Matriarch of dance and former Canberra CityNews Artist of the Year, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, must be heaving a loud sigh of relief as her creative arts centre, Mirramu, is about to turn a new page. 

Succession is a hard act to pull off, but now her former collaborator and choreographer Vivienne Rogis, who had been living for some years in Victoria, where she added Pilates instructor to her list of credentials, has returned to Canberra with her family and has joined Dalman as her as assistant director at Mirramu, on the shore of Lake George.

Rogis has released details of the starting project for 2025’s inaugural program, a two-day workshop called Prelude, designed to awaken creative practice. 

Suitable for all comers, Prelude will see Rogis joined by Dalman, visual artist Gabby Willmott and writer/teacher John Irving, the latter planning to help bring to light participants’ lost stories. 

Rogis, who says she believes in the power of movement as art, fun, medicine and community, has lately been focused on the way Pilates can help people reach their movement goals, including pain reduction, prehab and rehab and will no doubt introduce some of that into her workshops.

At a recent private gathering, leading Canberra dance practitioners, many interested in healing through dance, met at Mirramu to hear Dalman and Rogers outline their plans for the future in this anniversary year, which marks 60 years since Dalman founded the Australian Dance Theatre.

After leaving the ADT and Adelaide, she founded Mirramu Creative Arts Centre in 1989 and then Mirramu Dance Company in 2000, telling Aboriginal Elder Matilda House that the name had come to her in a dream. 

She traced the background to the formation of Mirramu, where in the early days dancers performed in the slippery mud, and she talked of having founded Weereewa, Festival of Lake George.

As for the question of wind farms in the region, she said: “I’m a greenie, but there are right places for them.”

Rogis, for her part, said coming back to Canberra with her family had been a process of revitalisation, and that she was very excited to be returning home. 

She and Dalman, she said, were often mistaken for mother and daughter and in a real sense Mirramu had been “a special family”. 

She had her dreams too, partly enabled because she was living in the Dandenongs close to nature. While in Victoria she created art events in a garden and got into many community projects, including the Paved Festival in the town of Emerald.

She and Dalman are still talking about the details, but some highlights will include a big event for the winter solstice, a performance involving current Australian Dance Theatre director and former Dalman protégé Daniel Riley in late October, and a mini art gallery – luckily Rogis’ husband is an expert on building “tiny” houses and will construct two of them on the property.

Maybe they’ll even get a coffee cart, too.

Prelude, Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, Lake Road Bungendore, March 9-10. Inquiries to viviennerogis@gmail.com