Campbelltown Arts Centre and the Sydney Opera House. Their full–length work ‘No Success Like Failure’ won a Green Room Award for ‘Innovation in the form of Cabaret’.
Justine Shih Pearson is a designer, curator and scholar of contemporary dance and performance, with a particular interest in intercultural and hybrid practices. Trained originally in theatre design at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, she has published in About Performance, Extensions and RealTime, and recently completed her doctoral dissertation at the University of Sydney; titled “In the In-Between,” the project looks at minute experiences of dislocation and disorientation within performances of interculturality, arguing for an expanded notion of embodiment and spatiality in understanding cultural performance. Justine is currently the acting director of Critical Path, a choreographic research centre in Sydney.
Jacqueline has over 30 years’ experience in dance and dance education. She established the Bachelor of Arts (Dance) at Nepean College of Advanced Education (now Western Sydney University) and led the successful redevelopment and accreditation of the Bachelor of Dance Education at ACPE (Australian College of Physical Education). More recently she constructed a second dance degree for ACPE: The Bachelor of Applied Dance.
Jacqui’s most recent role at ACPE was Associate Dean, Students and Services. Her responsibilities included strategic leadership in the areas of student engagement, welfare and retention, from initial contact through to alumni relationships with the College. As an educator, Jacqui’s philosophy of teaching is underpinned by research in somatic practices and dance as a community art. She completed the Feldenkrais Teacher Training course and is a qualified Iyengar yoga teacher. Publications include Dancers and communities: A collection of writings about dance as a community art (1997), edited with Helen Poynor; and Somdance Manual (2002), coauthored with Greg Holdaway and Zoran Kovich.
Her service to the dance community has included her work as President of Ausdance NSW; Chair of the Dance Committee, NSW Ministry for the Arts (now Arts NSW); and Chair of the Tertiary Dance Council of Australia. She was also a member of NSW’s HSC Dance Examination committee.
Jacqui is currently working with Canberra Dance Theatre and Belconnen Arts Centre, enjoying the challenges of using dance to promote creative and healthy living, and social inclusion.
Melinda Smith uses the mediums of painting, drawing, creative writing, and dance for personal expression. Melinda lives with cerebral palsy, which has necessitated the use of powered wheelchairs and speech generating devices. Melinda’s dance career began in 2006 when she performed with a small theatre group called Amuse Ability. In 2010 she helped to establish a small dance troupe of wheelchair users, known as Wheel Women, who partnered with Fusion Theatre to develop the stage production Perfectly Imperfect. Here she met choreographer Dianne Reid, and began to develop her dance practice. Mel worked with Weave Movement Theatre between 2010 – 2015 she performing in several Weave productions, working with choreographer/directors Yumi Umiumare, Penny Baron, Carolyn Hannah and Nick Papas from Born in a Taxi, Sally Smith and international guest Caroline Bowditch. Melinda has collaborated on the 2016 development of Subject A vs. Subject B directed by Joshua Pether. Since 2015 she has been attending regular workshops in Body Mind Centering and dance improvisation with Alice Cummins. Melinda comes from a professional background of mentoring and consultancy in the disability and education sectors. In 2008 Melinda began to develop a series of conference presentations and workshops promoting the health and wellbeing outcomes of dance and movement for people who have physical disabilities, in particular, wheelchair users. She continues to develop her work as a trainer and mentor for people with diverse physical needs.
Dr Barbara Snook is a Professional Teaching Fellow at the University of Auckland in the Dance Studies program. She was the Caroline Plummer Fellow in Community Dance at the University of Otago during 2008 and taught dance in Brisbane High Schools for 20 years. Barbara was awarded the Osmotherley Award in 2007 for her services toward the development of dance in Queensland and she was nominated for an Australian Dance Award for services to dance education in 2006. Her textbooks, Dance… Count Me In and Dance for Senior Students are used throughout schools in Australia and New Zealand. She has also written Dance Room Book One and Dance Room Book Two for children in the first years of school. An updated Dance…Count me in containing all new content was released in July 2014 and an updatedDance for Senior Students containing all new content is due for release in July 2015.
