Michelle Anne Potter AM (born 1944) is an Australian dance writer, critic, archivist, and curator of historical materials. Her research and writing have focused on but have not been restricted to Australian dance history. She was honoured for her achievements with the award of Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2023 Australia Day Honours list.
Born in Sydney in 1944, [1] Michelle Anne Potter [2] became interested in dance in her youth, after seeing a performance by the Borovansky Ballet. She began her dance training with Joan and Monica Halliday in her hometown, then went on for further study with jazz dancer and teacher Ronne Arnold and Valrene Tweedie, a pioneer in Australia of the Cecchetti method of ballet training. She also studied acting and theatre techniques at the Mina Shelley School of the Theatre in Sydney, a well-known school for professional performers. Having become an accomplished dancer by the time she was 15, she determined to get an early start in her theatrical career. [3]
She earning a bachelor's degree with honours in social anthropology, and a diploma in education from the University of Sydney in the early 1970s. [4]
In the 1980s she earned a second undergraduate degree with honours in art history, and later a doctorate in art history and dance history at the Australian National University (ANU). [1]
In 1959 she performed in a Christmas pantomime directed by Maurice Sullivan and Mina Shelley, and continued to work in their shows for some years. In the mid-1960s she worked with Ballet Australia in both major productions and in choreographic workshops. [1] [5]
In the 1970s and 1980s, after earning her degree and teaching diploma from Sydney University, Potter moved to Canberra and taught at the National Capital Ballet School. [1] During these years, she tried her hand at choreography, creating Court Serenade (1975), to music by Delibes, for the ballet school dancers; Orpheus and Eurydice (1977), to music by Gluck, for Canberra Opera; and Morning Prayer (1978) for St. James Church in Curtin, A.C.T. She also appeared in several productions by the National Capital Dancers, including The Nutcracker and Giselle. [4]
In the 1980s Potter received an art history undergraduate degree and PhD atANU. [1]
From 1988 to 1990 she was Esso Fellow in the Performing Arts at the National Library of Australia, and in 1989 was Janet Wilkie Memorial Scholar at ANU, which was a travel scholarship to New York City, where she undertook research. [1]
The focus of her research over the years has ranged from the history of the Wassily de Basil's Ballets Russes in Australia, with particular emphasis on the designers of sets and costumes, [6] to contemporary masters such as Merce Cunningham, whose work with John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns was the subject of her doctoral dissertation. [7] She has also done intensive study on Robert Helpmann [8] and on Pina Bausch. [9]
In 1996, Potter curated the National Library of Australia's touring exhibition Dance People Dance. From 1997 until 2001, she managed the "Keep Dancing!" project at the National Film and Sound Archive. As part of that project, she co-scripted, researched, and produced two video documentaries and a film: [1]
Potter has been writing about dance since 1990. Her articles and reviews have been published in a variety of journals, magazines, programs, and newspapers in Australia, the UK, the US and Germany, and her work has also been published as chapters in many anthologies and catalogs. [1]
In 2002, Potter was appointed inaugural curator of dance at the National Library of Australia. In this post she recorded over one hundred oral history interviews with eminent Australians working in the arts. She was also one of the original team of investigators for the research project Ballets Russes in Australia: Our Cultural Revolution, a four-year collaborative partnership of the Australian Ballet, the University of Adelaide, and the National Library of Australia, which began in 2005. [10]
In 2006, Potter left the NLA to move to the United States and take up an appointment as curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, a position she held until 2008. During this appointment, she co-curated Invention: Merce Cunningham and Collaborators, a major retrospective exhibition for the New York Public Library in June 2007. [11]
Since returning to Australia in 2008 Potter has worked as an independent dance writer and critic.[ citation needed ]
Potter was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2023 Australia Day Honours List. [2]
In addition she is the recipient of two Australian Dance awards: Outstanding Achievement in Dance on Film (2001) and Services to Dance (2003). [12] She shared the award for achievement in dance on film with Sally Jackson, with whom she had collaborated on the video documentary Boro's Ballet.[ citation needed ]
She has also won an International Dance Day Award (1996), a Canberra Critics' Circle Award (1997), and two Australian Cultural Studies Awards (1998 and 2000). [13]
Potter has published a number of books, including:
Potter is the founder of two notable media dedicated to dissemination of information about dance history and current performances. In 1994, she founded Brolga: An Australian Journal about Dance and continued to edit it until mid-2006. A few years later, in 2009, she established a personal website, Michelle Potter ... on dancing, as an additional outlet for her writing and reviews. [14]
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Hélène Kirsova was a Danish prima ballerina, choreographer and ballet teacher and is noted as the founder of the first professional ballet company in Australia. She trained in Paris with former Sergei Diaghilev ballet dancers and choreographers. She then performed in companies run by Léo Staats and Ida Rubinstein before in 1931 becoming a soloist with Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, dancing for several years in Europe and North America. In 1936, as a principal dancer, she joined René Blum's Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in which she scored a singular success in London. Later that year she joined Colonel Wassily de Basil's Monte Carlo Russian Ballet as prima ballerina on an extensive tour of Australia and New Zealand where she was fêted by critics and audiences. She remained in Australia, started a ballet school in Sydney, and in 1941 formed the Kirsova Ballet. Despite wartime restrictions she directed the company for several years before retiring in 1948. She has been described as the "Godmother" of Australian ballet.
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Xenia Nikolaeva Smirnova Krüger Borovansky was a Russian-born dancer and choreographer, based in Australia after 1939. She was principal teacher at the Melbourne Academy of Russian Ballet, and active in running the Borovansky Ballet.
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The Kirsova Ballet was the first professional Australian ballet company. It was founded by prima ballerina Hélène Kirsova in 1941. Initially the leading performers were dancers who had stayed in Australia following the 1938/1939 tour of the Covent Garden Russian Ballet, but they were supported by talented young Australian dancers promoted from Kirsova's ballet school in Sydney. These local performers soon led the troupe and appeared in several seasons in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. The company also supported Australian composers, musicians, artists and designers in producing new ballets choreographed by Kirsova. Struggling under wartime restrictions, unable to tour abroad, and later suffering creative differences with the country's main theatre owners, the company's prominence was brief. It closed in 1945 having been the pioneer of a genuine Australian ballet tradition. Its influence on Australian ballet was significant.
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