The final 18 dance graduates from the University of Western Sydney (UWS) have been dancing their outrage in graduation performances and theatres in the west of Sydney. The graduates are the last of the Bachelor of Performance Theory & Practice course, which will be "retired" after 20 years of success. "Retired" is the university's word for no new student intake for 2007. The course is one of four to go for reasons of space allocation and low attendance according to inside sources.
Titled An Absurd Little Bird, the performance not only inspired but educated audiences about the corporatisation of education and the decline of arts through the dancing of the tango of Argentina. The performances are also a collective action by students and teachers against the course closure.
"We lament the fact dance is now no longer here and we lament the fact that the arts in Australia are so undervalued," said Elizabeth Cameron-Dalmon, head teacher of dance at UWS. Cameron-Dalmon told Green Left Weekly the performance course was "being taught out" when she took up the position three years ago. However, she had been working to keep the course alive due to the art of dance being an "ecology of the community".
The news of closure motivated students to take collective action to express what they were feeling through dance. While students fundraised in a combined effort to get the performance going, a Latin American theme ultimately inspired the work. A painting by Jack Vittriano showing a couple dancing the tango as a storm is breaking was the starting point. "The couple dancing the Tango is a symbol for the dance course, the storm (the university) is the force pushing it out", said Cameron-Dalmon.
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shiverstess@gma... replied on Permalink
Dear Green left
I am the author of this article. At the time I was completing a communications degree at UWS and an absurd little bird told me about these forgotten dance students fight for their dance courses at WSU its known as today.
My name is comrade Shelly Frances Kershaw (formerly Shelly Ann Dahl). I am a forgotten Australian liberation intersex asexual born out of adultery and poverty with dystonic tremor. I am the founder of CLACCA and I am the founder of FAJAC Sydney and I am a CAAH sydney activist. Quite clearly you need a new editor who values history and research and accurate public truth telling writing and the original authors of green left articles because I find it absolutely absurd a stupid ignorant idiot believes its their god given right to delete the names of the original authors of green left articles.
I attended this event because I loved live theatre about social justice issues and was invited by the graduating arts students of UWS to cover the story for green left and the UWSSA onion. Dani Barley was too busy so they sent me to cover the story because an absurd little bird through the grapevine had told me UWS had forgotten the gifted dance students from poverty of UWS and the graduation present UWS was giving these dance students was to cut their courses.
These students went to the university of western sydney with dreams of a future in dancing because they couldn't afford to go to NIDA. But these students were told they would be the last dance students to graduate from UWS. What kind of future would there be for dancers from poor and oppressed backgrounds who can't afford to go to NIDA and go to poor universities to get a university education?
Universities were not intended to be places where only the wealthy are permitted to complete a degree for a future. Today universities have trimesters in specialised universities like Charles Sturt University United Theological College and booth college. The third trimester you do over Christmas and new year where face to face class time is reduced to a week and you have to spend your Christmas and new year completing university assignments. Students and teachers are not machines. Rushing students to complete our degrees with no time for work, protest organising or families and friends or to do research or for sleeping or eating or practical experience does not make good leaders and does not make any economic sense.
Define absurdity the corporate media of a capitalist machine who will never learn that universities are not machines. They are made of not perfect human beings completing university education to fight for a future yesterday, today and tomorrow.
God bless and love in struggle forgotten green left journalist Comrade shelly Frances Kershaw+.