Australian Youth Dance Festival

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1997 Australian Youth Dance Festival

‘Your Culture, Your Dance’

City: Darwin
Date: 28 September – 3 October, 1997
Festival Hub: the Darwin Entertainment Centre

Management team

Curators: Youth Advisory Panel—Billie Cook (WA), Shona Erskine (Vic), Sophie Lucas (Tas), Chantal McKenzie (SA), Taciano Cavalcante (Qld), Julia Quinn (NT), Kristy Shaddock (NSW), in consultation with Julie Dyson and Ralph Buck.

Project manager: Julie Dyson

Project administration: Sandra Macarthur-Onslow (Ausdance National) and Merrian Styles (Ausdance NT)

Welcome to country

The Larrakia people, traditional owners of the Darwin area, had been unable to perform the welcome ceremony in the park due to a family funeral, but the Modern Dreamtime Dancers, who had driven 2,000 kilometres from Broome, performed three dances choreographed for the festival.

Launch: by Minister for Education, The Hon. Peter Adamson, MLA, and hosted by the NT Government at Parliament House in Darwin on Sunday 28 September.

Special features

1. An advisory panel of young professional artists representing the States and Territories, and funded by the Australia Council, designed and implemented the program.

   Each was under 25 years of age and engaged in professional dance practice in their communities. The panel members were located in Cairns, Albury/Wodonga, Melbourne, Launceston, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. Their role was to assist in devising the program, choosing keynote speakers and workshop leaders, and then to act as facilitators throughout the festival.

2. Recommendations from youth dance leaders for the future of youth dance in Australia were produced.

3. Launch of new publication Dancers and Communities edited by Helen Poyner and Jacqueline Simmonds and published by Ausdance NSW.

Keynote speakers, panel members, workshop leaders and tutors:

the AYDF Youth Advisory Panel, Ralph Buck, Karen Bryant, Sally Chance, Susan Ditter, Christine Donnelly, Clare Dyson, Mark Gordon, Darren Green, Michael Hennessy, Luke Hockley, Lewis Lampton, Penelope Lancaster, Gary Lang, Michael Leslie, Catherine Magill, Andrew Morrish, Jeff Meiners, Tracie Mitchell, Ruth Osborne, Philip Piggin, Dorethea Randall, Jerril Rechter, Genevieve Shaw, Maggi Sietsma, Cheryl Stock.

Structure

Daily theme and keynote session, followed by concurrent sessions that included panel discussions, a primary and junior secondary students’ strand and a senior secondary students’ and teachers’ strand. Keynote discussions explored the daily theme and included practical sessions with keynote presenters.

Each afternoon was ‘free’ time, and people had an opportunity to work with friends, collaborators and mentors, to experiment with new ideas, to reshape an older piece or to prepare for a later ‘showing’ session.

A mentor list appeared on the notice board each morning, and people chose someone to work with in whatever way was appropriate for them. This was followed by an afternoon session where experimental work was shown and discussed.

Groups shared choreographic practice, discussed issues such as collaboration, funding and the future and the design of a festival web page. ‘Tasters’ classes and evening performances were highlights of the festival.

Daily themes included

‘pathways and partnerships’, ‘our culture our dance’, ‘collaborate and initiate’, ‘dance at the edge’, and ‘the future’.

National participants and performers included:

Corrugated Iron Youth Theatre (Darwin), Boys from the Bush (Albury/Wodonga), the Aboriginal Tagira Arts Academy (Darwin), Stompin Youth Dance Company (Tasmania) and the NSW Education Department dance group. Professional companies included Expressions Dance Company, Restless Dance and Tracks Dance.

International participants

Ludus Dance Company from the UK were special guest artists, providing insight into their unique dance education work and performing excerpts of their production Interface.

Funding

The Australia Council’s Dance Fund, the Community Cultural Development Fund, and the NT Government. Playing Australia funded Expressions, Restless and Stompin’ to perform. Directors and professional dancers from these companies were available as mentors when not performing. The British Council funded Ludus as part of its New Images program.