‘Dance is a dynamic and expressive performing art… Dance reflects and shapes contemporary local and glo-balized cultures, communicating ideas through the related practices of performing and choreographing. As a lifelong activity for individuals and groups, dance supports personal expression in changing social contexts, from early childhood to teenage and later years…’ Jeff Meiners quotes from the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), ‘The Art of Learning’, Draft of a paper on Arts Shape.
The volume is full of information and quotations such as the above. This volume of edited essays covering Australian dance historically is for the serious student of dance. If you are really interested in knowing what Australian dance is all about, you have to go for this book.
Editors Stephanie Burridge and Julie Dyson have strung together essays from practioners and scholars. It is a meeting point where choreographers, performers, associated artists and compa-nies of the region choose to imaginatively invent, blend, fuse, select and morph multiple influen-ces of the multi-layered population of Australia.