Re-activating Australian Dance Theatre’s archive for the future
Not all research takes place in a laboratory. Some of it appears on a stage.
Comedy, dance, music and theatre – and the cultural impact of the performing arts – are the subjects of current research work with multiple industry partners, as highlighted by these snapshots.
Re-activating Australian Dance Theatre’s archive for the future
In 1965 Elizabeth Cameron Dalman founded Australia’s oldest contemporary dance company, Australian Dance Theatre, in Adelaide. ADT, as it has come to be known, flourished throughout the politically progressive Dunstan decade, and many of the works made in that period engaged with the pressing social issues of the time, including war, gender politics and the position of First Nations peoples within the Australian imaginary.
Under successive Artistic Directors (Jonathan Taylor, Leigh Warren, Meryl Tankard and Garry Stewart) the company has become an internationally recognised dance powerhouse, and its alumni have danced and choreographed in companies all over the world.
In partnership with Wiradjuri choreographer Daniel Riley, ADT’s first Indigenous Artistic Director, this three-year ARC Linkage project involving the universities of Adelaide and Melbourne seeks to document the company’s history while also interrogating the function of the dance archive.
The project will address the broader question of how dance can be inherited, specifically through documenting a process we call ‘Re-Activation,’ in which the company will revisit early repertoire, some of which was made ‘about’ Aboriginal culture, and investigate how this work can be retrieved from memory and re-considered in the light of contemporary understanding of First Nations cultural sovereignty, in order to germinate a new work.
The resultant work, directed by Daniel Riley, will be programmed in the 2025 Adelaide Festival as part of the company’s 60th anniversary celebrations.
Other outcomes from the Linkage project include an exhibition of the company’s history which will also feature in the 2025 Festival program, a digital archive to be housed at Melbourne University’s Digital Dance and Theatre Platform, case studies of the impact of gender on Australian female choreographers, a documentary screen play, and the development of innovative methods of preserving costumes using 3D imaging.
Written by Maggie Tonkin
The project is led by Dr Maggie Tonkin (University of Adelaide), with fellow Chief Investigators Adjunct Associate Professor Cheryl Stock (Adelaide), and Professor Rachel Fensham (University of Melbourne).