Kym Stevens is a lecturer in Dance Education at QUT and has worked as a dance teacher in both NSW and QLD, in primary and secondary schools, and continues to develop arts’ implementation strategies with primary schools in QLD schools. She was the dance consultant for The Arts Year 1 – 10 Syllabus while working as a project officer for Ausdance QLD. Kym has worked as a dance teacher in private studios both here and in the United States, and has developed many community-based dance projects throughout Australia. Her qualifications include a Masters of Education (Research), Bachelor of Business Communications and a Graduate Certificate in Dance in Education.
Dr Catherine (Kate) Stevens applies experimental psychology methods to the study of auditory and temporal phenomena including music, dance, and environmental sounds. She holds BA (Hons) and PhD degrees from the University of Sydney. Kate is an Associate Professor in Psychology, MARCS Auditory Laboratories at the University of Western Sydney.
Professor Cheryl Stock, PhD, AM has a career spanning four decades as a dancer, choreographer, director, educator, researcher and advocate. Cheryl is Secretary General of World Dance Alliance and Adjunct Professor in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology where she previously held positions as Head of Dance and Director of Postgraduate Studies. Founding Artistic Director of Dance North and currently Artistic Advisor, Cheryl has created over 50 dance works as well as 20 collaborative exchanges in Asia. Her publications and practice encompass interdisciplinary and interactive site specific performance, contemporary Australian and Asian dance, and practice-led research. Cheryl is a recipient of the Australian Dance Award’s Lifetime Achievement and in 2014 was awarded an Order of Australia.
Cheryl Stock on QUT ePrints
Susan Street AO danced with Kolobok Dance Company before moving to Amsterdam to work with the International Folkloric Dance Company, which toured extensively in both Western and Eastern Europe. She was Head of Dance from 1988–1999 at the Queensland University of Technology and then Dean of Dance at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She has an Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance Education and in 2000 she was made an Emeritus Professor by QUT, the first Australian dance educator to be promoted to the title of Professor. Susan was Chair of the Dance Board and a Council member of the Australia Council from 1997–1999, and she also chaired the World Dance Alliance–Asia Pacific Dance Education network for a decade. From 2005–2011 Sue was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology, and is now Executive Director of QUT Precincts, a trust member of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and a member of the Australia China Council. Sue was the National President of Ausdance from 2006–2012.
1952–2005: Ross Stretton began his dance training as a tap dancer in Canberra before taking up ballet at the age of seventeen. He was accepted into The Australian Ballet School in 1971, and in his first year was awarded the Nureyev Bursary, followed by the Harold Holt Memorial Scholarship. He joined The Australian Ballet in 1973, was promoted to soloist in 1974 and principal artist in 1978. From 1979–96, Ross performed with companies in the US and UK, before becoming the sixth Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet, expanding its repertoire to include many outstanding contemporary ballets. Three words encapsulated his vision for the company: ‘creativity, energy, passion’. After four–and–a half–years as AD of The Australian Ballet, Ross became Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet in London, before returning to Australia in 2002.
Charlotte Svendler Nielsen, PhD, is Associate Professor, Head of Educational Studies at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen and member of the research cluster ‘Embodiment, learning and social change’. She is also Project leader: Danish Ministry of Education’s qualitative part of the research project, ‘Learning through Movement’ (2013–2015); Leader: Danish part of the European UNESCO ‘Observatory for arts and cultural learning’; Program chair: 13th Dance and the Child International (daCi) World Congress (2015) and author of peer-reviewed articles in Danish, English and Spanish as well as co-editor of many books, including Dance Education around the World: Perspectives on Dance, Young People and Change (Routledge, 2015).
