Not so long ago I was looking at the Ausdance National website when I discovered a section called ‘Spoken Memory. Oral History Interviews at the National of Australia’. The title ‘Spoken Memory’ is an excellent one and I have taken the liberty of using it for this post, with thanks to Ausdance.
There were several lists on the Ausdance site. They had been assembled under the names (including mine) of various interviewers, and the lists were made up of those interviews that are available online. Not all interviews make it to the online collection—it depends mostly on what the interviewees have agreed to when completing the Rights Agreement at the end of their interview.
The Ausdance lists, which included links to the online version of each interview, stopped (in relation to me) at 2012 and, again in my case, didn’t include all the interviews I had done with people associated with dance in some way. Photographer Max Dupain, for example, who was interviewed specifically for his thoughts on the Ballet Russes dancers he photographed in the 1930s and 1940s, was not included; and musician Eric Clapham, whose background included working as a pianist and adviser for various ballet companies, was not mentioned either; and there are more examples. But the Ausdance lists were a great way of bringing online dance interviews to the attention of people who may not use the National Library catalogue to any great extent.
With the above in mind, I have posted below a list of the interviews I have done with people associated with dance in some way, and which are available online. This list is about one third of the interviews I have recorded to date. My complete list of interviews, which includes people working in areas of the arts other than dance, is included as a link at the bottom of this post.
To hear the audio you need simply to accept the end user licence agreement, which appears when the link is opened. Happy listening!
Alison Plevey. December 2024. Matthew Lawrence. January 2024
James Batchelor. December 2023. Alice Topp. November 2023.
Barbara Engel Cuckson. October 2022. Ruth Osborne. February 2021.
Douglas Gautier. February 2020. Susan Street. January 2020.
Chrissa Keramidas. January 2020. Ariette Taylor. October 2018.
Jonathan Taylor. September 2018. Shaun Parker. August 2017.
Victoria Rowell. March 2017. Greg Horsman. April 2016.
Tanya Pearson, August 2015. David de Verelle-Hill. May 2015.
Lisa Pavane. January 2015 Edna Busse. August 2014.
Gailene Stock. April 2012. Hugh Colman. March 2012.
Jennifer Irwin. August 2011. Paul de Masson. July 2011.
Cecil Bates. June 2005. Valrene Tweedie.December 2004.
Eileen Kramer. February 2003. Bill Akers. February 2002.
Anita Ardell. April 2001. Paul Saliba. April 2000.
Reg Bartram. November 1999. Lucette Aldous. February 1999.
Alan Alder. February 1999. Paige Gordon. May 1998.
Patrick Harding-Irmer. May 1998. Shona Dunlop MacTavish. April
1998.
Marina Berezowsky. March 1998. Coralie Hinkley. March 1998 and
November 1997.
Martin Rubinstein. August 1995. Peggy Sager. November 1994.
Viola Tait. November 1994. Hanny Exiner. November 1994.
Charles Boyd. October 1994. Moyà Beaver. October 1994.
Irina Baronova. August 1994. Tamara Tchinarova August 1994
Robert Southey. March 1994. Walter Stringer. January 1994.
Margaret Scott. April 1993. Kristian Fredrikson. January 1993.
Eric Clapham. May 1992. Kelvin Coe. May 1992.
Noël Pelly. March 1992. Max Dupain. September 1990.
KIra Bousloff. August 1990. Kenneth Rowell. June 1989.
Geoffrey Ingram. December 1988. Valrene Tweedie. November 1988.
Michelle Potter, 11 July 2025
Oral history list as at June 2025:
The link above includes the interviews that are not available online, information about the special projects for which some oral histories were recorded, and oral histories I have recorded for institutions other than the National Library of Australia.
Featured image: Geoffrey Ingram being interview by Michelle Potter in the oral history recording studio of the National Library of Australia, 1988. Photo: © National Library of Australia
