Michelle Potter … on dancing
Michelle Potter. © Michelle Potter
Looking at Australian Michelle Potter’s bio, it seems perhaps easier to say what hasn’t she done — first on stage in 1959, dancer and choreographer in the 60s and 70s. It’s in the 80s when she moved more into academia with a series of jobs, notably being the first Curator of Dance at the National Library of Australia and going on to do the same in New York at the Public Library for the Performing Arts. I paraphrase greatly — go read her whole bio and be mightily impressed.
Michelle has been writing about dance since 1990, released numerous books, and while at the National Library did many oral history interviews of the great and the good in Australian dance. For London audiences, her interview with Ross Stretton, AD of the Royal Ballet from 2001 to 2002, after his abrupt resignation and return to Australia, makes for particularly interesting listening (if sadly it costs money to get access). For me, she wrote many reviews and other pieces on first Ballet.co.uk, and then DanceTabs.
The great thing about Michelle is that all this historical knowledge really informs her reviewing/wider words, and coupled with her straight talking, you get an unvarnished and realistic take on what’s happening. She doesn’t talk in code — if she likes what she sees, then you know it, and ditto if she doesn’t.
Her website, Michelle Potter … on dancing, has been going for over 15 years now, and while she naturally covers dance doing in Oz, she also travels and consumes interesting dance streams from around the world — have a look at the unsentimental review of the Royal Ballet in Ashton’s Ondine. And there is much on dance and ballet history too — it’s a terrific cornucopia of dance coverage.
For the long term, here is a link to michellepotter.org, as indexed by the Internet Archive WayBack Machine.