Australia Dancing - Potter, Michelle (1944

Potter, Michelle (1944 - )

Chapple, Alan: (left to right) Hilton Ellis, Annabel Reid and Michelle Potter in 'Giselle', National Capital Dancers, 1994

Research Materials | Other Resources

Michelle Potter was born in Sydney and learnt to dance with Joan and Monica Halliday, Ronne Arnold and Valrene Tweedie. She also studied acting and theatre techniques at the Mina Shelley School of the Theatre. She began her professional career in 1959 performing in Aladdin, a Christmas pantomime directed by Maurice Sullivan and Mina Shelley, and continued to work in the Sullivan-Shelley shows for the next few years. In the mid 1960s she worked with Valrene Tweedie’s choreographic ensemble, Ballet Australia, performing in both full-scale productions and in choreographic workshop performances.

In the 1970s and 1980s, after completing a degree in social anthropology and a diploma in education from Sydney University, she taught for Janet Karin and Bryan Lawrence at the National Capital Ballet School in Canberra. During this period she also choreographed Court Serenade for National Capital Dancers (1975), Orpheus and Eurydice for Canberra Opera (1977), and Morning Prayer for St James Church, Curtin ACT (1978), and appeared in productions by the National Capital Dancers, including Nutcracker and Giselle. In the 1980s she also returned to academic study and completed a second undergraduate degree in art history and subsequently a doctorate in art history and dance history at the Australian National University. She was the National Library of Australia's Esso Fellow in the Performing Arts between 1988 and 1990 and Australian National University's Janet Wilkie Memorial Scholar for 1989, which gave her study time in New York.

In 1996 she curated the National Library of Australia's exhibition Dance people dance, which toured Australia under a Visions of Australia grant until 1999. Between 1997 and 2001 Potter was manager of the Keep Dancing! project at ScreenSound Australia, the National Screen and Sound Archive. As part of that project she co-scripted, researched and produced two videos, An avalanche of dancing: the Ballets Russes in Australia 1936–1940 (1999) and the award-winning Boro’s ballet: the making of an Australian ballet 1939–1961 (2001) and the DVD The Australian Ballet: opening act 1962–1972 (2002).

Potter has been writing about dance since 1990. Her articles and reviews have been published in a range of journals, magazines, programs and newspapers in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. They include Australian Art Review, Ballet News, The Canberra Times, Choreography and Dance, Dance Australia, Dance Chronicle, Dance Research, Dancing Times, Muse, National Library of Australia News and The Sydney Morning Herald. Her writing has also been published as chapters in books and she is the author of three books A Full House (1991), A Passion for Dance (1997) and A Collector's Book of Australian Dance (2002). In 1994 she founded Brolga: an Australian journal about dance and continued to edit that journal until mid 2006.

Potter was appointed inaugural curator of dance at the National Library of Australia in 2002 and in 2006 became the third curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. She was the recipient of the award for services to dance at the 2003 Australian Dance Awards.

Research Materials

Other resources

Find more about Potter, Michelle in:

Collection - OzLife
Internet - Google
Articles - New York Public Library Dance Collection
Pictures - Picture Australia