Jill Sykes AM began reviewing dance in London and is dance critic for The Sydney Morning Herald. She has been a freelance arts journalist most of her career, writing about theatre, music and the visual arts as well as dance. She is editor of ‘Look’ — the membership magazine of the Art Gallery Society of NSW, author of the book ‘Sydney Opera House — From The Outside In’ and editor of the book on the TV series ‘Wine Lovers’ Guide to Australia’, as well as a contributor on dance to specialist publications in Australia and overseas.
Tetsutoshi Tabata is a visual installation artist deeply involved with dance performance and projected scenography. In 1994 he co-founded 66b/cell, a collective using real time and pre-recorded computer graphics and animation to create different textures, lighting and kinetic effects. He is currently developing an original multiple projection imaging system.
Meryl Tankard is a director/choreographer with a celebrated career both nationally and internationally. She began as a dancer with the Australian Ballet and went on to join Pina Bausch’s Wuppertaler Tanztheater in Germany as a principal soloist. Since 1984 Meryl has created and produced her own dance theatre productions and directed two companies in Australia. Her work has toured to prestigious festivals and venues all over USA , Europe and Asia and she has been the recipient of many awards both here and overseas. As a freelance artist Meryl has created works for major European dance companies including the Lyon Ballet and Netherlands Dance Theatre. In 2000 she created Deep Sea Dreaming, which opened the Sydney Olympic Opening Ceremony and she has choreographed musicals for Disney on Broadway and London’s West End, as well as choreographing for opera and film. Several of her works have been co-produced by the Sydney Opera House and ABC TV has televised her work for the Australia Ballet and Opera Australia. A documentary on her life/work entitled Black Swan was produced by Don Featherstone. Meryl also has a Graduate Degree in film directing from AFTRS.
A distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at Macquarie University, David is internationally known for his work as an economist with specialist interests in the economics of the arts and culture. His research interests include the role of culture in economic development, the economic situation of individual artists, the economics of the performing arts, the creative industries, the economics of heritage and the relationship between cultural and economic policy.
Kristin Tovson graduated with a Master’s of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University. As a dancer, she has performed primarily in New York and Boston working with Sara Sweet Rabidoux/hoi polloi. She is the recipient of a 2009-10 Fulbright grant to collaborate with Berlin-based artist Thomas Lehmen, researching choreographic forms and improvisational tools and making a new piece while living in Berlin for the year. She continues to be inspired by her work with dance in a variety of community arts contexts and hopes to continue documenting the importance of community-based work.
Hilary was dance critic for the Canberra Times from 1972–90. In 1977 she was a founding member of the Australian Association for Dance Education (now the Australian Dance Council – Ausdance Inc.), and was its national president from 1981–84. Hilary was the joint national coordinator of Ausdance from 1985 until 1991, co-managing many projects including partnerships with the Media Arts & Entertainment Alliance (MEAA) to produce the Dancers’ Transition Report (1989), and the National Arts Industry Training Council to produce the first Safe Dance Report (1990). As the writer and editor of many Ausdance publications, Hilary invented the now internationally-recognised term ‘Safe Dance’, with implications for dance practice world wide.
Valrene Tweedie's early stage experiences were with the First Australian Ballet and the Polish Australian Ballet. At the age of 14 she auditioned for Colonel de Basil in Sydney and joined his Original Ballet Russe in 1940. She left Australia with the Original Ballet Russe in 1940 and danced extensively in North and South America with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Ballet Theatre. After her return to Australia she became third artistic director of the National Theatre Ballet (1953) staging several ballets from the de Basil repertoire and also choreographing her own works. After the demise of the National Theatre Ballet (1955) Tweedie went on to choreograph for Tivoli revues and the Elizabethan Opera Ballet Company, work in educational ballet programs for the National Theatre Movement. Tweedie began full-time teaching in 1956 and founded Ballet Australia to encourage the creation of new Australian choreography. Tweedie was the recipient of a Medal of the Order of Australia in 1991, and an Australian Dance Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1998.
