Former Greta resident & footballer, Tim Newth has been awarded an Order of Australia for his - for his significant service to the performing arts, particularly through the development of Indigenous dance.
Biography of Tim Newth
Designer, visual artist and co-artistic director of Tracks Dance Company Tim Newth spent his childhood on a farm in Hansonville, Victoria. After completing high school in Wangaratta, Newth studied for a Diploma of Fine Arts in photography and painting at the Bendigo College of Advanced Education. Graduating in 1982, Newth began working as a freelance designer and visual artist. His first project was Good Time Junk Machine (1984), a community project in Albury-Wodonga. In 1985 he was engaged as Wangaratta's Artist in Residence; in this position he developed a number of community art projects including Arm to Arm - the Great Shirt Link-up (1985) and Going Dancing (1986), a collaborative community project with dancer and choreographer Beth Shelton. Consequently, Newth was engaged as a visual artist and designer for Dance Works productions in Melbourne, Around Squares (1986), Snapshot (1987), Unfurl (1987) and Tide (1987). Newth also had the opportunity to take dance lessons with Dance Works founding director Nanette Hassall.
In 1987 Newth worked on When the Sun Says Goodnight, the first of seven projects with TasDance. He was engaged as Designer in Residence for the Darwin Theatre Company in 1988, working on Twelfth Night and Black Rainbow, then spent the next few years travelling between Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory. He also worked as director, designer, visual artist, performer and consultant for several groups including Dance Works, TasDance, Dance North, Corrugated Iron Youth Theatre, Dance South, North of the Border Dance Troupe and Storm in a Teacup. Independant projects and community events followed: Skysong (1988), The Passing of the Flame (1988), Dance on Darwin (1988) and The Meeting of the Waters (1989).
Newth first began working with the Lajamanu community in the Northern Territory in 1988, collaborating on a community theatre project with dancer Sarah Calver. This residency was the beginning of a defining relationship between Tracks Dance Company and the Warlpiri people of Lajamanu. After returning home to Hansonville in 1991 with an illness, Debra Batten asked Newth to work on Three Wishes for David McMicken's Melbourne-based Storm in a Teacup Dance Theatre. In 1992 following McMicken's appointment as a Community Dance Development Officer at Brown's Mart Community Arts in Darwin, Newth and McMicken worked together on several projects including the outdoor dance theatre event From Little Things Big Things Grow in Alice Springs, and the procession Tracks & Clusters in Darwin. Newth also did a number of other projects through Brown's Mart Community Arts, including Lajamanu Kurra Kurra Yani (1992), a dance theatre performance by a group from Lajamanu.
Tracks Dance Collective, today operating as Tracks Dance Company, emerged as a formal company in 1994 under the joint artistic directorship of Newth, McMicken and Calver. Following Calver's departure in 1998 Tracks has been co-directed by McMicken and Newth. Some of Newth's major contributions while at Tracks have included 4WD Sweat Dust and Romance (1997), The Land the Cross and the Lotus (1998), Outside the Camp (2000), a 2002 Asialink residency in Sri Lanka to work with the Sama Ballet, which resulted in Snakes Gods and Deities (2004), and Endurance (2009). More recent projects include Crocodile Man and the Pineapple Woman shown at 2011 the Darwin Festival, and Eight to Eighty - the Architecture of Age, in 2012.
From - http://trove.nla.gov.au/people/1491387?c=people
Last Modified on 26/01/2014 20:23