a dancer with contemporary companies in Australia (Kinetic Energy and Human Views), with a stint in South East Asia & Japan as a showgirl, I enrolled at Sydney University in the 1990s to do a BA in History and, what was called back then, Women’s Studies. I went on to do Honours in Australian (dance) History and a PhD exploring a history dance in Australia, both at Sydney University.

Between 2000 and 2006 I was producer with the One Extra dance company working primarily with Julie-Anne Long, Martin del Amo, the Fondue Set (Jane McKernan, Elizabeth Ryan and Emma Saunders), Michael Waites, and Narelle Benjamin. I joined Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Sydney part time in 2003 and became the inaugural chair of the board of Critical Path in 2005.

In 2008 I moved to Theatre & Performance Studies full time where my teaching focused on performance in the everyday and theories of embodiment. Phd students under my supervision examined intercultural performance; dance, technology and dramaturgy; Australian dance history; creative reconstruction and historiography; ballet and the transnational transfer of 'style'; butoh in Australia; oral history; queer embodiment; place and performance; phenomenology and dance, salsa and flamenco. I retired from full time teaching in mid 2024.

Currently I am the chair of the board of ReadyMade Works Inc (Jane McKernan is Creative Producer) and developing new publications with Martin del Amo and Narelle Benjamin under the umbrella of a publishing project called Anatomy of a Dance Work.

Other projects include:

  • a book: Nobody’s Muse: the dancing women of Australian modernism,1920-1960, exploring the work of Lola Laban, Joan Joske, Joan Henry, Sonia Revid, Irene Vera Young and Gertrud Bodenwieser

  • a research project on the influence of Indian, African, African-American and Afro-Caribbean dance on Australia performance during the 1950s and 1960s

  • a book on the appropriation of Indigenous dance practices in Australia and the United States, concentrating on the work of Rex Reid, Beth Dean, Ted Shawn and Reginald & Gladys Laubin

  • a research project with colleagues at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) on the influence of Pina Bausch on Australian dance since the 1980s