Australian Youth Dance Festival

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1999 Australian Youth Dance Festival

City: Townsville
Date: June 27 – July 2, 1999
Festival hub/performance space: Dance North, TAFE and Arcadia Beach on Magnetic Island

Management team

Curator: Julie Dyson in collaboration with the eight 1998 Australia Council Emerging Choreographers (Michelle Heaven, Sun Ping, Arun Munozz, Rebecca Youdell, Clare Dyson, Scotia Monkivitch, Paulina Quinteros, Luke Hockley).

Project administration:Sandra Macarthur-Onslow and Naomi Black (Ausdance National), with assistance from Julie Chenery (Ausdance Qld) and the Ausdance network.

Welcome to country

The Birri Gubba, with a traditional welcome from the local Bindal Dancers. The Bindal Dancers, through elder Dean Hegarty of the Birri Gubba people, performed for the first time in public at the opening of the Festival. Dean helped plan the launch and his dancers were invited to participate in the festival project.

Launch: The Mayor of Townsville, Tony Mooney.

Special features

Choreographic development project

Choreographer Beth Shelton and visual artist Tim Newth, with cultural advisers from Mornington Island, worked with young people to create their own festival piece throughout the week.

Beth and Tim were assisted throughout the week by other Australian dance artists, including Paige Gordon, Tiina Ali-Haapala, Debbie Clements, David McMicken and Michael Hennessy.

This piece involved dance, movement and the visual arts, as well as an introduction to Indigenous arts. The performance took place on Arcadia Beach on Magnetic Island before hundreds of other AYDF participants and local residents.

The community’s cultural image was enhanced by the public nature of the project, and through the Flinders Mall performances, the Aboriginal culture workshops and capoeira classes in the Perfumed Gardens, various activities in the TAFE lecture rooms and courtyards, and the old supermarket in Sturt Street which came to life for the first time in five years.

Dance North provided invaluable artistic and technical support for the packed evening performances.

Ausdance and the National Aboriginal Dance Council of Australia

Both organisations worked with the Australia Council’s Dance Fund to ensure the participation of a representative Indigenous artist from each State.

The existence of the project’s infrastructure and program, made possible by Festivals Australia, was clearly instrumental in assisting the Dance Fund to reach its decision to support such high quality representation by young Indigenous artists, and feedback from each indicated that the festival ‘changed their lives’ in terms of their own professional development.

The program

The 1999 AYDF program included: technology workshops in web design and the Life Forms program, as well as dance writing, dance on screen and opportunities to work with peers and mentors in creating new work.

Structure

Building on the 1997 AYDF but with three separate strands of workshops and discussions catering for:

1. independent artists, advanced dance students, teachers
2. intermediate students, youth dance companies, upper secondar
3. upper primary, lower secondary students

Daily themes

‘process to where?’, ‘contemporary indigenous dance issues’, ‘dance meaning and context’, ‘dance across cultures’, and ‘the future’.

National participants

Dance North, and youth dance companies Extensions from Townsville, Steps from Perth and Stompin from Launceston.

International participants

Copenhagen’s ‘Skolen for Moderne Dans i Danmark’

Funding

The Australia Council’s Community Cultural Development Fund and the Dance Fund. Festivals Australia provided funds towards the cost of the skills development component of the festival.