Jennifer Uharriet earned a master’s degree in public administration from Brigham Young University after completing her undergraduate degree there in both dance and international studies. She now works as a budget analyst for the State of Arizona.
Amy Jo Vassallo is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. Dancing from a young age is what sparked Amy’s interest in human biology, and she completed a Bachelor of Medical Science, Masters of Community and Health Development and Postgraduate Diploma in Nutritional Science, before working as a health policy advisor and health science researcher.
In 2015, she enrolled in a PhD under the supervision of Dr Claire Hiller, A/Prof Evangelos Pappas and A/Prof Emmanuel Stamatakis investigating injury epidemiology in recreational and professional dance.
In addition to her Safe Dance work Amy has published dance injury, dance participation and dance for health studies in academic journals and has presented her research widely at both national and international conferences. She is a contributing member of the Dance Research Collaborative (based at the University of Sydney), the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science and the Australasian Injury Prevention Network and is the Chair of Higher Degree by Research Student Executive Group at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney.
Amy is also passionate about the promotion of women in science and improving public health through dance participation. You can connect with Amy via Twitter - @amyjvassallo
Karen studied ballet at Carol Oliver’s School of Ballet in Ballarat from ages six to nine (1976–79). Her childhood and teen years were filled with athletics, gymnastics, diving and dancing at any opportunity.
In 1987 at age 17, she was diagnosed with bone cancer and had her right leg amputated above the knee. Karen’s deepest grief was her loss of dance. Her body still responded to music, but she buried her desire for dance for the next 20 years.
In 2002 she began to explore movement at creative improvisation dance classes at Kumbada Studios, Kalorama, Melbourne. Several years later she joined Ruccis Circus in Melbourne attending aerial workshops on the trapeze, cloud swing, the rope and tissue.
In 2012 she joined Weave Movement Theatre, a mixed-ability performance group based in Melbourne. She was involved in the creative development with street theatre group ‘Born in a Taxi’ and was part of the production that arose out of this collaboration, called One Lump or Two. Karen continued with Weave in 2013 and performed in Flock, which was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
2014 provided creative development work with Kat Worth, and intensive training workshops with Olivia Millard, Michelle Heaven, Michelle Ryan, Yumi Umiumare and Caroline Bowditch.
Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk studied the Japanese dance-theatre butoh from 1992–1996 in Tokyo and in 1994 co-founded 66b/cell as a result of work combining body movement and multimedia. She completed a practice-led PhD at Queensland University of Technology in 2007, investigating interdependencies between performing bodies, visual and sonic media.
Research Fellow Deakin Motion.Lab
Dr Jordan Beth Vincent is a Melbourne-based dance historian and dance critic for Fairfax Media, and a researcher in the areas of live performance and new technology. Jordan is a Research Fellow in Deakin’s School of Communication and Creative Arts, based in the Deakin Motion.Lab, and she previously lectured in dance history at the Victorian College of the Arts. She is an experienced production manager with proven experience in delivering commercial research projects including the development of multiple VFX-technology driven pipelines, motion capture projects, virtual reality and augmented reality design, virtual productions, app design and development, interactive performances and pre-visualisation for film and television.
Jordan's current research areas include dramaturgy in digital performance and the impact of new technologies on the arts and cultural industries, and she is currently working on research projects that explore documentation for live performance, app concept and design, spatial user interface, new modes of publishing and measuring cultural impact.
She is the chair of Deakin University's AllPlay Dance Advisory Committee and a member of Deakin's Arts and Cultural Impact Research Alliance (ACIRA).
Associate Professor Kim Vincs is the Director of the Deakin Motion.Lab, which she established in 2006. Dr Vincs’ research interests are in motion capture, dance and interactive technology and integrating practice-led artistic research with quantitative, scientific methods. Current projects include developing new mathematical methods for analysing movement signatures using motion capture data, creating dance/motion capture performances using stereoscopic projection and measuring audience response to dance. Kim also teaches motion capture at Deakin University and directs for commercial motion capture projects. She was awarded two national Australian Council of Teaching and Learning awards in 2006 for her work in dance and motion capture.
