The Australian Dance Awards has just announced that the winner of the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award for 2016 is Perth dance identity, Terri Charlesworth. The award will be presented at a ceremony in Perth on 18 September when recipients of awards in other categories will also be announced.
The citation that was attached to the award covers the main aspects of Charlesworth’s long and much-admired career in dance, although her qualities as a teacher are beautifully summed up by former Australian Ballet principal, Lisa Bolte. Charlesworth was a teacher at the Australian Ballet School between 1982 and 1986 and Bolte was one of her pupils during that period. In my biography of Dame Margaret Scott, Bolte recalls:
I always felt that Terri came at dancing from both a very technical and holistic approach to life and dance. She also worked on visualisation with everything, from finding, strengthening and relaxing certain muscles, to visualising rings on your fingers to attain a certain classical port de bras or to lengthen the arms. I worked closely with her for my graduation performance as the Sugar Plum Fairy in Robert Ray’s Nutcracker in 1985. We worked on technique, including port de bras, épaulement, and very importantly on the musical phrasing. And Terri inspired me to attain the style by bringing books with pictures of lithographs I could study to attain the style. It was a complete inspiration.—Dame Maggie Scott. A life in dance (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2014), pp. 235–236.
With many congratulations to Terri Charlesworth!
Michelle Potter, 25 August 2016
Featured image: Terri Charlesworth. Photo: © Darren Clark
