Contributors

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.