BOLD
The BOLD Festival
Elizabeth is Director of Mirramu Creative Arts Centre and Artistic Director of Mirramu Dance Company. She founded Australian Dance Theatre in 1965 and was its Artistic Director for 10 years.
Elizabeth was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 2015 Australian Dance Awards and named the 2015 Canberra Times Artist of the Year. Other Awards include an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship and a National Dance Award for a Lifetime Achievement in contemporary dance. She has been a recipient of an ACT Creative Arts Fellowship and several Canberra Critics Circle Awards.
As Artistic Director of Mirramu Dance Company since 2001, Elizabeth has created more than 20 works (including works for theatre venues and site-specific spaces). She was Head of the Dance Department at the University of Western Sydney from 2004 – 2007 and has been guest teacher at Tanz Atelier Wien’s ChoreoLabs, Austria and at L’Ecole des Sables, Senegal. She teaches, choreographs and performs regularly in Taiwan. In 2016 she joined Teaċ Daṁsa and toured globally with this company performing in Michael Keegan Dolan’s award-winning Loch na hEala/Swan Lake until 2020. Recently she performed with and choreographed for Australian Dance Party in their production of Symbiosis. She teaches and choreographs for the GOLDs at Canberra Dance Theatre.
Elizabeth draws inspiration for many of her choreographic works from the natural world often presenting them as site-specific productions. Dance is also her vehicle for making comment on various aspects of our humanity and for bringing awareness to social and environmental issues that concern her.
Our BOLD Patron and living legend
Dr Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM
PATRON
PATRON ADDRESS for BOLD 2024
I am honoured to be the Patron for BOLD and am very pleased to welcome you all to this important festival in March 2024.
The BOLD festivals not only celebrate dance in all its many forms, but they also acknowledge and pay respect to our dance elders, teachers and mentors. Making a career in the arts, particularly in dance, is not an easy pathway. It requires a flexible body and a flexible mind. It also calls for skill, determination, discipline, and a great deal of audacity. One needs to be ‘BOLD’.
Over the last couple of years as we have come out of the pandemic it has been wonderful to see the Arts flourishing again. Dance in particular has developed and blossomed with new and exciting ways of performance and presentation. More and more people are taking dance classes and embracing dance as an important part of their lives.
Dance has become a powerful vehicle in expressing concerns about the declining state of our planet and the slowness of governments in tackling grave climate issues. Through our dance presentations we cannot pass laws or have much political influence, but we can move people’s hearts and help to change how people see the world and live their lives. Let us use our art form to do this. In the same way let us also help to bring peace around the world in these horrifyingly brutal times of war and destruction happening in so many countries.
We have to keep expanding what it means to be BOLD and as artists, to be brave in being bold.
I applaud all the dancers, dance teachers, directors, producers and all those associated with Dance in its many forms. Dance teaches us to move together no matter what our race, religion, ability, age or sex. It is essential in our lives, and particularly vital for us all in this current climate.
Dance helps us to collaborate and work together. It is the language of the soul and so it communicates to all people.
Dance is the Great Connector.
May the BOLD Festival 2024 celebrate Dance for these gifts that it gives us.
This BOLD Festival in Canberra is directed and curated by award-winning choreographer/dancer and mentor, Liz Lea, and reflects not only her professional talents but also her passion and commitment to the art form of dance, community inclusion and cross-cultural connections in the Arts.
Between 8-10th March 2024, BOLD will host performances, presentations and forums focused on dance legacy. It will enable dance artists to come together either in person or online, to share their practices and present their performances. It will enable the followers of dance to experience both the joy and the power of dance to communicate, unite, entertain, provoke thought and transform.
We hope to see you at one or many of the beautiful experiences Liz Lea has designed for you in BOLD ….
Dr Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM