Osmotherly
Dance Educator Award

The Osmotherly Dance Educator Award was created to recognise the outstanding contribution of dance educators whose work has made a significant impact on dance education in Queensland schools, earning them recognition at a state, national and/or international level.  Previous recipients of the award include Julie Chenery (2006), Sue Fox, Barb Snook (2007), Maggi Sietsma (2008), Julie Dyson, Jude Smith (2009), Kristin Bell (2010), Brian Lucas (2011), Helen Mullins (2012), Angela Pratt (2013), Shaaron Boughen (2014), Gail Hewton (2016), Jeff Meiners (2017), Kym Stevens (2018), Ralph Buck (2019), Shona Press (2020), Renee Place (2021), Leisa Cooper (2022), Lucy Flook (2023) and Jessica Kavanagh, Caitlin Sands (2024). 

 The successful nominee will be presented with their award at the Queensland Dance Education Conference 2025 (QDEC25) to be held in Magan-Djin/Brisbane on Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd May 2025.  In addition to the award, the recipient will receive complimentary admission to both days of the conference (or regional equivalent).  The recipient’s name, headshot and biography will be included in the Osmotherly Dance Educator Award page on the Ausdance Queensland website (under construction). 

“Robert was one of those rare people who had a professional dance background and was a qualified and committed dance educator of extraordinary insight and intellectual capacity. He became a leading voice in contemporary Australian dance education, able to think conceptually about the problems of teaching, learning, understanding and performing dance, about document ing the processes, and about transmitting less tangible qualities such as inspiration and passion for his art form. He had a deep understanding of other art forms, and was excited by the challenge of his students discovering the visual arts, drama, literature and technology, and their importance to dance.”

Julie Dyson on Robert Osmotherly
(Published online by Ausdance on 23 April 2013)