Careers in dance
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Recommendations arising from the Safe Dance IV research project
In professional dance, as with all physical and athletic endeavours, there will always be a realistic expectation of some musculoskeletal complaints. The information gathered through the Safe Dance research studies develops a better understanding of the changing profile of professional dancers in Australia and their experience of injury. The findings can be used to assist in the tailoring and evaluation of evidence based injury prevention initiatives with the long-term goal of safely sustaining dancers in their professional dance careers for as long as they choose.
Online delivery of dance classes and tutorials
Due to COVID-19 and changed circumstances in studios, schools and community, many dance providers have chosen to move their classes online. Here is a guide to keeping people connected, moving and staying positive in challenging times. However, teaching online presents a new set of practical, legal and pedagogical considerations. This resource looks at these three areas and provides some ideas and suggestions. It has been prepared by Dr Katrina Rank, Director of Education and Life Long Learning at Ausdance Victoria.
Have dance makers become timid in our role as storytellers?
Artists are often at the forefront of new waves of socio-political change. Whether you’re talking about the birth of democracy or the recent #metoo campaign, we’re usually there, agitating or at least sparking discussion. But in a country where arts funding is under near-constant threat and the fight for audience attention is fierce, are we as brave as used to be? In the recent Nick Enright keynote address Australian playwright/provocateur Wesley Enoch made a case for no. Australian artists, he said, were ‘too concerned with upsetting audiences, politicians, sponsors, donors, funders, we have become timid in our role as storytellers.’ So, what about dance? Have we absconded our duty?
Safe Dance Report IV: Investigating injuries in Australia’s professional dancers
Safe Dance Report IV examines the Australian context and occurrence of injury in professional dancers (independent dancers and those based in companies), and how dancers manage their injuries and return to dance practice. It makes recommendations to support sustainable, healthy, and productive dancing careers.
The Big 4-0!
The Big 4-0! While turning the big 40 can provoke anxiety, soul-searching and the purchase of sports cars in humans, for an organisation to reach this marker is a cause for unadulterated celebration. This year marks this milestone for Ausdance, Australia’s national body for dance advocacy, education and outreach. First established in 1977 as the Australian Association for Dance Education (AADE) in Melbourne, Ausdance’s mission was to provide a united voice for Australia’s burgeoning dance community. Over these last four decades the accomplishments of Ausdance have been as varied as they have been numerous but the goal has remained the same: to educate, inspire and support the dance community to reach its potential as a dynamic force within local, national and international spheres.
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Sustainable careers for dance artists
The dancer’s performing life is highly focused, demanding dedicated vocational training from an early age, and it depends on time-consuming creative and physical regimes. Dance artists, in contrast with other artists, are particularly challenged when it comes to professional career development.
Projects View all
Keith Bain Choreographic Travel Fellowship
The biennial Keith Bain Choreographic Travel Fellowship supports international travel and experiences by emerging choreographers (under 40 years) across any dance genre.
2019 National Dance Forum
The NDF is the most significant platform for dialogue across the Australian contemporary dance sector. Dancers, makers, researchers, writers, directors, producers, advocates and educators participate in discussions about the inherent concerns and realities affecting current professional practice in Australia.
Ensure employer-sponsored skilled visa programs advance the Australian dance sector
International arts appointments can contribute artistic excellence to the Australian dance and cultural sector.
We are working to ensure the specific artistic expertise and knowledge contributed by international experience can continue to advance the Australian dance sector.
We are asking for dance occupations to be moved to the Medium and Long Term Strategic Skills List to support the long-term artistic commitments often required for international engagement of elite dance artists.
Reinstate professional dance courses on the VET student loans eligible course list
Ausdance National is working with the National Advocates for Arts Education to:
- reinstate professional dance courses on the VET Student Loans eligible course list
- make a case to redefine the methods used to assess courses eligible for student loans—recognising the cultural sector as one of Australia's major employers and arts graduates as key contributors to the creative economy in Australia.
Investigating injuries in Australia’s professional dancers
Australia is at the forefront of dance injury epidemiology efforts; the Safe Dance Project Report on dance injury prevention and management in the Australian dance profession, known as Safe Dance®, was launched almost 30 years ago. It was the first study of its kind conducted in Australia and showed an alarming prevalence of both chronic and acute injuries in Australian dancers. These findings led to a variety of recommendations and initiatives, including a recommendation to repeat the Safe Dance study regularly to evaluate the effect of these initiatives and provide further insight into dancer health and wellbeing.
Publications View all
Asia–Pacific Channels
Asia–Pacific Channels is the bi-annual newsletter of the World Dance Alliance (WDA), published by Ausdance National in collaboration with MyDance Alliance in Malaysia. It profiles dance events and activities from WDA members throughout the Asia–Pacific region.
