Kinesis Magazine

- Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM MCA

It is a pleasure to be here today at this Dance History Symposium and I thank the committee for inviting me. I am proud to be the first to speak and in the time that I have I will reflect in particular on my role in directing Australian Dance Theatre during the years 1970 – 1975, making reference to some of the questions posed to me. I am currently writing about this period of Australian Dance history, so it is material that is very close to my heart. While the facts are correct, the views that I share with you today are personal.

 

1. Unique in Australia

By 1970 Australian Dance Theatre had become a visible force in the theatrical landscape of Australia and was considered to be the National contemporary dance company. It presented regular professional seasons in Adelaide, toured regionally and also made tours to Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Hobart, and throughout Queensland. As well as these full-scale performances, the company presented dance-in-education programs, workshops and demonstrations. In 1968 we toured to Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. In the same year Jennifer Barry and I appeared in the New Choreographers Concert in New York.

 

I founded and established the Company in 1965 with no funding at all. (It may surprise you to know that our first Government funding came in 1969). The company grew out of and was supported by The Elizabeth Dalman Modern Dance School, which I had set up in 1964. The school provided a cost free venue for company classes and rehearsals and eventually some employment for the dancers. I offered dance skills, dance teacher training and performance opportunities to the Company members. These performance opportunities brought in some money for company costs.

 

The dancers also received some remuneration but on the whole they made enormous financial sacrifices in their commitment to the company during those years. In looking back over the first ten years of Australian Dance Theatre, it has been estimated that the commercial capital in time, effort and personal investment put in by members of the company was worth more than 5 million dollars. It would be worth double this by today’s standards.

 

As well as our inexhaustible pioneering drive in bringing the techniques and philosophies of the modern dance movement to Australia, it was an exciting time.

 

In Adelaide in 1970 Premier Don Dunstan promised that, South Australia would become the technological, design, social reform and the artistic centre of Australia.”

 

1970 was an important year for Australian Dance Theatre.  I had been invited to choreograph and provide dancers for a new Sound and Image production called Time-Riders, The Oldest Continent. The brainchild of Stan Ostoja Kotkowski, it was commissioned by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust and presented in the 1970 Perth and Adelaide Festivals of Art and then toured to Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Hobart.

 

Sound and Image productions were cutting edge experiments with technology and theatre. They involved many artists from diverse art forms and there was much experimentation with new technology. They also investigated the relationship of performers to audience.

 

Anne Latrielle wrote in the Melbourne Age at the time:

 

The work, which was based on the huge divide between the culture of Indigenous Australians and the white colonial settlers, was hailed around Australia as an all-Australian production. The dancers of Australian Dance Theatre - Jennifer Barry, Cheryl Stock, Delwyn Rouse, Bert Terborgh Neville Burns, and I had three and a half month’s work touring the production nationally. We were seen to be at the coalface of new experimental theatre developments in Australia at the time.

 

When the Time Riders tour was completed I rearranged the choreography into a work I called Creation. Based on some Aboriginal legends of the Dreamtime, poetry of Roland Robinson and other Australian poets, and set to music of Australian composers such as Ian Cugley, Peter Sculthorpe, and John Antill, Creation became an important work in the ADT repertoire. (Parts of Creation have been remounted on dancers in various companies and projects both in Australia and overseas in recent years. The choreography is still relevant today).

 

Creation was one of the most popular and acclaimed works on our South East Asian tour in 1971. During this seven-week tour we visited eight different countries in South East Asia.

 

The dancers on the tour included: Gillian Millard, Cheryl Stock, Maxine Ewart, Delwyn Rouse, Bert Terborgh, Geoffrey Cichero, Eleanor Martin and myself. The technical crew included Andre Heilbron and Kevin Roberts, and our tour manager was Neil Curnow.

 

This tour was important for several reasons. It was the first time that an Australian contemporary dance company had toured to most of these countries, making us pioneers outside of our country as well as inside. Not only was there interest in the dance that we brought, but also in the fact that we were Australians. The reception to our works far exceeded our expectations. As well as giving us confidence, this tour helped us to define our identity as Australian artists and give us a greater perspective on our position in the national and international dance landscape.

 

From the highlands of New Guinea to the National Theatre in Manila, the University Theatre in Chandigarh and smaller theatres in Taipei, New Dehli and Bombay in India, to the sophisticated theatres in Hongkong, Singapore and Bangkok our performances were well received and highly acclaimed. Our records show that 11,000 people attended the 36 performances that we presented.

 

As a result of the huge amount of international publicity gained on the tour, Australian Dance Theatre began to receive genuine national recognition. Some annual funding was forthcoming both from the South Australian Government and from the recently established Australia Council for the Arts. Having proved ourselves overseas, we were finally recognized at home!

