Meryl Tankard AO

Meryl Tankard AO (b. 1955) is an internationally renowned dancer, choreographer, director and filmmaker. Born in Darwin, she attended dance schools in Melbourne, Penang and Sydney before being accepted into the Australian Ballet School in 1973. After joining the Australian Ballet in 1975, she then worked as a soloist with Pina Bausch's dance theatre in Wuppertal, Germany between 1978 and 1984. As a freelance choreographer, she established her distinctive choreography in works such as Two Feet (1988) and was commissioned for projects in France, the Netherlands and Germany. For three years from 1989 she was artistic director of Canberra's Meryl Tankard Company, followed by six years as artistic director of Adelaide's Australian Dance Theatre, later renamed the Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre. Tankard's defining work in this period was Furioso, featuring aerial choreography. With composer Elena Kats Chernin, she created the full-length ballet Wild Swans for the Australian Ballet in 2003. The Oracle (2009), a revisioning of the Rite of Spring for Australian dancer Paul White, won the Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Choreography in 2010 and toured internationally. Since graduating from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in 2010, Tankard has made several films including the award-winning documentary Michelle's Story (2015). She continues to create dance productions, including recreating Two Feet for the 2019 Adelaide Festival and choreographing Claudel for the Sydney Opera House in 2021.