University of Sydney / Faculty of Arts / Department of Performance Studies / Staff / Academic Staff

Dr Amanda Card

BA (Honours) University of Sydney 1994
PhD University of Sydney 1999

Lecturer

Room S109, Woolley Building, A20 Manning Rd

+61 2 9351 8253

Amanda Card spent her professional career as a dancer in the 1980s working with Kinetic Energy (Sydney), on the commercial dance circuit in Sydney, Japan and South East Asia, and as a member of Human Veins Dance Theatre (Canberra). In 1990 she traded dance for academic study receiving a BA Honours in 1994, with majors in History and Women's Studies. Awarded in 1999 her PhD dissertation, History in Motion: dance and Australian culture 1920-1970, concentrated on issues of national representation, aesthetic and political influence, and sexual politics in Australian dance. In May 2000 Amanda joined Onextra, a producing unit for independent dance in Sydney, as Executive Producer with responsibility for the artistic and financial direction of the company. In 2003 she joined the Department of Performance Studies (part time, shifting to full time in 2007). Amanda currently lectures on dance and movement studies, intercultural performance, embodiment, social dance history and theatre history. Amanda was the inaugural Chair of the Board of Directors of Critical Path, Sydney’s choreographic research and development centre and is currently a peer adviser with the Dance Fund of the Australia Council for the Arts. In 2006/7 she was awarded Nancy Keesing Fellowship for research on the dance/critic and philanthropist Jean Garling at the State Library of New South Wales.

Research areas

  • western contemporary and classical dance history
  • social dance and music
  • dance/theatre and other hybrid performance practices
  • contemporary Indigenous dance
  • phenomenology and historiography

Current projects

  • Prominence in Obscurity: Dancing women and expressive dance in Australia, 1928-1950 A history of ‘modern’ or ‘expressive’ dancer/choreographers working in Australia in this period.
  • The Tempo of Criticism An exploration of the writings of Jean Garling as dance critic in the post-war period. Research project for the 2006/7 Nancy Keesing Fellowship with the State Library of NSW. This is the first stage in a larger project exploring dance criticism in Australia.
  • A history of inter-cultural performance. A study of the appropriation of Aboriginal and Native American dance and the development and reception of contemporary Indigenous dance practices in Australia and North American since the 1920s.
  • Embodied histories Examining the potential of embodied experiences and the ‘reading’ of embodied practices as a source for historical recovery.
  • Subjectivities and dancing bodies An exploration of gender within the construction and understanding of the moving body in contemporary and historical performance contexts.
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Selected publications

"Art dance, burlesque and body culture: negotiating interwar modernities", in Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly (eds.), Impact of the modern: vernacular modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s, Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 2008.

Body for Hire: the State of Dance in Australia, Platform Paper No. 8, Currency House, 2006.

“Disco Dance”; “Jazz Dance”; “National Identity and Dance”; “Research and Writing on Dance”; “Dancing on the Popular Stage since 1930”; “Choreography” (co-authored with Erin Brannigan) “Creative Appropriation of Aboriginal Dance” (co-authored with Carole Johnson), in Dr. John Whiteoak and Dr. Aline Scott-Maxwell, eds., Companion to Australian Music and Dance, Currency Press, Sydney, 2003.

“Choreographing a Continent: modern dance and constructions of national identity in Australia”, Dance in Australia: Influences and Present Trends–Choreography and Dance, Vol. 4, Part 2/3, (USA), 2001.

“Violence, vengeance and violation: The Display a ‘powerful dramatic work, intended to be very Australian’”, Australasian Music Research, No. 4, Centre of Music Research, Melbourne University, 2000.

“Prominence in Obscurity: Sonia Revid in Melbourne 1932-1945”, Brolga, 10, (ACT), June 1999.

“The Great Articulation of the Inarticulate”: Reading in the Jazz body in Australian and American Popular Culture”, Journal of Australian Studies, No. 58, (QUT), October, 1998.

“From Aboriginal Dance to Aboriginals Dancing: the Appropriation of the Primitive in Australian Dance." in Crusader Hillis, ed., Heritage and Heresy, Ausdance, ACT, 1997.

Recent Conference Papers

  • “Do try this at home: dance manuals as popular entertainment”, A World of Popular Entertainments Conference, Newcastle University, June 2009
  • "The Tempo of Criticism: the dance writings of Jean Garling", State Library of NSW, November 2008
  • "Dancing 'round a Tipi: the appropriations of Reginald and Gladys Laubin", Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference, University of Sydney, July 2008
  • “Coming Undone with the Dances of Martin del Amo”, ADSA Conference, Melbourne University, July 2007
  • “Exotic, Erotic and interesting to know: Australian ‘modern’ dancers 1914-1930”, Australian Modernities Conference, Queensland University, December 2006
  • “Close Encounters of an Inter-corporeal kind: a Walk in the Academic Forrest”, a performance paper presented with Julie-Anne Long, Dance re-booted Conference, Deakin University, July 2004
  • “Blame it on the Butoh”, at Performance Studies International Conference #10, Singapore, June 2004

Editorial Work

Guest editor, Brolga: an Australian Journal about Dance, 29, December, 2008.

Areas of Teaching (2009)

  • PRFM 3604 Embodied Histories (Semester 1, 2009)
    PRFM 3605 Cross-Cultural and Hybrid Performance (Semester 1, 2009)
  • Amanda is on Special Study leave in Semester 2, 2009
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