Contributors

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.

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.

Peter Furness, a dancer, traveller and adventurer, trained and performed in Australia and has recently returned to Sydney which he is rediscovering.