SPARE a thought for the dance teachers of Canberra – Ausdance ACT is doing exactly that.

Hard-working and talented, mixing the rigours of teaching with creative discipline in a system where colleagues often think what they do is mere frivolity, dance teachers understand that their chosen art form offers life skills like few other subjects.

Now help is at hand as Ausdance’s “Move Up”, a program of practical dance workshops, moves into gear with summer workshops, helping teachers to learn and understand dance movement while implementing the dance elements of the Australian curriculum.

Ausdance hopes each workshop will be a safe place for risky ideas and opposing views of practice and policy across schools and the professional dance teacher network. The focus this January will be on upper-primary, high school and college teachers, but there is also room for any teacher of dance working independently.

Ausdance has hired a star-studded line up of professional tutors.

Sarah Boulter will teach practical contemporary dance skills, technique and improvisation working within the new curriculum to high school, college and studio teachers. She became a household name through her choreography for “So You Think You Can Dance” in Australia and the UK.

Co-director of Ev & Bow dance training centre in Sydney, Boulter is also a performer, having worked in the hit musical “Notre Dame de Paris” in Europe and for The Queen’s 50th Jubilee Celebration in London. She worked alongside Meryl Tankard on “Kaidan: A Ghost Story” at the Opera House.

Individually, Whittaker fuses contemporary and hip-hop, fined-tuned for the hit TV show “So You Think You Can Dance”, on which he had been assisted by Boulter. His TV credits also include the ABC3 TV series “Dance Academy” and in 2014 and 2015 he attended Urban Dance Camp in Germany.

He’ll teach popular commercial styles to high school, college and studio teachers alongside Sydney jazz ballet expert Daniel Dolling’s classes on that perennially popular art form with young people, musical theatre.

Ausdance ACT’s “Move Up”, January 20-21, Gorman Arts Centre. Registrations via ausdanceact.org.au