Kathy Vlassopoulos is a children's dance educator, and facilitator of the Children's Dance Festival, an annual event held in Melbourne, Australia. She is also a lecturer in creative dance teaching and Australian representative for daance and the Child international (daCi).
Born in Moscow, Anna Volkova began her dance training in Paris with former Imperial Russian ballerinas Olga Preobrajenska and later Lubov Egorova. She began her professional career with Colonel de Basil’s Russian Ballet at the Alhambra in London in 1933 and then at Covent Garden in 1935. From 1935 onwards she was a de Basil dancer and travelled with them around the world until 1943. Volkova came to Australia with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet in 1938 and returned in 1940 with the Original Ballet Russe. In Australia she danced many important roles and was known in particular for her interpretation of the first Waltz in Les Sylphides. Following the Original Ballet Russe Australian tour, Volkova toured with the company to South America, and was stranded in Cuba during the infamous Ballets Russes strike. She moved to Australia in 1945 to marry an Australian, Jim Barnes, and has lived in New South Wales since that time.
Libby is a dedicated and knowledgeable professional with over 10 years' experience in the property and construction industry in development management, project management and building services engineering consultancy. She has undertaken challenging and complex property and construction projects and has worked in a range of project fields across Australia including retail, residential, commercial and healthcare.
Libby graduated from the University of Western Australia (UWA) in 2002 with a Bachelor of Engineering and worked as a consulting engineer in Perth and Melbourne for five years before moving into project and construction management in Sydney. In 2008 Libby completed a Graduate Certificate in Applied Finance and Investment from FINSIA enabling her to fully transition into property development.
Libby currently works as a development manager for a property developer in Sydney leading various residential and mixed use developments in both Sydney and Melbourne. Libby has a keen interest in NFP board governance and strategy and recently graduated from the Foundations of Directorship Course at the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) in Sydney.
Outside of her career in property, Libby has a passion for the arts and is a regular attendee at the ballet, Sydney Dance Company, STC and Art Gallery of NSW with her husband and three children.
Judith Walton teaches theory and practice in performance making on the BA in Performance Studies at Victoria University, Melbourne. Recent work includes: reconfigured at 24HR Art, Darwin, no hope no reason for the Melbourne International Arts Festival, ACCA, Tactical Operations/Eudemonia with Rachel Fensham for Performance Studies international (PSi) #10 Singapore, and paralla x, at the Moving Image Centre, Auckland.
Junji Watanabe received his PhD in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo in 2005 and his MA in Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics in 2002. His research interests lie in the area of cognitive science involving motion and visual perception, as well as auditory and tactile interfaces for communication devices.
Paul White has worked for directors and companies worldwide including DV8 Physical Theatre (Lloyd Newson), Australian Dance Theatre, Meryl Tankard, Tanja Liedtke, Narelle Benjamin, David Hughes, and Nigel Jamieson. He toured extensively in Australia and overseas with Tanja Liedtke’s Twelfth Floor and construct; developed In Glass with Narelle Benjamin: co-choreographed and performed the full-length solo The Oracle with Meryl Tankard which premiered as part of Spring Dance 09 at the Sydney Opera House. Most recently, Paul collaborated with Martin del Amo, co-choreographing and performing this solo work, Anatomy of an Afternoon (2012). Over the years, Paul has been acknowledged with Helpmann and Australian Dance Awards for his performances in Honour Bound, Twelfth Floor, construct, In Glass and Anatomy of an Afternoon (2012). In 2010 he received Australian Dance Awards for both performance and choreography (with Meryl Tankard) for The Oracle. In the next year, he will perform a number of works with Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, and continue touring other shows throughout Europe and the U.S.A.
David Wynen has appeared extensively in theatre and television and his training has included all facets of dance, drama and voice. He is currently dance/movement lecturer at the University of Ballarat. His specific research interests are centred on tap, and on dance as a form of rehabilitation.
