Australian Ballet’s 50th year sees new star rising
In its 50th anniversary year, The Australian Ballet is celebrating a new rising star in its ranks, Chinese Australian dancer Chengwu Guo.
The ABC's 7.30 program profiles his work and interviews his mentor Li Cunxin, the teenage dancer Chen played in Mao's Last Dancer, the hugely successful film based on Li's autobiography.
Dance people receive Australia Day Honours
Former balleriona Josephine Spaull, respected ballet teacher, Tanya Pearson, and Judith Anderson, formerly General Manager of The Queensland Ballet, have today been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).
Josephine was recognised for “for service to the performing arts, particularly dance, as a teacher and administrator". Tanya's citation was "for service to the performing arts, particularly ballet, as a teacher and mentor to young dancers". Judith's citation was "for service to the Queensland Ballet and to women". We congratulate Josephine, Tanya and Judith for their outstanding achievements.
The website It's an Honour has all the information you'll need to nominate more dance people for Australia's highest Honours!
Celebrating our Australian of the Year
There have been celebrations around the country today for our new Australian of the Year, actor Geoffrey Rush.
We congratulate him on his acceptance speech that placed the arts at the centre of Australian life and culture. He acknowledged the role of the First Australians, and said he was sure "that my colleagues will see this as an endorsement of our national story of creativity".
Senior Australian of the Year is Laurie Baymarrwangga, an extraordinary elder from the island of Murrungga in East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.
The Australian of the Year Awards were announced last night by the Prime Minister.
New research with dance and the elderly
New research by the University of Western Sydney is demonstrating that folk dance has clear benefits for the health of the elderly. You may have missed this great report from the ABC’s 7.30 program on 4 January.
Visit by American Dance Abroad director
Andrea Snyder is co-director of American Dance Abroad, a new initiative in the US that promotes the export of American dance. Andrea was formerly CEO of Dance USA, and is a valued colleague of Ausdance.
Andrea will be visiting Australia for the Australian Performing Arts Market (APAM) in February, so we’re putting her in touch with the Australia Council and dance producers in Sydney and Melbourne before she goes on to APAM. She'll see a lot of Australian dance while she's here and importantly will be establishing Australian networks for possible future exchanges.
Moving the National Cultural Policy forward
This week there were some major ministerial announcements around the development of the National Cultural Policy (NCP), including a review of the Australia Council. It is widely expected that the Government will announce new ideas and programs that the Australia Council will deliver as part of the NCP.
Dance training in Australia
One of the great advantages of working with Ausdance National is the opportunity to see performances and appreciate some of the excellent dance training we have in this country.
In Perth recently for the Ausdance directors’ meeting, I was lucky enough to catch Summerdance, the end-of-year performance by WAAPA students who premiered Balanchine’s great classic, Serenade, staged by Balanchine Trust repetiteur Eve Lawson. The work was beautifully performed, as WA’s 7.30 program reported, and the students also gave outstanding performances of works by Gabrielle Nankivell, Xiao-Xiong Zhang and Natalie Weir.
This week we’ve seen On Course in Canberra, QL2’s program of student work from a range of tertiary dance courses in Australia. Apart from exceptionally strong technique, the students’ maturity in communicating their ideas made for an entertaining and thought-provoking program.
I’d also been lucky enough to see the Paris Conservatoire student season in November in a program that included Noces by Angelin Preljocalj, and works by Hofesh Shechter and Thomas Lebrun. These students were also outstanding, but it's no surprise that it confirms Australian dance training as being up there with the world’s best!
Canadian cultural policy researcher visits
This week we hosted Shannon Litzenberger in Canberra as part of her research into Australian cultural policy. Shannon is a Canadian dance artist, writer, director and advocate who we first met at the 2009 Dance Congress in Hamburg.
Shannon is particularly interested in the political process of developing a national cultural policy; the ways in which new funding models might be developed; the cultural diplomacy strategies of the government; the National Cultural Policy Discussion Paper and the various (and many) responses received by the government as part of its consultation.
Tanja Liedtke digital archive
In news that will particularly interest Australian dance researchers, educators and students, the Tanja Liedtke Foundation has announced that it has created the Tanja Liedtke digital archive, now freely accessible to anyone who is interested in knowing more about Tanja’s life and work.
The Foundation has also announced that one of Tanja's works, construct, has been voted by The Monthly magazine as one of 20 Australian masterpieces, across all art forms, since the year 2000. The work was declared the masterpiece in the category of contemporary dance, a great achievement!
Dance support organisations meet in Paris
Last week 25 dance support organisations met in Paris for three days of talks, presentations and performances. As we are members of the World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific, we had also organised for WDA people to provide this mainly European group with more information about its activities.
