Dance is quintessentially ephemeral - there is no shared archive or collective notation, to ensure ideas are not forgotten.
The unique embodied languages of dance are passed on only by expert human care and attention to detail. This is easily lost.
 
I translate dance to the screen as an antidote to its impermanence. An evolving archive, On View: Icons is a collection of portraits of iconic dance artists, whose legacies deserve to be remembered.

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6 Icons of Australian Dance:
Eileen Kramer, Nanette Hassall AM, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM, Lucette Aldous AC, Elma Kris, Shirley McKechnie AO. 

Exhibitions:
  • 3 channel HD video installation - Dancehouse, Melbourne, Nov 28-30 2024
  • 3 channel HD video installation - Sydney Festival, Neilson Studio, Jan 16-19 2024 (featuring 6 artists).
  • Stage 2: 3 channel HD installation, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, VCA, Melbourne 2018 (featuring artists Lucette Aldous, Shirley McKechnie and Nanette Hassall).
  • Stage 1: 5 channel HD installation -The Performance Space at Carriageworks, Sydney 2015 (featuring artists Lucette Aldous and Shirley McKechnie).
Video and Installation: Sue Healey
Director of Photography: Judd Overton
Music: Darrin Verhagen 
Producer: Dino Dimitriadis
Funded by: Australia Council for the Arts and Create NSW
2024 Sydney Festival exhibition supported by Tobi Wilkinson and Rob Keldoulis
ESSAY by JILL BROWN 2024
REVIEWS:
https://fjordreview.com/blogs/all/on-view-icons

https://dancemagazine.com.au/2024/12/moving-portraits-the-choreography-of-dance-on-film/
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DAME LUCETTE ALDOUS AC (1938-2021)
Lucette Aldous was an international dance luminary, prima ballerina and ballet teacher. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, she undertook her early training in Australia, and later at the Royal Ballet School in London, and then performed with Ballet Rambert and the Royal Ballet. She returned to Australia in 1970 quickly rising to Resident Principal Dancer with the Australian Ballet. She is particularly noted for her partnerships with Rudolf Nureyev in the film Don Quixote and Kelvin Coe. Lucette trained and inspired many students and professionals throughout Australia. In 2018, she was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for her services to the performing arts and dance education as a mentor and role model for young performers.
Lucette passed away in June 2021 in Perth, Australia.

ELIZABETH CAMERON DALMAN OAM (born1934) Nationally and internationally renowned as a director, choreographer, teacher and performer, Elizabeth is one of our foremost dance pioneers. A passionate artist with a life-long dedication to dance, she has been a prime mover in shaping the Australian dance landscape for over 50 years. Elizabeth began her early dance training in Adelaide and in 1957 left Australia to study and perform in London, Europe and New York. After working with Murray Louis, James Truitte, Kurt Joos and Alwin Nikolais and especially Eleo Pomare, Elizabeth returned home in 1963 to establish her own school of dance in Adelaide and, in 1965, with Kevin Roberts as production manager, she founded one of Australia’s earliest contemporary dance companies—Australian Dance Theatre. She is currently Director of the Mirramu Creative Arts Centre at Lake George in New South Wales.
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​NANETTE HASSALL AM (born 1947) graduated from the Juilliard School in New York and then joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company touring extensively in the USA and Europe. She performed, taught and choreographed for major companies in both Europe and Australia before returning to Australia to teach at VCA (1981-85) and founding and directing Danceworks, a full-time professional dance company in Melbourne between 1983 and 1990.  She is currently the Head of the Dance Department at the W.A. Academy of Performing Arts, a position she was appointed to in 1994. As a dance advocate Nanette has been a member of the Australia Council and its Dance Board. She has also been chair of the Creation and Presentation Network of the World Dance Alliance and chair of the Tertiary Dance Council of Australia. She was recognised nationally through two Australian Dance Awards, for her Services to Dance Education in 2002 and for Lifetime Achievement in 2012. 

EILEEN KRAMER (born 1914) is an Australian dancer, choreographer, artist and writer. Eileen was an original member of the influential Bodenwieser dance company in 1939. She danced with Bodenwieser for many years before she travelled to live in India, Europe and America for the majority of her life. She returned to Australia at the age of 99 and has created several choreographies, The Early Ones, A Buddha's Wife and the Now Project and several films with Sue Healey. Eileen published her first memoir, Walkabout Dancer, in 2008, and a fantasy novel The Heliotropians, in 2009. This was followed in 2018 by Eileen: Stories from the Phillip Street Courtyard, chronicling her bohemian adventures sharing an inner-Sydney rooming house in the 1930s. In 2020 she published Elephants and Other Stories, as well as conceiving a new work for film, The God Tree, released in 2021. A new memoir, Life Keeps Me Dancing, was published by Pan Macmillan in 2023.

ELMA KRIS Her clan is from the North Western and Central Islands of the Torres Strait, and Kris was raised on Waiben Island (Thursday Island). She studied at the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA) Dance College and first danced with Bangarra Dance Theatre in 1997, as well as forming her own dance group Bibir and dancing with the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre Company, before joining Bangarra full-time in 1999. Her many choreographic credits include Bupau Ipikazil and Bupau Mabigal (NAISDA, 1994), Malu (Bibir Dance Company, 1998), the Torres Strait Island element of the Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremony (2000), Emeret Lu (Bangarra, True Stories, 2007; named Best New Work in 2007 Dance Australia Critics’ Survey) and About(Bangarra, Belong, 2011).

SHIRLEY MCKECHNIE AO (1926-2022)
​Shirley had a career in dance that spanned five decades, all ‘firsts’ in terms of achievements—founder of one of the first contemporary dance school in Victoria in the 1950s; founder of one of the earliest contemporary dance touring companies as director, choreographer and performer (Australian Contemporary Dance Theatre 1963 – 73); founder of the first tertiary dance degree course (Rusden Campus, 1975); a driving force behind the Armidale choreographic seminars (1974 – 76) and a founder of the Australian Association for Dance Education (Ausdance, 1977). She was a member of the Council of the Victorian College of the Arts (1974 – 88); assisted with the founding of the first dance education company (Tasdance, 1981); the founding chairperson of the Tertiary Dance Council of Australia (1985–86); interviewer and researcher for the National Library of Australia (1980s–90s); guest artist, The Australian Ballet (Nutcracker, 1992); National President, Ausdance (1992 – 94); founder of Green Mill Dance Project (1993 – 97); first Australian Research Council grant for choreographic research (Unspoken Knowledges, 1998–2000); Professor of Dance (VCA, 1998); elected as Honorary Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities (1998). Shirley was an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the VCA/University of Melbourne and a leading advocate for dance in Australia. She died in 2022.

Sydney Festival January 2024, Photo - Wendell Teodoro
ESSAY BY DR. NALINA WAIT 2024

​Carriageworks exhibition 2015, Photos - Gregory Lorenzutti.
Margaret Laurence Gallery, VCA, Melbourne 2018