Professor Wendy Woodson
 Professor Wendy Woodson |
Fulbright Senior Scholar
Media Profile
“Following on from the tremendous changes in the world situation, I am interested in how different bodies – both human and otherwise – share, or co-exist, in space. I am also pursuing images and ideas about migration based on actual stories of travel across continent both forced and voluntary, and imaginary travel through different times and dimensions.”
Wendy Woodson, Professor of Theater and Dance at Amherst College and Artistic Director of Present Company Inc. is a specialist in choreography, performance art, video, directing, and creative writing. With her Fulbright Scholarship she will spend five months at the University of Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts, working on several new performance and video works in collaboration with local artists and students.
Given Australia’s rich diversity of different cultures and experiences with issues of reconciliation, mediation and migration it was the obvious base for Wendy from which to further explore such themes. After corresponding with an Australian pen pal as a child, “Australia became a mythical place” in her imagination and one that she “always wanted to know”. This later led to a strong interest in the work of Australian film makers and a fascination with the concept of the aboriginal walkabout. A visit to Melbourne as an adult forged Australia as a place she wanted to explore further both professionally and personally.
“I especially appreciated the wide cultural diversity and the dynamic mix of divergent points of view and influences that are reflective of contemporary Australian culture. I feel that this area of the world offers an important model to other countries at this time – it would be difficult to think of the concepts of reconciliation, migration or mediation without considering and learning from the Australian experience.”
Wendy has an impressive background of 75 pieces of work that include choreography, performance art, dance theatre and video and is highly regarded for her founding and management of a not for profit organisation that produces original works in these realms. She has also served on many committees for arts advocacy and has an extremely long list of awards to her name including a recent fellowship to the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre, Italy.