National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 56 | April 2002


Australia Dancing—A New Strategic Partnership

Ausdance logo Australia dancing logo Australia Council for the Arts logo
Peggy Sayer, Martin Rubinstein and artists of the Borovansky Ballet in Terra Australis  1946
Peggy Sayer, Martin Rubinstein and artists of the Borovansky Ballet in Terra Australis 1946
Backcloth and costumes by Eve Harris
Photographer Jean Stewart
In Geoffrey Ingram Archive of Australian Ballet, Pictorial Collection

A new and exciting project—Australia Dancing—is up and running at the National Library of Australia. Generously funded by the Australia Council, this strategic partnership between the Australian Dance Council (Ausdance) and the Library aims to develop and enhance the directory to the Australian Dance Collection www.nla.gov.au/ausdance.

The directory began as a secondary feature of Keep Dancing! a collecting partnership between the Library and ScreenSound Australia that ran from 1997 to 2001. As a result of major input from the Library’s IT team during the lifetime of Keep Dancing! the directory became much more than a secondary feature. It became the jewel in the crown of the project. Its potential to reach out to researchers, artists, students and the general public was recognised by the Australia Council and in 2001 the Council’s Dance Fund elected to support a new partnership by providing funding to employ a Curator of Dance at the Library.

Michelle Potter
Michelle Potter, Curator of Dance

Some exciting initiatives are planned that will move the directory forward and make it compatible with the Library’s Guide to the Collections format. There will, of course, continue to be a focus on building the Australian Dance Collection through the acquisition of new materials across a variety of media.

Since the project began in January 2002 acquisitions for the Australian Dance Collection have included a collection of programs, flyers and other ephemera from performances choreographed by Meryl Tankard; two oral history interviews, one with William Akers, AM, lighting designer and director of productions for the Borovansky Ballet and the Australian Ballet, and one with Robin Haig, artistic director of West Australian Ballet in the 1970s; original designs on paper by Eve Harris for the 1946 production of Terra Australis by the Borovansky Ballet; and manuscript items relating to the career of dancer Christina Gallea with Walter Gore’s short-lived but influential Australian Theatre Ballet. Other significant dance acquisitions are in progress.

The Library has always been at the forefront of initiatives to collect and make accessible Australian dance materials and has significant collections of dance related oral histories, photographs, posters, programs and personal papers. Australia Dancing will ensure that these initiatives continue.
—Michelle Potter

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au