The major event on the dance calendar, the 2009
Australian Dance Awards, will take place at The Arts Centre, State
Theatre in Melbourne on Sunday 7 June, featuring performances by some
of Australia’s finest dance companies and performers including The
Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, Australian Dance Theatre
(ADT), BalletLab and Stompin’.
The Australian Dance Awards
is a celebration of the excellence and variety of the Australian
professional dance sector. It is the one-night-of-the-year when dance
creators, performers, educators, filmmakers and enthusiasts gather
together to acknowledge and honour their peers. It is also a
not-to-be-missed opportunity for dance lovers to sample some of the
best works of the last twelve months.
This will be the
second year the Awards take place in Melbourne. Last year’s Awards
attracted a near capacity crowd of over 1600 dance lovers, breaking
all previous attendance records and proving positively that the
Australian dance industry is in vibrant good health.
This year there will
be eleven Awards including for the first time, “Outstanding
Achievement in Youth or Community Dance’. The Awards identify
Australian dance professionals, both in Australia and overseas, who
have distinguished themselves in performance, choreography, design,
dance writing, teaching and dance on film. A record-breaking 550
nominations from dance lovers have been received this year and will
be assessed in upcoming months by a panel of dance professionals.
Look good on the dance
floor? To celebrate the awards, Chunky Move and Ausdance Victoria are
asking for participants for an exciting new dance performance
featuring five Chunky Move dancers and 100 community participants to
be unveiled at Federation Square on Saturday 6 June. The new work
will be rehearsed over a four week period and the choreography and
rehearsal process documented weekly in blogs and video interviews on
the website contemporarydance.com.au.
Had enough movement
and need a quick sit down? Accompanying the awards, Ausdance
Victoria will present a symposium looking at the development of
ballet and contemporary dance in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s,
crucial decades which saw the rise of tertiary dance education, and
small dance companies, huge leaps in the professionalisation of the
art form, and the formation of Ausdance (then AADE). The
Dance History Symposium will be held at the Arts Centre, Black Box at
10.00am on Sunday 7 June.
Short List Nominations
for the Australian Dance Awards will be announced on 4 May. The
Australian Dance Awards is a project of Ausdance.
www.australiandanceawards.net.au
Sunday 7 June, the Arts Centre, State
Theatre
Bookings: Ticketmaster outlets 13 61 00 or
www.ticketmaster.com.au- under 26 $10 balcony tix available!!!
On sale Wednesday
1 April
