Hilary Crampton

1943 – 2009

Hilary Crampton was a unique contributor to Australian dance, whose interests were very much formed by her early dance education, and by her professional relationships with many prominent Australian artists and educators. She spent most of her career in Australia, and was one of this country’s finest dance critics, writing for The Age newspaper until early this year.

Hilary was born in Queanbeyan, NSW in 1943, but she spent most of her early years in Sydney where she studied ballet at the Scully Borovansky School, and where as a child she saw many of the Sydney seasons of the Borovansky Ballet. She later opened her own ballet school in Sydney, at the same time discovering the Bodenwieser Dance Centre where she developed a keen interest in improvisation and a dance aesthetic beyond the ballet. She began reading dance history, and during this period – influenced by Michael Edgley’s touring Russian ballet and European folkloric companies – she took master classes with Margaret Walker, eventually becoming a member of her Dance Concert, a folkloric dance company with a philosophy of taking dance to the people.

In the late 1960s Hilary was influenced by a group of people who were producing the Armidale choreographic seminars, a ‘melting pot’ of contemporary dance, classical ballet and critical writing and dialogue. Chief among these new mentors were Shirley McKechnie, Dame Peggy van Praagh, Keith Bain, Bernard James and, later, Peter Brinson, the eminent British dance educator. Hilary was in the inaugural graduating year of the Bachelor program at the Laban Centre in London, and she also attended each of the four Armidale seminars, and was then closely involved in the subsequent founding conference of the Australian Association for Dance Education (now Ausdance) in 1977.

During the 1980s Hilary was Head of the Dance Department at Rusden and completed her Masters degree in Hawaii in 1989, at the same time honing her writing skills with reviews and articles, and contributing to policy development at events such as Ausdance biennial conferences and the 1991 Dance Summit. Between 1992 and 1995 she was President of Ausdance Victoria, and was a member of the Board and Programming Committees of the Green Mill Dance Project from 1993 to 1997.

Hilary was passionate about dance education, and contributed greatly to dance advocacy as one of the Ausdance representatives on the National Affiliation of Arts Educators, editing Sampling the Arts (NAAE, 1997) and writing chapter in The Mayer Key Competencies and Arts Education (NAAE, 1996). She also contributed generously and knowledgeably to other Ausdance publications, including Brolga – an Australian journal about dance, Dance Forum and Ausdance Victoria’s Kinesis.

Hilary was an astute political advocate, and had begun a PhD in arts policy, an interest that was greatly valued by all of us at Ausdance, particularly through the organisation’s transition years in the 1990s. Hilary’s paper at Ausdance's Critic as Advocate seminar at the Sydney Opera House in 2000 was particularly outstanding. Her last job as a lecturer in arts management at the University of Melbourne gave her enormous satisfaction, particularly in being able to pass on her vast knowledge of Australian arts policy and its impact on artistic practice.

Hilary continued to contribute to policy development through her writing and conference appearances, most recently through her paper presentation at the World Dance Alliance Global Assembly in Brisbane in 2008. She continued reviewing for The Age newspaper until recently, and her devoted friends helped her to fulfill a final dream of attending a performance of The Australian Ballet’s triple bill, Concord, just a week before she died.

Hilary will be greatly missed by her Ausdance friends across Australia, and by the dance community generally. She made an intelligent and generous contribution to the understanding of Australian dance through her writing and lectures, and was made an Honorary Life Member of Ausdance Victoria in 1998. Hilary was awarded the 2006 Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance for her 'extensive and rigorous engagement with local and international dance practice as a writer, teacher, administrator and tireless dance advocate over 40 years'.

As a tribute to Hilary’s dance scholarship, we have her permission to publish online the articles she has written for Ausdance over the years, including those for Brolga and Dance Forum, and for various conferences. While Hilary was best known as a writer, educator and advocate, she primarily saw herself as an artist and an arts practitioner who could write, a sentiment well reflected in her insightful writing.

– Julie Dyson