BOLD
The BOLD Festival
Our BOLD Patron
Dr Elizabeth Cameron Dalman AM, CdOAL
PATRON
In Pushing Boundaries Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, often referred to as the Rebel of the Dance in Australia, outlines her early dance training, her search for modern dance teachers and some of the challenges she faced as a modern dance pioneer in the 1960s and 1970s. She describes her experiences of working across Art forms and collaborating with artists of all disciplines in avant-garde multi-media productions during this tumultuous time of social and political change. She also refers to several of her later choreographies that were inspired by visual art works and will speak of her more recent Dance-in-Nature practice and performance.
ELIZABETH CAMERON DALMAN AM, CdOAL, PhD
Elizabeth is Director of Mirramu Creative Arts Centre and Artistic Director of Mirramu Dance Company. She founded Australian Dance Theatre in 1965 and was its Artistic Director for 10 years.
Elizabeth was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 2015 Australian Dance Awards and named the 2015 Canberra Times Artist of the Year. Other Awards include an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship and a National Dance Award for a Lifetime Achievement in contemporary dance. She has been a recipient of an ACT Creative Arts Fellowship and several Canberra Critics Circle Awards. In 2023 she was awarded the medal of Chevalière de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture, and in 2025 an AM for her continued contribution to contemporary dance.
Since 2000 and as Artistic Director of Mirramu Dance Company Elizabeth has created more than 20 works presenting them in theatre venues or site-specific spaces. From 2004 she was Head of the Dance Department at the University of Western Sydney for three years. She has been guest teacher at Tanz Atelier Wien’s ChoreoLabs in Austria, at L’Ecole des Sables in Senegal and from 2006 on many occasions has been a guest lecturer at the Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA). She choreographs and performs regularly in Taiwan and collaborates annually with Dancecology fromTaiwan.
In 2016 she joined Teaċ Daṁsa and toured globally with this company performing in Michael Keegan Dolan’s award-winning Loch na hEala/Swan Lake until 2020. From 2016 – 2018 she performed in Dust on the Shortbread with Anything is Valid Dance Theatre in Perth, WA, and in 2021 performed with and choreographed for Australian Dance Party in Symbiosis. Elizabeth has worked with Sue Healey on dance film projects such as En Route, Icons, Contours and Lake Song. She teaches and choreographs for the GOLDs at Canberra Dance Theatre.
Elizabeth draws inspiration for many of her choreographic works from the natural world often presenting them as site-specific productions. Dance is also her vehicle for making comment on various aspects of our humanity and for bringing awareness to social and environmental issues. She also writes about her dance practice. Her new book Nature Moves was launched in Canberra in 2025.