published writing and papers presented
2019 Body and Embodiment, in Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies: Key Terms in the Field,Vanessa Agnew et al, editors, London: Routledge. Read here
2019 Conference paper. “Pina Bausch, festival culture and the impact of 1980 in 1982”, Festivals & Performance, the Australasian Drama and Performance Studies Association (ADSA), Launceston, Tasmania, 25-28 June. Read here
2019 Catalogue essay. Martin del Amo on the Pages of RealTime, In Response: Dialogues with RealTime, University of NSW gallery, March - May. Read here
2017 Conference paper. 'On the edge of my seat': ‘Black’ dance and the transnational education of Anita Ardell, Modernism Today, MSA Conference, Amsterdam, August. Read here
2017 Conference paper. "Sonia Revid: her thoughts on dance and art", for Leap into the Modern: dance Culture in Australia from the 1930s, National Gallery of Australia, August.
2016 Gertrud Bodenwieser (1890-1959)" The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Taylor and Francis
2015 Dancing Modernists in Oceania. In Stephen Ross & Allana Lindgren (Eds.), The Modernist World, London: Routledge, pp. 225-264
2015 Review. "Taking Up Space: Nothing to Loose at the Sydney Festival", The Conversation, January 23
2015. Conference Paper. “the 'sciencing' of dance?”, Australasian Drama & Performance Studies Association (ADSA)conference in Sydney June read here
2014 A world with(out) words, Tess de Quincey’s Nerve Nine. In Bodies of Thought: Twelve Australian Choreographers, Erin Brannigan & Virginia Baxter (editors), RealTime, Adelaide, Australia: Wakefield Press
2014 Review. Sydney Festival Review: Chi Udaka, The Conversation, January 17
2014. The Designer and the Dance Maker, Elegy, Australian Ballet Souvenir Program, June
2012 Do Try This At Home: Dance Manuals, Myopia and Misrecognition. In Gillian Arrighi and Victor Emeljanow (Eds.), A World of Popular Entertainments: An Edited Volume of Critical Essays, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 118-133 Read here
2012 Introduction: Anatomy of a dance work, Brolga, 36, June
2011 Tethering the flow: dialogues between dance, physical culture and antiquity in Interwar Australia". In Rachel Fensham and Alexandra Carter (Eds.) Dancing Naturally: nature, neo-classicism and modernity in early twentieth century dance, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
2011 Together in Isolation: New Moves across Time and Space". In Julie Dyson and Stephanie Burridge (Eds.), Shaping the Landscape: Celebrating Dance in Australia, UK: Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis, pp. 155-173. Read here
2011. Feeling for Dancing in the archives of the dead. In Glen McGillivray (Ed.), Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia: hidden archives in performance, Peter Lang Read here
2011 A 100 year pas de deux, British Liaisons, Australian Ballet Souvenir Program, May
2010 Homage and critique in contemporary dance (or a reverie on the lasting legacy of Yvonne Rainer’s NO manifesto), Brolga32, June
2010 Review. Australia's Dance History Treasure Chest. Australia Dances: creating Australian dance 1945-1965, Realtime, 100, Dec/Jan
2009 Temporal Surrender, What do I think About when I think about Dancing, Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre, Sydney Read here
2009 Serge Lifar, Paris Match, Australian Ballet Souvenir Program, March
2009 Do you believe in Fairies, Sleeping Beauty, Australian Ballet Souvenir Program, June
2008 Art dance, burlesque and body culture: negotiating interwar modernities, in Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly (editors), Impact of the modern: vernacular modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s, Sydney: University of Sydney Press. Read here
2015 Conference paper. “dancing ‘round a tipi: research into the life and work of Reginald and Glady Laubin”, American Studies Association. Read here
2006 Body for Hire: the State of Dance in Australia, Platform Paper No. 8, Currency House.
2003 Disco Dance; Jazz Dance; National Identity and Dance; Research and Writing on Dance; Dancing on the Popular Stage since 1930; Choreography (co-authored with Erin Brannigan) Creative Appropriation of Aboriginal Dance (co-authored with Carole Johnson), in Dr. John Whiteoak & Dr. Aline Scott-Maxwell, eds., Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia, Currency Press, Sydney.
