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Dr Amanda Card

BA (Honours) University of Sydney 1994
PhD University of Sydney 1999

Chair of Department
Room S109, Woolley Building, A20 Manning Rd

+61 2 9351 8253

Amanda spent her professional career as a dancer in the 1980s working with Kinetic Energy (Sydney), on the commercial dance circuit in Sydney, Japan and South East Asia, and as a member of Human Veins Dance Theatre (Canberra). In 1990 she traded dance for academic study receiving a BA Honours in 1994, with majors in History and Women's Studies. Her PhD, awarded in 1999, concentrated on issues of national representation, aesthetic and political influence, and sexual politics in Australian dance. Between 2000 and 2007 Amanda was Executive Producer of Onextra, a producing unit for independent dance in Sydney, with responsibility for the artistic and financial direction of the company. In 2003 she joined the Department of Performance Studies (DPS) part time. Amanda was also the inaugural Chair of the Board of Directors of Critical Path (Sydney’s choreographic research and development centre) and a peer adviser with the Dance Fund of the Australia Council for the Arts. Since 2008 she has been a full time member of the academic staff of the DPS, currently lecturing in dance and movement studies, intercultural performance, embodiment and critical theory for performance studies.

Research areas

  • dance history
  • contemporary dance
  • social dance and music
  • hybrid performance practices
  • phenomenology and historiography

Current projects

  • Choreographing Continents: appropriation and national identity in Australian and American dance Book project - a history of the appropriation of Indigenous dance forms.
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Selected publications

"A world with(out) words,Tess de Quincey’s Nerve 9", in Bodies of Thought, 12 Australian Choreographers, Erin Brannigan, Keith Gallasch, Virginia Baxter (editors), Sydney (due 2013)

"Do try this at home: dance manuals, myopia and misrecognition", in A World of Popular Entertainments, an edited volume of critical essays, Gillian Arrighi (ed.) Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012

"Feeling for dancing in the archives of the dead", in Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia, Glen McGillivray (editor), Peter Lang, Bern, 2011

"Tethering the Flow: dialogues between dance, physical culture and antiquity in Interwar Australia", in Dancing naturally: nature, neo-classicism and modernity in early twentieth century dance, Rachel Fensham and Alexandra Carter (editors), Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2011

"Together in Isolation: new moves across time and place", in Shaping the Landscape: Celebrating Dance in Australia, Julie Dyson and Stephanie Burridge (eds), Routledge, 2011

"Xavier Le Roy & The Fondue Set - homage and critique in contemporary dance (or a reverie on the lasting legacy of Rainer’s NO manifesto.)", Brolga, 32, 2010.

“Temporal Surrender”, What do I think About when I think about Dancing, Sydney: Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre, 2009

"Art dance, burlesque and body culture: negotiating interwar modernities", in Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly (eds.), Impact of the modern: vernacular modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s, Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 2008.

Body for Hire: the State of Dance in Australia, Platform Paper No. 8, Currency House, 2006.


Recent Conference Papers

  • "Reenacting old dance" (panel - Reenacting the Sixties - with Meredith Morse), Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference, University of Queensland, AUS, July 2012
  • "Anatomy of a Dance Work" (with Justine Shih Pearson & Martin del Amo), Compass Points - ADSA Conference, QUT, Brisbane, AUS, July 2012
  • "Reviving the Greeks in Australian Dance", Moving Naturally: Making Dance 1900s-1930s, Surrey University, UK, October 2009
  • “Do try this at home: dance manuals as popular entertainment”, A World of Popular Entertainments Conference, Newcastle University, June 2009
  • "The Tempo of Criticism: the dance writings of Jean Garling", State Library of NSW, November 2008
  • "Dancing 'round a Tipi: the appropriations of Reginald and Gladys Laubin", Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference, University of Sydney, July 2008
  • “Coming Undone with the Dances of Martin del Amo”, ADSA Conference, Melbourne University, July 2007
  • “Exotic, Erotic and interesting to know: Australian ‘modern’ dancers 1914-1930”, Australian Modernities Conference, Queensland University, December 2006
  • “Close Encounters of an Inter-corporeal kind: a Walk in the Academic Forrest”, a performance paper presented with Julie-Anne Long, Dance re-booted Conference, Deakin University, July 2004
  • “Blame it on the Butoh”, at Performance Studies International Conference #10, Singapore, June 2004

Editorial Work

Guest Editor, June 2012 Brolga: an Australian Journal about Dance, 36, "Anatomy of a Dance Work"
Guest editor, with Justine Shih Pearson, About Performance: In/between/moves 11, forthcoming (2011)
Guest editor, Brolga: an Australian Journal about Dance, 33, December, 2010. Access Journal here
Guest editor, Brolga: an Australian Journal about Dance, 29, December, 2008.

Units of Study

  • PRFM 3604 Embodied Histories (Semester 1, 2013)
  • Critical Theory for Performance - Honours/MA Research (Semester 1, 2013)
  • PRFM 3605 Cross-Cultural and Hybrid Performance (Semester 2, 2013)
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