Yukihiko Yoshida is a dance critic, researcher and educator. He is a committee member of the Dance Critics Society of Japan and has written numerous reviews and articles for dance magazines and newspapers. He also works for network divisions of academic organisations, constructing research grids on dance. He studies and teaches Media Studies, Theatre Research, Cognitive Science (Cognition Studies), Film Studies and Dance Studies.
Ann Young is a University of New South Wales PhD researcher, holds an MA (UWS), Post-Graduate Certificate Dance Teaching (UTS) and is a registered Cecchetti Ballet teacher and schoolteacher. Ann and family performed with Australian Heritage Dancers and she has taught Bush Dance and Folk Dance. She was awarded an Honorary Life Membership of Ausdance NSW for her contribution to dance a voluntary worker.
Min Zhu is a Chinese dancer, choreographer and dance teacher, who worked for the Department of Dance at Beijing Normal University and currently is a PhD candidate at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Edith Cowan University. Her research project is to investigate the nature and characteristics of contemporary Chinese dance including the comparative analysis of content and form of contemporary Chinese dance and western dance. As a practitioner, her latest interest is to explore the boundary and intersection of contemporary performance through improvised performance. In 2013 she founded the performance group ‘Company2’ with Dr. Tanatchaporn Kittikong in Perth.
Jennifer De Leon is a dance performer, choreographer and teacher and Director of Poyema Dance Company. She is also a psychotherapist (NZAP) and dance therapist, trained in UK, USA and NZ and founder of The Healing Dance Dance/Movement Psychotherapy, as well as a Laban Movement Fundamentals Certificated Practitioner (New York), a Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming, and registered Dance Teacher (NZADT). Jenny is based in Auckland where she lives with her 2 children and is currently, alongside her dancing activities, embarking on her Doctorate.
Tess de Quincey is a choreographer and dancer who has
worked throughout Europe, Japan and Australia as a performer, teacher and director. Trained in dance, graphics and sculpture in London and Copenhagen, she was formerly a performer with butoh dancer Min Tanaka and his Mai-Juku Performance Co in Japan 1985–91. Her interdisciplinary performances are based in the Body Weather philosophy and methodology founded by Min and Mai-Juku. Tess has created an extensive body of artworks in different terrains, from the city to the desert, both nationally and internationally, with a focus on durational, site-specific and intercultural environments.
Major solo productions ‘Movement on the Edge’, ‘Another Dust’, is ‘.2’ and ‘Nerve 9’ have toured Australia and Europe. In 2000, Tess formed De Quincey Co which is Australia’s leading Body Weather company — works have ranged from The Scent Trilogy, a glamtrash series of interventions in nightclubs, through to the intense and intimate suite of Five Short Solos in linked tiny spaces, Dictionary of Atmospheres, drawing audiences through the riverbed in Alice Springs, and most recently Run, which unfolded a gigantically scaled three-tonne sculptural performance engine as an enquiry into energy and motion.
Scott deLahunta works from his base in Amsterdam as a researcher, writer and organiser on a wide range of international projects bringing performing arts into conjunction with other disciplines and practices. He is a Research Fellow with Dartington College of Arts and the Amsterdam School of the Arts.
Martin del Amo, originally from Germany, is a Sydney-based dancer and choreographer. He is best known for his full-length solos, fusing idiosyncratic movement and intimate storytelling. These include It’s a Jungle Out There. (2009), Never Been This Far Away From Home (2007) and Under Attack (2005), all of which received significant critical acclaim. In recent years, Martin has extended his practice to choreographing group works and solos for others including Anatomy of an Afternoon (2012), Mountains Never Meet (2011) and various solos for his ongoing multi-part choreographic project, Slow Dances For Fast Times. Martin regularly teaches for a wide range of arts organisations and companies and has extensively worked as mentor and consultant on projects initiated by young and emerging artists. He also writes and regularly contributes to RealTime magazine.