2002 One Extra Dance", Forum: Journal of the Australian Dance Council, Ausdance National, Winter.
2001 Choreographing a Continent: modern dance and constructions of national identity in Australia, Choreography and Dance, Vol. 4, Part 2/3. Read here
1999 Violence, vengeance and violation: The Display a ‘powerful dramatic work, intended to be very Australian’, Australasian Music Research, 4, Centre of Music Research - Melbourne University
1999 Lattes, Luminaries and the everyday: reflection on the mastery and influence of Tudor, Tetley and Kylian [with Graeme Watson], What makes a Masterpiece, Ausdance SA Symposium Available
1999 Prominence in Obscurity: Sonia Revid in Melbourne 1932-1945, Brolga, 10, (ACT), June, 7-19.
1998 Conference paper. Ballet Knows its place: a response to Elizabeth Dempster’s paper, Ballet and Its Other: Modern Dance in Australia, Erin Brannigan (ed), MAP Programme, from MAP Symposium, 25-26 July, Melbourne. Available
1998 ‘The Great Articulation of the Inarticulate’: Reading in the Jazz body in Australian and American Popular Culture, Journal of Australian Studies, No. 58, (QUT), October, pp.18-28
1997 From Aboriginal Dance to Aboriginals Dancing: the Appropriation of the Primitive in Australian Dance, Heritage and Heresy, Ausdance, Melbourne.
1997 Heretics and Heritage: in defence of dance independents, Real Time, 22, December/January, (Sydney), 30
editorial work
Dancing Sydney Review Platform (2024-) contributing editor.
Anatomy of a Dance Work (series 2023-) with guest editors/artists Martin del Amo, Narelle Benjamin and tbc.
In 2012 Martin del Amo presented Anatomy of an Afternoon at the Sydney Festival, and then again in London in 2014. In 2012 Ausdance National agreed to dedicate an entire issue of their Australian dance journal, Brolga 36, to this work. An online journal since 2012, this Brolga material gets lost behind paywalls and academic aggregators. Anatomy of a Dance Work, modelled on the structure of Brolga 36, will be a small-print-run series—being with Martin del Amo’s Anatomy of an Afternoon, a work inspired by Nijinsky’s The Afternoon of a Faun and created on/with dancer Paul White. For Anatomy of a Dance Work 1 we will reprint some of the original and create new material, reflecting on the work then and now. The second in the series will feature Narelle Benjamin’s duet Cella, presented in Germany at the Pina Bausch Choreographic Season in 2016, the Sydney Festival in 2018, and Melbourne’s Dance Massive in 2019. Cella was inspired by the Renaissance drawings in Human Anatomy, Depicting the Body from the Renaissance to Today. As it happens, this duet was created on/with/by Narelle Benjamin and, once again, Paul White. For future editions of Anatomy of a Dance Work watch this space.
About Performance,“Fashioning Performance/Performing Dress”, No. 16, (2018) with Guest Editor, Rosie Findlay, City University London.
Fashion, dress and performance share many characteristics. As aesthetic traditions, fashion and performance invite expressive human agency and create a space for the representation and contemplation of the contemporary socio-cultural moment. At the same time, performance and dress are both created and enacted by bodies that ‘speak’, enfolded into everyday practices of trying out and trying on, appearing and presenting ourselves to ourselves and to each other. The ways that fashion, dress and performance imbricate and influence each other extend beyond a consideration of costume for performance into: reading dress as performative; evaluating how dressing effects embodied knowledge, and exploring the relationship between fashion, dress and live aesthetic presentations. The 2018 issue of About Performance (no. 16) takes the dynamic and multi-directional intersection of these three concepts as its theme. Read Introduction here
About Performance, “Performance Studies: here, (over)there, now”, No. 14/15, 2017, the anniversary edition – Guest Editor with Dr Justine Shih Pearson.
As Associate Professor Ian Maxwell suggested in 2006 (TDR, 50:1): “the development of what we at Sydney University call performance studies has been determined by a range of factors, both transnational and local.” (p. 35). Our research and teaching at the Department has been influenced by “paradigm shifts washing across the humanities” (p.36) – the linguistic, semiotic, new historicism, sociological, anthropological, phenomenological turns, to name a few – and by the changing influences and interests of staff, students and associates (artistic and academic) over the last 25 (or more) years. Central to our theoretical and thematic interests in Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Sydney has been the work of professional performance makers. We have also been a leading research hub for rehearsal studies, reception theory and documenting performance. Our students, colleagues, and associates have published on theatre, parades, law, dance, politics, sport, acting, space, ritual, gender, movement and place. Our research, teaching and associations have reflected the eclectic nature of the discipline of performance studies more broadly and this special issue of About Performance reflects this expansive trend. With About Performance no. 15/16 we take a snapshot of where we are all at: here, (over)there, now. This edition will have new research on and around performance, by scholars associated with Performance Studies at Sydney University since its inception. Featuring the work of ex-students/colleagues, research and artistic associates and mentors, we cast our net wide, our only criterion being interest and excellence. Complete Copy available at Sydney University Press. Single articles available through Informit.
