Contributors

Our contributors—the talented people who research and write about dance—their work champions innovation, creativity and diversity in dance.

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Aadya Kaktikar View Full Bio

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.

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Jondi Keane View Full Bio

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.

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Sela Kiek-Callan View Full Bio

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.

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Jenny Kinder View Full Bio

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.

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Ann Kipling Brown View Full Bio

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.

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Geoffery Kohe View Full Bio

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.

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Alexandra Kolb View Full Bio

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.

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Sunil Kothari View Full Bio

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.

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Susan Kozel View Full Bio

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.

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Donna H. Krasnow View Full Bio

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.

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