Creative Ageing Forum pack
On Monday 29 October, Ausdance NSW held the ‘Creative Ageing Forum’. We consulted with our sector and brought together a cross-section of academics, producers and program providers to discuss their current practice and the challenges working within this rapidly growing sector of the Australian population.
1977 Dance Education Conference Papers
Dance Education Conference Papers by the Australian Association for Dance Education. These papers are an edited version of the talks and discussion of the Dance Education Conference held in Melbourne in August 1977.
Ausdance National newsletter
Published every two months, and themed around an event or popular dance topic, our email newsletter reflects on professional dance practice and shares ways for you to get involved.
Brolga 40
Articles in this issue explore ideas that relate to improvisation as it has been experienced in a practical, bodily way.
Marchant’s article Dance Improvisation: Why warm up at all? considers what takes place before improvising begins, while warming up. In Improcinemaniac, Reid describes her simultaneous practice of screendance and improvisation. Reid uses language that is deliberately poetic, and deconstructs and reassembles words in order to question or reconfigure meanings, particularly those of conventional dance language. Using improvisational play with light and lens is also described by Wilson who applies a deeply embodied approach, developed over years working as a dancer, to her visual art practice in experimental photography. Millard’s What’s the score? explores the use of scores or verbal propositions as supports for dance improvisation. In Gaps in the Body, Fraser writes of having arrived at an understanding of improvisation that, rather than being about moving, is about ‘attention’. McLeod’s article, The Ethos of the Mover/Witness Dyad, describes the response of an invited public to a performative Authentic Movement event over three evenings.
News / Blog / Press Releases / Events View all
International Young Choreographers Project 2024
Applications from emerging Australian choreographers are now being called for this international opportunity.
The IYCP has been providing young choreographers with this invaluable artistic and cultural experience since 1999. Read about previous Australian participants’ experience here.
Closing date is 16 December 2023.
About the International Young Choreographer Project
The International Young Choreographer Project (IYCP) is held in southern Taiwan in July/August and is hosted by World Dance Alliance Asia–Pacific Taiwan chapter. Eight choreographers from the Asia-Pacific region are chosen by WDA Asia Pacific (WDAAP) to attend.
Participants are selected from a list of young choreographers recommended by World Dance Alliance country chapters (Asia Pacific, including Australia, the Americas and Europe), based not only on their choreographic work, but also on their ability to meet the challenges of working in a foreign country with unfamiliar dancers and culture, and their potential as a significant contributor to dance in the future.
The selected choreographers work with selected dancers from Taiwan. The three-week process of developing new works with local Taiwanese dancers concludes with two performances. The program highlights the diversity of dance in both styles and cultures, and how local and international choreographers perceive their daily lives and the world.
Participants must fund their own travel to Taiwan. However, an honorarium of US$800 for WDAAP choreographers is included, plus accommodation, local transportation, dancers, studios, publicity, production and office assistance.
Australian applicants must be members of Ausdance (find your local Ausdance).
Information for applicants
Application forms are available from Ausdance National.
In addition to contact information, applicants will be asked to answer these questions:
- What you would gain from a professional experience such as this?
- Why would you like to work in Asia?
- A brief concept of your proposed work.
- A 200-word biography and a resume/CV.
Closing date is December 16 2023.
Tertiary Dance Council federal election statement
The Tertiary Dance Council of Australia (TDCA) is comprised of academic members from Australian higher educational institutions that offer programs in Dance and Dance Education. It is chaired by Associate Professor Peter Cook, Deputy Head of the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland.
This national body has identified the absence of a national cultural policy that is inclusive of all art forms, their benefits and accessibility, and the impact of arts education and training on the lives of all Australians.
During the recent pandemic lockdowns, society turned to the arts which pivoted their practice for online audiences, and for aesthetic and well-being contingencies. The arts need to be recognised and celebrated for their capacity to nurture, develop and reinvigorate research for the benefit of the wider society.
The TDCA also has serious concerns about the Federal Government’s re-prioritisation of research funds resulting in ministerial intervention and the enacting of veto powers in relation to the Australia Research Council’s Discovery Grants and Linkage programs.
This narrowing of scope is taking place as we are facing, according to Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, “an unprecedented crisis in the cultural sector” (Reshaping policies for creativity). Although the arts and cultural sector is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world, it is also one of the most vulnerable and is often overlooked by public and private investment, including the distribution of public research funds.
Tertiary dance programs undertake practical academic explorations, often involving performance and choreography, that are completely aligned with research principles in their planning, execution and dissemination. They explore contemporary and cultural topics, develop theoretical positions, and engage methods and methodologies that work towards better understanding of, and knowledge about, the issues at hand.