Brolga: an Australian Journal about Dance, "Anatomy of a dance work", No. 36, June, 2012. (Guest Editor)
This edition investigates and documents the making of "Anatomy of an Afternoon" by Martin del Amo in collaboration with dancer Paul White.
About Performance, “in between moves”, No. 11, 2011. (Guest Editor with Justine Shih Pearson).
This About Performance is dedicated to writing about moving. These articles, collected under the subtitle In-Between Moves, explore movement in the spaces between: between bodies and other bodies, bodies and objects, bodies and places, bodies and time. They examine how being in these spaces can be conceptualised through ideas and experiences of motion.
Brolga: an Australian Journal about Dance, 33, December, 2010. (Guest Editor) In this edition choreographers: "Shelley Lasica, Martin del Amo and Narelle Benjamin talk candidly and elegantly about the way they make work—how they begin, how they collaborate with others and how they get things done. The Fondue Set—Jane McKernan, Elizabeth Ryan and Emma Saunders—offer a fascinating response to a set of provocations. They reveal their process in a three-part harmony that speaks to the particular concerns of this group of female artists. Helen Herbertson, Trevor Patrick and Tess de Quincey provide poetic reflections that speak to the nature of the work they produce. This results in beautiful, powerful prose that evokes, rather than explains, the why, when and how of their devising processes. But what I like about this more figurative approach is the way in which their writings help me re-imagine the sensibility of their performances. Brain Lucas gives us a generous, reflective musing on how even established artists are in a constant and continuing state of development and growth, and Julie-Anne Long takes us on a journey, through the inspiration, creation and realisation of a working process. She reflects on collaboration and the influence of place with a word skill that replicates her expertise as a dancing devisor." (editorial)
Brolga: an Australian Journal about Dance, 29, December, 2008. (Guest Editor)
Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia, Currency Press, 2003 (dance consultant assisting managing editors) Currency Press, Sydney
Nobody's Muse
A history of the first wave of independent modern dance artists in Australia from the 1920s to the1950s.
With chapters on Lola Laban, Maud Allen, Joan Henry & Joan Joske, Sonia Revid, Irene Vera Young, Ruth Bergner & Elizabeth Wiener, Gertrud Bodenwieser & Margaret Barr—Nobody’s Muse is a new history of early modern dance as seen through the life and work of those who offered Australians new ideas on how to dance and how to live.
These women stoked controversy and challenged orthodoxies. They led independent lives as performers, choreographers and producers.
They were part of the European, American and Australian avant-garde.
They were important artists in their own time but (mostly) been forgotten in ours.
Expected completion and potential publication date, 2026
Anatomy of a Dance Work
Anatomy of a Dance Work will be a series of publications focusing on the making and performance of one Australian dance work. Continually frustrated by the inaccessible nature of material on dance and performance for artists and audiences outside the academy (deep dive, long form writing often languishes behind paywalls or university aggregators), and also concerned about the lack of publications that go beyond the quick-turn-around reviews of performance, the Anatomy of a Dance Work series will be modelled on an edition of Brolga 36 I edited for Ausdance National in 2012. This was based entirely on Martin del Amo’s Anatomy of an Afternoon which premiered at Sydney Festival 2012. That year we published reflective articles from Martin del Amo, myself, an interview with Martin by artist Matthew Day, and papers by choreographer/dancer Kristina Chan, curator/academic Erin Brannigan and designer/academic Justine Shih-Pearson, with photos by Heidrun Löhr.
In the inaugural edition of Anatomy of a Dance Work No.1 we will republish some of this material as well as expand, with new reflections on the memory of, and what remains to say about, the creation and reception of Anatomy of an Afternoon, a work in which Martin del Amo payed homage to Njininksy’s Afternoon of a Faun, created on and with dancer Paul White, with a 2014 season in London.
Anatomy of a Dance Work No.2 will be a study of Narelle Benjamin’s duet Cella, presented in Germany at the Pina Bausch Choreographic Season in 2016, the Sydney Festival in 2018, and Melbourne’s Dance Massive, 2019. Cella was choreographed and performed by Narelle Benjamin with, as it happens, Paul White. Working closely with Narelle Benjamin, we intend this publication to be an in-depth revelation and analysis of the work by its creators and collaborators, with other artists, academics and audiences potentially asked to reflect on the work. We will take a walk through the work’s inspiration and process, its development and performance.
Anatomy of a Dance Work, the series, will have a small-print-run with (an eventual) web presence. This is an attempt to thicken our relationship with, and memory of, important Australian dance works. Important in whose estimation? Mine!