These annual meetings are an opportunity to share dance support strategies, ideas and visions for the future. We were invited on the first day to share this year’s achievements, a challenge for many European organisations that face severe funding cuts. Despite funding difficulties all round, presentations were inspirational and visionary for dance, and we came away with many ideas for collaborations and future planning with now-familiar colleagues such as Madeline Ritter and Ingo Diehl (Germany), Caroline Miller (Dance UK) and our French colleagues Agnès Wasserman and Frédéric Moreau.
Delegates at Paris meeting of dance support organisations. Ingo Diehl (centre) is the Tanzplan Deutschland Educational Program Director. Ausdance directors meet in Perth
Ausdance network directors usually meet twice a year to share ideas, update one another on projects and work toghether on plans for the future.
Last week it was Ausdance WA's turn to host the directors' meeting, and it was great to be back in the purpose built dance spaces at the King St Arts Centre where the meetings were held. While not all directors could be present this time, we heard about many excitinfg national projects, including plans for dance in the new Australian Curriculum, the 2012 Australian Youth Dance Festival to be held in Sydney next Easter, the launch of the Live Performance Training Package, the World Dance Alliance festival to be held in Taiwan next July, and, of course, the 2012 Australian Dance Awards to be held at the Heath Ledger Theatre in Perth on 1 September.
Youth dance—where does it fit?
In responding to our suggestion of a campaign to support the smaller key dance organisations, Ruth Osborne, artistic director of QL2 Dance, came in to discuss some of the issues youth dance companies are experiencing.
Time for a funding review of smaller dance companies
Recent funding decisions across all sectors of the small to medium performing arts sector have highlighted the widening gap between what was considered to be 'adequate' funding for these companies five years ago, and the reality of their existence today. While we highlighted the issues in our contribution to the National Cultural Policy discussion paper, we also plan see the Arts Minister, Simon Crean, to again draw his attention to the parlous state of funding for smaller key organisations, especially in dance.
Restless Dance Theatre’s Junction project
Junction is an artist exchange program initiated by Restless Dance Theatre to support and promote the development of new independent work. Piloting this program is independent artist Tobiah Booth-Remmers who is being mentored by Carol Wellman Kelly through the national JUMP mentoring program.
Our new website is here
Hello. Thanks for joining us. Finally we're alive. Bet you were wondering what we've been doing!
Well, last year we talked to our dance partners and contributors about what information they wanted, needed and expected from our website. We also looked at the amazing work they had written and we'd published over the last 10+ years. A lot of it was very interesting and answered many questions, but it was trapped on paper collecting dust on the shelf. We also realised that we spent a lot of time making things happen with not much time left to tell you about it along the way.
Our contribution to the National Cultural Policy discussion paper
We joined the many artists, companies and community organisations and made a submission to the National Cultural Policy discussion paper.
Because we think it’s important for the dance voice to be heard as part of the wider arts industry, we also coordinated the submissions from ArtsPeak and the National Advocates for Arts Education.
You can keep in touch with the development of the National Cultural Policy by joining the Arts Minister’s e-news.
Writing the Australian Curriculum in the arts gets underway
Last week we joined other advisers and writers of the new Australian Curriculum in the Arts for a three-day induction meeting with ACARA (the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority). We worked intensively together to understand cross-curriculum, Indigenous and disability priorities, and in our own art forms to look at various aspects of the new curriculum.
Art form writers now have a tight timeline to complete first drafts, and advisers will have opportunities to review them in November and December. It’s anticipated that work will then continue into January and February before broader consultation begins.
Making an Australian arts curriculum work
When the National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) met in Sydney last month, we identified some of the things that all governments—Federal, State and Territory—will have to provide if they're to resource the Australian Curriculum in the Arts.
With the arts curriculum to begin trialling next year, we've lobbying for:
- Upgraded teacher training and professional development in each art form, especially for primary school teachers.
- Curriculum materials such as science's Primary Connections.
- Space within schools for safe learning environments.
- Clarification of the role of specialist teachers, artists in schools and arts companies.
Diversifying dancers’ careers
We want dance artists to be able to diversify their careers, get more training if they need it and earn a realistic income.
Because we want to work with governments to reinvent a program that worked so well, we’ve commissioned Shane Carroll to review the SCOPE (Securing Career Opportunities and Professional Employment) program and provide us with the evidence we need to make the arguments. Shane has been one of the program’s leading advocates and drivers.
Postcard from the future
The Prime Minister, in her role as chair of the standing committee on the arts, today announced a significant program of research and development for dance that she said would provide Australia with a major advantage over France, its nearest rival in recognising dance as its most important cultural export. The ABC interrupted its sports broadcast to bring this contemporary dance update direct from the Prime Minister's office.
This was how we interpreted a request from ABC Radio National for a 'postcard from the future' during an interview about the arts and cultural policy in Australia. The program will go to air early next year, and the intention is to "reflect ... the broad policy shift from a vision about Australia developing and presenting a unique Australian cultural identity, to that of a sustainable arts and cultural industry or sector".
We'll let you know when the program is due to go to air.