Australian Dance Theatre (ADT) is Australia's oldest professional contemporary dance company. Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM founded the company in mid-1965 with the aim to 'open the horizons for provocative contemporary and cutting edge dance'. The opening performance took place in the then new Shedley Theatre in Adelaide's northern suburb of Elizabeth on Thursday 30 August 1965.
Surviving initially on box office takings, sponsorship from company members and income from the Elizabeth Dalman School of Modern Dance, the company built a substantial repertoire and Australian audience base which attracted funding from state and federal government bodies. Elizabeth's work presented a view of modern Australia with strong reference to the country's rich indigenous cultures. It was the first time local audiences had seen such work. The company won international acclaim following tours in North America, Europe, Asia, India, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.
After an 18 month hiatus Jonathan Taylor took over as Artistic Director in 1977. At the same time Ballet Victoria ceased operations after 30 years so the South Australian and Victorian premieres announced that ADT would act as the contemporary dance company for both states. It was the first time there had been such a cross-border alliance in Australia. The agreement stayed in place until 1984.
As a former dancer with England's renowned Ballet Rambert, Taylor brought with him a distinctive style. His first season for the company, presented during Come Out 77, was a grand presentation of three different programs covering ten works. Alan Brissenden from Dance Australia notes: 'It was ambitious, polished, exceedingly well danced by a brand new company, very different from anything seen in Adelaide before…'
During the nine years that Taylor was in charge of ADT he created another highly regarded body of work including Wildstars and Transfigured Night. In 1980 ADT was the first Australian company invited to perform at the Edinburgh Festival.
Seeking a new direction in 1985, ADT appointed former Adelaide Festival Director Anthony Steel and ADT Rehearsal Director Lenny Westerdijk as artistic caretakers. They presented Melissa Fenley's Descent into the Maelstrom for the 1986 Adelaide Festival as well as other works through to the end of the year.
Leigh Warren was appointed as Artistic Director of ADT in 1987. Warren, having studied at the Australian Ballet School, was the first Australian performer to receive a Churchill Scholarship. He had also danced with Ballet Rambert, Nederlands Dance Theater and Rudolf Nureyev before becoming a freelance choreographer.
Warren sought to 'develop a truly Australian form of dance that expresses our culture' 2 and invited other Australians to create work for ADT, including Kate Champion and Graeme Murphy. This pushed the style of the company once again to the leading edge of dance in Australia. He also successfully collaborated with William Forsythe which resulted in Forsythe mounting a work on the company before Warren left in 1992.
With her background training with Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wupperthal Meryl Tankard brought a unique new style to ADT when she was appointed as Artistic Director in 1993.
Through works such as Furioso and Aurora she introduced a range of additional performance elements to her works such as acrobatics, mime, image projection, etc. It was a style that won over audiences from Adelaide to Germany where she had particular touring success.
Following Meryl's departure from ADT in early 1999 Bill Pengelly stepped in as an interim Artistic Director until the appointment of Garry Stewart. During his time at the helm Pengelly produced two programs of new choreography, including Split which showcased a short work by Garry Stewart titled Currently Under Investigation.
Garry Stewart's first piece as Artistic Director was Housedance, performed on the western sails of the Sydney Opera House for the Millennium Broadcast in 2000. His internationally praised repertoire includes Birdbrain (the most performed contemporary dance work in the history of Australian dance), The Age Of Unbeauty, Nothing, HELD, Devolution and G. The company has garnered 21 industry awards since 2002 and is the only Australian company to be invited to perform at Theatre de la Ville in Paris (considered the world's most prestigious contemporary dance venue).
Creating a distinctive new dance vocabulary, Garry Stewart has brought audiences new experiences through his collaborations with New York dance photographer Lois Greenfield (HELD) and Canadian robotics artist Louis-Philippe Demers (Devolution). His latest work, G, was co-produced with Theatre de la Ville (Paris) and co-commissioned by The Joyce Theater's Stephen and Cathy Weinroth Fund for New Work (New York), Southbank Centre (London) and Merrigong Theatre Co. at Illawarra Performing Arts Centre (Wollongong). His passionate interest in film, text and multimedia forms has thrilled tens of thousands of people across the globe and once again established ADT as Australia's pre-eminent contemporary dance company with an uncompromising commitment to artistic excellence.