Brolga articles
Issue #30
When in Doubt, Laugh: An Australian Choreographer in Taiwan
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Aussie choreographer Felicia Hick writes candidly about her personal experience as a participant on the 2008 Asia Young Choreographers Project (AYCP) in Taiwan. She had to create a ten-minute work in three weeks with highly trained but non-English speaking dancers! The dancers’ tendency to laugh whenever they did not understand something, explains the title of this article.
Issue #29
The Fire and the Rose – Valrene Tweedie, OAM
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Michelle Potter gives us more than a glimpse of the life of this great Australian dancer, teacher and visionary, who left the country at the age of 15 to begin her professional career with the Colonel Wassily de Basil company. Tweedie travelled and performed all over the world, before returning to Sydney in 1956 to teach and facilitate creative choreographic development for more than two-and-a-half decades.
Issue #28
Sustainable dance making: Dancers and choreographers in collaboration
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In this peer reviewed paper, Karen Barbour talks about some of her personal experiences/challenges as a dance maker in both professional and community environments. She clearly defines what sustainability means, talks about the importance of collaboration, and her concerns about some practices in the dance world that are potentially damaging to dancers and choreographers, both physically and psychologically.
Issue #27
Unthinkable complexity: dance, datascapes and the desire to connect in Lucy Guerin’s Aether
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Bree Hadley, Lecturer in performance Studies at Queensland University of Technology, has written a thorough and insightful analysis of an award-winning and complex work by one of Australia’s leading contemporary choreographers. She writes about the work’s themes, the choreographer’s approach and strategy, audience responses and how Aether explores the way communication technologies impact on human relationships.
Issue #26
Graeme Murphy and the SDC
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Who better to write about Graeme and the SDC than Jill Sykes, dance critic for the Sydney Morning Herald who would have seen everything the company has ever performed! She starts off by naming some key pioneering dance artists who have contributed to ‘transforming an artform for the few into an adventurous and innovative theatrical event’, such as Diaghilev, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Jiri Kylian and others. Graeme’s body of work over three decades must surely make him the Australian representative in this pack. Some spectacular photos by Branco Gaica and Geoff Busby are included.
Issue #25
Galvanising community: Margaret Barr at Dartington Hall 1930-1934
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Although Margaret Barr was not an Australian, she emigrated in 1949 and established the Margaret Barr Dance-Drama Group before becoming the first Director of Movement at NIDA. With her influence as a teacher and choreographer (she made over sixty works in Australia), Margaret plays a significant role in the history of Australian dance. Garry Lester’s paper focuses on her work during her time at the unique and revolutionary Dartington Hall in England, which was being developed as a school/community focused on arts, education, enterprise and social justice. This is Part One.
Issue #24
Observing Lois Greenfield
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The dance photographs by Lois Greenfield are spectacular, distinctive and sometimes surreal, although Greenfield claims that she does digitally manipulate her work. WAAPA dance graduate and photographer, Laura Ross pays tribute to the invaluable contribution that this exceptional photographer is making, not only to the documentation and preservation of dances, but to dance photography as its own artform. (Check out Lois’s photos on her website www.loisgreenfield.com)
Issue #23
Soft gauzy ballet dresses
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Michelle Potter gives a brief and interesting history of women’s ballet costumes from the soft, long skirts of the romantic era in Paris in the early 19th century, to the shorter skirts that we see Degas’ dancers wearing; the introduction of white muslin from the East and the gradual evolution of the tutus that are still worn today. Female dancers have been the ultimate symbols of feminine beauty and allure, as seen through mens’ eyes, even in times when women, and specially dancers, had extremely low social status, and often lived in great poverty.
Issue #22
The historical buzz on Buzz Dance Theatre
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Buzz Dance Theatre began in Perth as a pilot project with two dancers. It was an initiative of the WA Education Department during the liberal-minded seventies when educators believed in the value of arts in a child’s education and government funds were given to small companies to teach and perform at public schools. Buzz Dance Theatre today receives triennial funding from the Australia Council and has developed into Western Australia’s premier professional contemporary dance company. This paper will give the reader an interesting picture of one facet of Perth’s artistic and cultural history.
Issue #21
Simon Dow’s gamble
La Boheme—the ballet
Dance critic Lee Christofis, talks about Simon Dow’s attachment to the music for Puccini’s opera La Boheme and how he was inspired to create his own ballet version, even though it was risky. Australian audiences had not often been thrilled by long three-act ballets, especially those adapted from operas. It received ‘rapturous applause and rave responses’ when it opened, which Lee attributes to not only the universal appeal of stories about love, death and redemption, and the emotionally charged score, but also his expansive and challenging choreography.
Issue #20
Lynne Golding—national star
Robin Grove pays tribute to this rather over-looked Australian dancer who captivated Australian audiences during the 40s and 50s with her vivid characterisations and seemingly effortless technique. Lynne made an enormous and unique contribution to dance in this country, as both performer and teacher. Robin writes about her life, and this period of Australian history, with great knowledge and affection.
Issue #19
Jewel in the crown?
Professor Susan Street talks candidly with Kevin Ng about her time as Dean of Dance at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (1999 – 2006). It seems that Sue took the dance department from being the ‘weakest link’ to the ‘jewel in the crown’ by injecting the department, the staff and students with confidence. Sue makes some interesting comparisons between Australia and in Hong Kong, in terms of dance training, support for dance and the arts, and funding for companies versus independent artists.
Issue #18
Black symbols on a white page—or colourful moving images?
Ray Cook, an Australian dancer and notator, living in the US, talks about recording and preserving dance with film/video and dance notation. Why, although video is mostly incapable of accuracy when it comes to reproducing choreography, does video remain the popular choice? His case notes from his experience as a notator are very interesting, particularly to those with any experience of, or interest in, dance notation—a strange and foreign language. Although it is difficult to come to terms with dance steps represented by funny black symbols on a page, video/film records of dances can only ever be one interpretation of a work.
Issue #17
Perceiving dance
Larry Ruffell begins to explore the complex and fascinating world of scientific analysis of visual and aural processes, and the connection to emotional expressivity and response. It is apparent how much scope there is for original research in the area of dance. It is interesting to note and compare the emotional responses to various artforms that vision and hearing-impaired people may have. We don’t really know if dance (or music) convey emotion, or merely information, which may or may not elicit an emotional response.