Dance in Australia


Dance in Australia spans a wide range of traditions and styles. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance dates back thousands of years, and serves as an important form of storytelling and cultural ritual. Following European settlement, folk traditions from England, Ireland, and Scotland evolved into a distinctly Australian style known as bush dance. More recently, classical performance has risen in prominence through institutions such as the Australian Ballet.
Australia has also given rise to unique styles like the Melbourne Shuffle, a rave dance from the late 1980s, and New Vogue, a sequence-based form of ballroom dancing.

Indigenous Australian dance

Traditional Aboriginal Australian dance dates back thousands of years, and was closely associated with song and was understood and experienced as making present the reality of the Dreamtime. In some instances, they would imitate the actions of a particular animal as part of telling a story. For the people in their own country it defined roles, responsibilities and the place itself. These ritual performances gave them an understanding of themselves in the interplay of social, geographical and environmental forces. The performances were associated with specific places and dance grounds were often sacred places. The body decoration and specific gestures related to kin and other relationships, such as to Dreamtime beings. Some groups hold their dances secret or sacred. Gender is an important factor in some ceremonies with men and women having separate ceremonial traditions, such as the Crane Dance.
The term "corroboree" is sometimes used by non-Indigenous Australians to refer to any Aboriginal dance, although this term has its origins among the people of the Sydney region.
For Torres Strait Islander people, singing and dancing is their "literature" – "the most important aspect of Torres Strait lifestyle. The Torres Strait Islanders preserve and present their oral history through songs and dances;...the dances act as illustrative material and, of course, the dancer himself is the storyteller". There are many songs about the weather; others about the myths and legends; life in the sea and totemic gods; and about important events. "The dancing and its movements express the songs and acts as the illustrative material".

20th–21st centuries

In the latter part of the 20th century, the influence of Indigenous Australian dance traditions was seen with the development of concert dance, particularly in contemporary dance with the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association and the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts providing training to Indigenous Australians in dance, and the Bangarra Dance Theatre. With a new sense of pride emerging in a number of Aboriginal organisations in Redfern, Sydney, the Aboriginal Dance Theatre Redfern was established in 1979.
The National Aboriginal Dance Council Australia was established in 1995. With support from Ausdance, NADCA and ADRT founder Christine Donnelly convened three three major Indigenous dance conferences. The first conference was held in Sydney in 1995. The second was held in Adelaide in 1997; it included discussion of cultural and intellectual property rights and copyright issues for Australian Indigenous dancers. The third conference took place in Sydney in 1999, and was funded by the Australia Council.

Bush dance

has developed in Australia as a form of folk dance, drawing on traditions from English, Irish, Scottish and other European dance. Favourite dances in the community include dances of European descent such as the Irish Céilidh "Pride of Erin" and the quadrille "The Lancers".
One of the most well-known Australian bush dances is the Nutbush, a line dance typically performed to the American song Nutbush City Limits by Ike & Tina Turner. The Nutbush was developed around 1975 as part of an effort to modernize physical education and creative arts curricula for state primary and secondary schools. It was subsequently popularised and has seen sustained success to this day, including gaining viral popularity internationally through TikTok.
In 1980 the Bushwackers Band published The Bushwackers Band Dance Book and a companion LP containing a number of Australian bush dances. These were largely existing folk dances that had republished with more Australian names. For example, Waves of Tory became Waves of Bondi, the Ninepin quadrille became the Drongo and the Virginia Reel became Strip the Willow.

Ballet

Ballet companies

was founded in 1962. It is the foremost classical ballet company in Australia, and is recognised as one of the world's major international ballet companies. It is based in Melbourne and performs works from the classical repertoire as well as contemporary works by major Australian and international choreographers. As of 2010, the Australian Ballet presented approximately 200 performances in cities and regional areas around Australia each year as well as on international tours. Regular venues include the Arts Centre Melbourne, Sydney Opera House, Sydney Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre and Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
Other prominent Australian classical ballet companies include the Queensland Ballet and West Australian Ballet.

Ballet Dancers

Renowned Australian ballet dancers include English-born Dame Peggy van Praagh and Robert Helpmann, both of whom served as artistic directors for the Australian Ballet.
Li Cunxin, acclaimed ballerino and author of the best-selling autobiography Mao's Last Dancer, moved to Melbourne in 1995 where he became a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet. He subsequently worked as the artistic director of the Queensland Ballet from 2012 to 2023.

Other Australian dances

Melbourne shuffle

The Melbourne shuffle is a rave dance that developed in Melbourne in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The dance moves involve a fast heel-and-toe movement or T-step, combined with a variation of the running man coupled with a matching arm action. The dance is improvised and involves "repeatedly shuffling your feet inwards, then outwards, while thrusting your arms up and down, or side to side, in time with the beat".

New Vogue

The New Vogue is an Australian style of sequence Ballroom dancing. Each New Vogue dance has a fixed set of steps can be learnt in advance. Compared to traditional Ballroom dancing which is heavily reliant on the skill of the leader, New Vogue dances are more accessible to beginners as both partners can learn the steps and dance together. New Vogue Dancing is one of the three Dancesport styles in Australia, in addition to traditional Ballroom and Latin American.

Dance in popular culture

's popular 1992 film Strictly Ballroom, starring Paul Mercurio, contributed to an increased interest in dance competition in Australia, and popular dance shows such as So You Think You Can Dance have featured on television in recent years.
A bush doof is a type of outdoor dance party that originated in Australia in the 1990s, similar to a rave. Bush doofs are usually held in a remote country area or outside a large city in surrounding bush or rainforest, and generally feature electronic dance music. Events referred to as doofs are now held worldwide and have built from a small set of social groups to a subculture with millions of active members.

List of dance companies

Major dance companies

Those dance companies funded by the Major Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council and from state arts agencies are listed below.

Ballet companies

NSW