Cheryl Stock, AM

This publication of 31 papers with authors from 13 countries takes as its focus the theme that was the title and driving force of the activities comprising the 2014 WDA Global Summit. The Summit embraced Contemporising the past: envisaging the future in an interconnection between theory and practice, as echoed in the Proceedings through papers by artist/scholars and artist/teachers. The Summit program featured 346 presenters across 38 countries and included: an international conference of 197 presentations; 31 showcase performances featuring 83 dancers; 34 masterclasses with 24 teachers and 650 participants; and a choreolab with mentors Robert Swinston and Germaine Acogny working with 4 emerging international choreographers and 38 dancers. In addition there were evening performances featuring the work of French companies including Robert Swinston’s Event and Olivier Dubois with his controversial work Tragedie. The principal aim of the Summit was to provide a supportive platform for sharing research and creative work, as well as nurturing professional development opportunities. Importantly this gathering was a networking opportunity to forge new partnerships, potential collaborations and to strengthen existing relationships.

These Proceedings, arising from the 2008 World Dance Alliance Global Summit, reflect both its spirit and diversity, re-appraising what dance is and might be in the 21st century. Through 53 papers from 14 countries in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the authors—ranging from seasoned scholars to emerging artists publishing for the first time—span the perspectives of academics, educators, performance and community artists, health professionals and cognitive scientists; predominantly from dance but also from film, visual arts, science, performance and philosophy.

Memory, time and metaphor are central triggers for artists in exploring and shaping their creative work. This paper examines the place of artists as ‘memory-keepers’, and ‘memory-makers’, in particular through engagement with the time-based art of site-specific performance. Naik Naik (Ascent) was a multi-site performance project in the historic setting of Melaka, Malaysia, and is partially recaptured through the presence and voices of its collaborating artists. Distilled from moments recalled, this paper seeks to uncover the poetics of memory to emerge from the project; one steeped in metaphor rather than narrative. It elicits some of the complex and interdependent layers of experience revealed by the artists in Naik Naik; cultural, ancestral, historical, personal, instinctual and embodied memories connected to sound, smell, touch, sensation and light, in a spatiotemporal context for which site is the catalyst. The liminal nature of memory at the heart of Naik Naik, provides a shared experience of past and present and future, performatively interwoven.

Twilight: a new work by Cheryl Stock for Dancenorth's 30th anniversary

Julie Dyson and Cheryl Stock discuss Australian Dance in Shifting Sands: Dance in Asia and the Pacific.

Cheryl Stock, Artistic Director of Dancenorth (1984–1995) talks about a large-scale site-specific community dance project specially devised for the Townsville community in 1994. Originally published in Dancers and communities: a collection of writings about dance as a community art

This book tells us about some of the ways community dance evolves. I couldn't put it down. Like a good novel, its characters are fascinating, the stories captivating, and the twists and turns keep one interested, for it's as Shirley McKechnie says in the preface, 'a many faceted story of places, people and artists working together in partnerships concerned with discovery and celebration' (p.vii).

And yet there is no formula for being a successful community artist; every project requires a different approach. Flexibility, sensitivity, spontaneity, enthusiasm, honour, commitment, patience, exhaustion, resilience and pride permeate these pages, as do stories of ordinary people creating magic moments for themselves and others, through the facilitation of this person called a community dancer.

Arguably the largest and most complex independent project of this nature staged in Australia, Dr Cheryl Stock's accented body was a project of small break-through discoveries and ongoing creative partnerships.

This paper explores a large-scale international project, Accented Body, which involved partnerships across the arts industry, the tertiary sector, government and philanthropic organisations.

This section presents diverse experiences and concepts to further our understanding of embodied cognition and embodied knowing; incorporating notions of stillness, becoming, sensory awareness, conditions of liminality, kinaesthetic empathy and somatic and therapeutic practices as well as holistic approaches to the theory/practice nexus.

A conversation between dance and visual arts, a collaboration of Japanese traditional with Australian contemporary movement, viewpoints on experimenting with traditional forms and an intercultural project in Malaysia form the basis for papers in this section.

These papers focus on the changing nature of dance pedagogy; exploring questions of identity and tradition, embodied learning to teach theory in the classroom, the act of dancing as a research strategy, cultural inclusivity as the heart of curriculum development and effective applications of digital technologies.

Strategies for sustaining dance in the following papers occur from two perspectives: culturally in terms of preserving and contemporising traditions in India, Cambodia and Thailand; and pedagogically through strategies for life-long learning in the tertiary sector and improved teacher training for children.

These papers investigate the evolution and transformation of performance and choreographic practices from a range of perspectives; in culturally specific traditions, via audience engagement, through re-versioning strategies, and in our relationship with digital and interactive technologies. Re-centring movement in various contexts of genre, site, community settings and intentionality further inform these perspectives.

Dr Cheryl Stock (Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane) talks about a collaborative site-specific project in 2002 which brought together ten independent artists to rekindle the unique experience of live performance—one that the virtual world simply cannot replicate.

Assessment frames the focus of this paper, which emerges from our collaborative research, Dancing Between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Postgraduate Degrees in Dance, funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC). We examine the attributes of danced ‘doctorateness’, giving special attention to those factors in the Australian environment, which may endow resilience to concepts of excellence, independent thinking and originality when kinaesthetic knowledge becomes pivotal to research. Have the small pool of examiners and relationships between academia and the professional artistic environment shaped these doctorates in a particular way? Can these perspectives illuminate and forge parameters by which to legitimate danced insight? These and related issues are interrogated giving voice to supervisors, research deans, candidates and industry professionals across Australia who participated in this research project.