Seeing the downturn of arts-based grants compounds already disenfranchised academics, many of whom are undertaking unfunded and in-kind research projects that benefit society.
Inclusion of arts research projects and their interdisciplinary approaches clearly fits the paradigms from which society benefits. Limiting arts research program funding endangers the unique contribution that arts research makes towards the aesthetic leadership and engagement of well-being, so required as we live through the pandemic world and its recovery.
The technologising of the field, together with its diversification and partnerships across science, health, humanities and ecology, evidences how dance enhances lives across generations and within communities.
We also note the following:
- Covid has had a major Impact on the sustainability of private dance schools, which are TDCA feeder schools.
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The extreme vulnerability of the arts in higher education.
Recommendations:
- Commitment by all political parties to the development of a National Cultural Policy that includes arts education and training, and developed in consultation with artists, arts educators, the community, industry and peak arts bodies.
- Allocation of ARC grants to a broader industry cohort to redress diminishing arts research in dance in particular. Ministerial interference in ARC decision-making processes must stop.
- Support for research into the vulnerability of the arts in higher education.
- Reversal of increased tertiary fees in the Creative Arts, made on the false premise that this area of study does not lead to employment.
- Enabling of research into the private dance studio sector to assess the impact of Covid-19 on the viability of this important ‘feeder’ sector in dance training and employment.
Academy of Music and Performing Arts, AC-Arts Adelaide, Australian Ballet School, Australian College of Physical Education, Deakin University, Monash University, NAISDA Dance College, Queensland University of Technology, University of South Australia, Victorian College of the Arts, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, University of Southern Queensland, University of Tasmania.
Tertiary Dance Council responds to political interference in ARC grant programs
The Tertiary Dance Council of Australia (TDCA) is comprised of academic members from Australian higher education institutions that offer programs in Dance and Dance Education. It exists under the auspices of Ausdance National, and is chaired by Associate Professor Peter Cook of the University of Southern Queensland.
The TDCA is seriously concerned about the Federal Government’s re-prioritisation of research funds, resulting in ministerial intervention and the enacting of veto powers in relation to the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Grants and Linkage programs.
The TDCA has recently made a submission to the Senate's Australian Research Council Amendment (Ensuring Research Independence) Bill 2018.
Australian dance educators are also being encouraged to sign the Australian Parliament House Petition to prevent political interference in ARC funding grants (closing on 16 March).
Ausdance responds to ACARA’s review of the Australian Curriculum
The Ausdance National Education Committee, led by Dr Jeff Meiners and Sue Fox, has prepared a submission to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) in response to its review of The Australian Curriculum: The Arts.
The proposed revisions aim to declutter the content through improving the curriculum's clarity of structure and refine the content descriptions and achievement standards. This response relates specifically to Dance in the F-6 curriculum, as this is the identified focus of the review.
As Ausdance’s reps on the National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) Council, Jeff and Sue have also contributed to the NAAE's submission, which has reached a review consensus across all art forms.
We thank Jeff and Sue and the Ausdance National Dance Education Committee who contributed to Ausdance's submission, and who will continue to work with ACARA on next steps.
Ausdance National Education Committee members are:
- Rachael Bott (WA)
- Trish Brown (ACT)
- Sarah Calver (NT)
- Peter Cook (NSW)
- Megan Cooper (SA)
- Julie Dyson (ACT)
- Candice Egan (VIC)
- Sue Fox (QLD)
- Lesley Graham (TAS)
- Julie-Anne Grant (QLD)
- Rikki Mace (TAS)
- Kate Maquire-Rosier (NSW)
- Jeff Meiners (SA)
- Helen Mullins (QLD)
- Katrina Rank (VIC)
- Amy Wiseman (WA)
Fee increases for creative arts & humanities courses
With so many artists excluded from both JobKeeper and JobSeeker during the Covid-19 crisis, the sector suffered another blow with the announcement by the Federal Education Minister, Dan Tehan, that tertiary fees would be substantially increased for Humanities and Creative Arts courses.
The Minister's announcement did not contain much detail, so we asked whether he would clarify the percentage increase for the Creative Arts. 'We understand fees for ‘creative arts’ will rise by 13%, from $6804 to $7700 over three years, but we are unable to find more accurate information in the Minister’s speech to the National Press Club. However, it is clear that Humanities & Social Science degrees will rise by 113%'.
We also asked the Minister to define ‘creative arts’, i.e. did it mean arts training courses such as those offered in Dance at QUT and the University of Melbourne (VCA)?
We now have a response from the Minister, and will be following up shortly with input from dance course directors and the Ausdance network.