Dance Artist and Educator
30-5-1943 – 6-9-2009
Shirley McKechnie and Robin Grove
The name of Hilary Crampton will be familiar to many readers. She was senior dance-writer for The Age from 1997 until recently, and brought to her work a wealth of experience and understanding. A loved and respected figure in the dance world, she died of cancer in Melbourne, on 6 September, aged 66. A recent student characterizes her as “a wonderful mentor and feisty dame who motivated students to stay true to their art-forms and advocate like hell to shift this country of ours from simply being sports-mad to being a bit arts-mad as well.”
Hilary Crampton was born in Queanbeyan, and educated in Sydney and Brisbane, training originally as a classical dancer. Her parents, Richard and Catherine, were not convinced by this choice of career (ballet-classes were meant to improve her tennis footwork), but she persisted, and to ballet added experience in a wide range of folkloric styles and jazz as professional demands called for it. Independent and determined, she opened her own dance-school in the local parish hall, and, at twenty-one, began intensive study at the Scully-Borovansky School in Sydney.
Her early career included appearances with the Dance Company of New South Wales and Dance Concert. She also worked as a teacher and choreographer, and in 1969, constantly searching to increase her knowledge, she enrolled in the legendary summer schools at the University of New England directed by Dame Peggy van Praagh, founding artistic director of the Australian Ballet.
It proved to be a life-changing experience. Not only were the summer schools a “creative broth”, but at the school of 1976, Hilary met Peter Brinson, an influential British dance-writer and scholar, and, encouraged by him, undertook a B.A. (Hons) in Dance at London’s Laban Centre for Movement and Dance. She always said that these studies gave her the opportunity to explore the intellectual dimensions of dance and the complexities of what has variously been called modern, contemporary, or new dance. In 1979, a Marten Bequest for Ballet assisted her in completing her degree.
On returning to Australia in 1980, she took up the position of dance-lecturer at Rusden State College (now part of Deakin University). She was appointed Director of the dance program in 1984, a position she held until 1990. During that time, she spent two years’ study leave on an East-West Center scholarship, completing an M.A. in dance at the University of Hawaii. Her research concentrated on arts policy in the United States and included three months’ fieldwork as International Fellow in Arts Administration in the dance program at the National Endowment for the Arts. Subsequent studies at Deakin and Melbourne Universities led her towards a PhD concentrating on arts policy, this time within the Australian context. Her other interests included critical writing on dance – particularly from a cross-cultural perspective – problems relating to the documenting and archiving of dance, and sociological perspectives on the body. Illness prevented her completing the PhD, but other aspects of her life have left a lasting impression on the Australian dance scene.
Hilary was President of Ausdance Victoria from 1992 to 1995, having been at the founding conference of the organization in 1977. She was passionate about dance education, and contributed greatly to dance advocacy as one of the Ausdance representatives on the National Affiliation of Arts Educators. She was a founding member of the Green Mill Dance Project, and also published widely and knowledgeably in a range of journals. While continuing to argue the significance of the critic as advocate, Hilary was herself an astute political advocate whose familiarity with matters of arts policy greatly assisted Ausdance through its transition years in the 1990s. In 2006, she accepted an Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance, which cited her “extensive and rigorous engagement with local and international dance practice as a writer, teacher, administrator and tireless dance advocate over 40 years”.
Hilary became the coordinator of Arts Management studies at the University of Melbourne from May 1998 and, over the next eight years, taught at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Her colleague, Lee Christofis, has said that “her arts policy seminars reflected a profound understanding of the topic and its political implications across diverse cultures, notably in Australia and the Asia Pacific region.” Hilary worked tirelessly to professionalize the course, attracting Melbourne’s outstanding arts professionals as teachers and mentors, and taking much pride in the rapid progress of her many gifted students. Indeed, at her bedside in her final hours were two of these devoted friends from earlier years: dancer-teacher, Meredith Blackburn and dancer-choreographer, Anna Smith. Like many of Hilary’s former colleagues and students they will miss her robust intelligence, her integrity and her passionate commitment to the dance.
Of her work as dance reviewer, at the Herald-Sun, then at The Age, she declared, ‘My duty is to the art form, to see everything, not just what I like”. She firmly believed her duty was “not to pamper artists’, but to insist on “honesty based on knowledge. I am an educator.”
Hilary is survived by her sister, Geraldine Kenny, much-loved nieces, Jane, Megan and Carolyn, and grand-nieces, Emma and Rachael.
Shirley McKechnie, one of Hilary’s oldest friends, is a dance artist, scholar and educator. Robin Grove is an academic, dance scholar and critic.
http://www.ausdance.org.au/tributes/Hilary_Crampton.html