 

In 1963 the organizers of the Adelaide Festival of Arts had been interested in bringing Eleo Pomare and his company to Adelaide. However it was not until 1972 and after much negotiating on my part, that they were featured in the Adelaide Festival of Arts. During his visit to Adelaide, Eleo, who had been my mentor in the 1960’s created a new work Limousine for Janis for ADT. A confronting, dynamic work that addressed both drug and alcohol abuse, Limousine for Janis was ground-breaking at the time. (In recent years this work has been remounted in Taiwan, Sydney and Canberra and in 2006 I won a Canberra Critics Circle award for my reconstruction of it on Mirramu Dance Company).

 

Eleo’s visit in 1972 was important on several fronts. Here was a vital and dynamic American modern dance company, the first international modern dance company to appear in Adelaide. Jennifer Barry, a founding member of ADT was then a member of Eleo’s company.  Carole Johnson who was also a member remained behind in Sydney. She then set up NAISDA and founded Bangarra Dance Theatre.

 

In 1972 Ray Cook, an Australian dancer who had been working in America for many years, joined ADT as Assistant Artistic Director. With the stimulation of Eleo’s visit and Ray’s appointment, the modern dance technique training of the company intensified. Ray created a couple of works and he mounted Doris Humphrey’s The Shakers for us. Classes in composition helped to encourage dancers from within the company to create new works for the repertoire. A very successful tour to New Zealand organized by the Universities Student Union added to the company’s international reputation. The regional touring, educational programs and full-scale performances continued to fill the calendar on into 1973. Company records of the years 1971 – 1973 show that the number of attendees to ADT performances during these three years was over 58,000.

 

In 1974 Jaap Flier from Nederlands Dans Theatre joined the company for a year.

 

In 1975 we began our tenth anniversary celebrations with a tour to Western Australia for the Perth Festival of Arts. A Gala season in Adelaide was followed by an extensive tour to Queensland and Sydney. Returning from our final performance to a full house at the Seymour Centre in Sydney, the ADT dancers and I each found a letter on our dressing table terminating our contracts. You can imagine our shock, especially as there had been no forewarning or prior discussion between the Board and me. There followed then a gap of 18 months before the new Artistic Director took the helm.

 

2. What interested me?

The things that have always interested me fit into three categories: Australia, Dance and Theatre

 

a.    Australian.

In Australia during the 1950’s and 1960’s, we suffered from what was called the Cultural Cringe. In the arts, only works from Britain or Europe and later from America were accepted as relevant art. Australian artists, undervalued and unsupported, were leaving this country in droves.

 

In 1963 after five years of study and performing in Europe, I returned to Australia. I became concerned with how we could express ourselves as Australians. Having been converted to the modern art movement and to modern dance techniques and philosophies in particular, I believed I had the tools to create works that contributed to the development of an Australian identity.

 

I believed that dance was a subtle way of bringing focus to things Australian, especially to the unique landscape of this country, to Indigenous Australian culture, the oldest culture in the world, and to the Australian free, democratic and relaxed way of life.

 

I was driven to choreograph works about my love for the land. Through this, I became fascinated by the Indigenous Australian culture and the mythical stories that relate to this country. In the 60’s and 70’s I became thirsty for more knowledge of ancient cultures and began to research in depth – both in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. This was a difficult thing to do in the 1960’s, as it was only in 1967 that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people were granted the right to vote, and living in PNG brought its own challenges.

 

b. Dance

ADT was a unique dance company at that time in that the dancers received training that was concentrated in a variety of modern dance techniques, African dance and improvisation. I was searching for an Australian contemporary movement language, and as the company developed, a distinctive Australian aesthetic evolved. This grew out of our conscious awareness of the power of the Australian land and our Australian way of life to make an imprint on our minds and bodies and therefore on the way we moved and expressed ourselves.

 

At that time I was teaching classes based on the techniques of Graham, Humphrey/Limon and Horton, on the unique style of Eleo Pomare and the improvisation methodologies of Alwin Nikolais. These were dedicated classes. I did not mix or fuse the techniques, one with the other.

 

By applying the techniques and philosophies of these dance pioneers to an Australian context, and in embodying my own responses to the land and life in Australia, I discovered new ways of moving and of expressing myself. At the same time I found myself pioneering modern dance and the modern art movement not only throughout Australia, but also internationally.

 

c. Theatre

I was fascinated by the changes happening in theatre in Europe and America during the 1960’s. The traditional forms were being challenged as actors and theatre directors searched for a more authentic way of performance than the traditional stylized forms offered. Inspired by these experimentations of ‘real’ and ‘living’ theatre many modern dancers and choreographers followed suit in their expressions. As a performer I excelled in dramatic dances and therefore fell easily into the theatrical medium of the modern dance pioneers and was drawn to their development of dance theatre.

I was also influenced by social/political issues and choreographed works on themes such as the Vietnam War,(Sundown, 1967) the Irish civil War and injustice for disadvantaged people (Release of an Oath, 1972), intergenerational problems (Generation Gap, 1968) and women’s rights (Sun and Moon, 1968).

 

I wanted to choreograph works that expressed our humanity, so I was constantly searching for the universal threads that linked us together as humans.

 

3. Company model

I searched for a different kind of company model. Like many others, I was disillusioned by the hierarchical control and intrigues within the classical ballet companies of the time. I had experienced Eleo Pomare’s European Modern Dance Company as both a manager and a performer from 1960 – 1963. I based Australian Dance Theatre on this model of collaboration and of expressing our connectedness, and I worked in a flexible intuitive way.

 

Australian Dance Theatre was a group of people searching, discovering, creating and sharing. Like Grotowski’s theatre where his group was “a complete way of life for all its members” 2, so too in the early years was Australian Dance Theatre. We were experimenting and pushing the boundaries in our art form and in ourselves.

 

“Modern” Dance was our medium, and the interaction between the people in the company was an important part of the overall development of the company. I believed that the quality of the performance was a reflection of the harmonious dynamic, shared energy and purpose within the company. I talked often about ‘the spirit‘ of the company, and worked towards evolving this sense of unity within the group, at the same time as celebrating the diversity of each unique individual artist.

 

Eleo Pomare taught me the craft of choreography during the three years that I worked with him in Europe. Of equal importance, he encouraged me to be an independent artist and discover my own choreographic style through living and working in Australia, the country of my birth.

 

4. Dance education

Dance education was a high priority in the company’s agenda and Australian Dance Theatre’s modern dance based Dance-in-Education programs were the first in South Australia. ADT was also the first dance company to carry such programs to many other places both interstate and internationally. These programs of course broadened our audience base, but we were also advocating for dance, particularly modern dance, to be taught in schools. At the same time we intended to help raise the profile of dance generally in Australia.

 

In the 1960’s I had often discussed with Harry Medlin, the then vice-Chancellor of Adelaide University, the possibility of setting up a dance course in the University. Although supportive of my work with ADT, he was horrified at the thought of having to present such an idea to his University Council members.

 

Another knocking on the university doors came when one of ADT dancers, Roger Pahl, wanted to major in dance at the drama course he was doing at the South Australian Teachers Training College, which was attached to the university. It was quite an achievement when finally he was given permission to do so, and I was invited to be his examiner. However it took a further 20 years before the first dance course was established at the Adelaide University!

 

I am proud that many of the dancers of the early ADT, including Gillian Millard, Cheryl Stock, Bert Terborgh, Jennifer Barry, Wendy Wallace, Andrew McNicol, Carolyn Bishop to name a few, became teachers, dance lecturers, some Heads of Dance Departments, in schools and universities either here in Australia, America or New Zealand. All had and continue to have a huge influence on new generations of dancers and dance makers.

 

5.

Although the original Australian Dance Theatre was literally dismembered, (by the notices of termination the dancers received in Sydney in 1975), the philosophies of modern dance and the modern art movement as practiced in the company and the search for a more authentic Australian expression carried on through each and every dancer who had been a part of those founding ten years. The influence that the modern/contemporary dancers had on the classical world was subtle, strong and powerful.  It helped to transition classical ballet into the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

In the second part of the 1970’s the divide between the moderns and the classical dancers lessened. Fusions began to take place and more experiments across movement practices and physical theatre disciplines increased.

 

The new generation of Artistic Directors of the state dance companies were mainly graduates from the Australian Ballet School or ex-dancers of the Australian Ballet Company. Although they talked about their work as “contemporary dance” few of them taught the modern dance techniques and philosophies.

 

The insistence on classical ballet training being imperative for a career in dance, at the expense of modern dance training became the norm. This slow erosion of training in the modern dance techniques was a huge disappointment.

It could be argued that it inhibited the development of an Australian dance vocabulary and movement language, which was foremost in the aims of ADT during the first ten years. Naturally I sometimes wonder what Australian dance forms would have emerged over the following years had the modern dance techniques and philosophies been carried through more profoundly. All .was not lost however, because they were taught in the tertiary institutions that were set up around the country.

 

My commitment to modern dance training that embodies an awakening of a greater consciousness in the dancer, the company and the audience, and makes visible our shared humanity, continues to this day, both internationally and in Australia.  With the dancers of my present company, Mirramu Dance Company, I continue to explore what a truly Australian dance theatre means.

 

From 1965 and particularly during the years 1970 -1975, ADT built a solid foundation, and gained an enormous international reputation. I also believe that our pioneering work prepared the way for dance to be accepted in schools and for tertiary dance courses to be set up in universities.

I am proud of the contribution given by the dancers, staff and crew of Australian Dance Theatre during the years 1970 – 1975.  Their passion, determination and commitment helped build the company into one of national standing.

 

I am proud too that Australian Dance Theatre exists today. I also respect that each Artistic Director over the years has contributed enormously to the history of dance in this country. I am delighted with the diversity of companies that have emerged, each with its own signature, and I applaud the role Australian dance plays on the international stage.

 

 

This article has been adapted from an oral presentation given in June 2009 as part of the Ausdance 2009 Dance History Symposium ' Changing Landscapes'.

 

 

 

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1   Anne Latrielle, The Age, June 1970
2   Peter Brook, a Theatrical Casebook, compiled by David Williams