Associate Professor Maggi Phillips is the coordinator of Research and Creative Practice at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, a position that enables daily access to the integration of artistic innovation and research. Her life path has crossed many disciplines and worldviews, from dancer to a world literature doctorate, circus ring to university boardroom.

Maggi received her ballet training in the Cecchetti method under Madame Lucie Saranova at the National Theatre Ballet School, Melbourne, later extending to other perspectives with Rex Reid, Kathy Gorham, Ted Miller, Maggie Scott and Robert Pomié. From 1965-74, Maggi toured with the Doriss Dancers (Doris Haug, choreographer of the Moulin Rouge, Paris), performing in theatres, casinos and circuses across Europe, the Middle East and South America. The next stage involved exploration of contemporary dance in Darwin as a medium for education, community participation and professional performance. This led to the establishment between 1984-87 of Feats Unlimited, a dance-in-education company that toured schools and communities throughout the NT and fostered local choreographic development. Changes and transitions, yet again, drew Maggi into academic life where she gained a doctorate in 1996 for her thesis, Storytellers, Shamans and Clowns: Postcolonial Engagement with the Supra-human in the Novels of R.K. Narayan, Nuruddin Farah, Bessie Head, Ben Okri and Salman Rushdie. Such exposure has shaped her view that dance education in its broadest sense is intrinsic to the human condition. Whether directed at aspiring or maturing professionals or grass-roots communities, the creative potentials of dance from infancy to old-age constitute her guiding principle.

In more recent times, hands-on approaches have given way to promoting the value of discovery through embodiment in national research contexts. The WAAPA appointment fuses her disparate influences, provoking understanding of knowledge’s variable manifestations and a desire to privilege diversity across those inordinate forms. Together with Associate Professor colleagues, Cheryl Stock and Kim Vincs, Maggi has completed the publication of Guidelines for best practice in Australian Doctoral and Masters Examination, encompassing the two primary modes of investigation, written and multi-modal theses, the culminating document of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council grant, Dancing between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Post Graduate Degrees in Dance. (November 2009)

Publications and Conference presentations

Phillips, M. (Nov 2009) “Artists, creativity and knowledge: a challenge for doctoral change.” Research in Dance Education, 10.3, 219-230.

Phillips, M, Stock, C & Vincs, K. (2009) Dancing between diversity and consistency: Refining assessment in postgraduate degrees in dance, Perth: WA Academy of Performing arts, ECU.

Phillips, M. (2008) “Choreographing “doctorateness’: discovering knowledge and legitimacy.” In Anis Md Nor & Joseph Gonzales eds (2008) TARI 07 'Independence & Identity' - Topics in Dance Studies, Malaysia, Akademi Seni Budaya dan Warisan Kebangsaan (ASWARA), Ministry of Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage.

(2008) “Creativity’s crossing forces: a danced interplay.” Paper delivered at CCi (ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation) International Conference – Creating Value: Between Commerce and Commons, which is being held from Wednesday 25 - 27 June 2008 at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre.

(2008) “Assessment of Embodied Doctorateness: Grappling with the Theory-Practice Divide.” Paper presented at the Centre for the Study of Research Training and Impact SORTI, University of Newcastle, June 2008.

(2008) “Place and placing value in postgraduate dance education.” Paper presented at the Australasian Drama and Theatre Studies Association’s Conference, A Sense of Place, at the University of Otago, 30th June to 3rd July, 2008.

Phillips, Stock and Vincs: (2008) “Dancing Doctorates Down-under? Defining and assessing ‘doctorateness’ when embodiment enters the thesis.” Paper presented at the WDA Global Summit, July 2008, QUT, Brisbane (currently being re-worked for refereed publication).

Phillips, M. (2006) “Communities of Multi-textured Identities: International Collaborations in Tertiary Dance.” Conference Proceedings Imagining the Future: Dance Education in the 21st Century, Hong Kong Dance Festival 14-17 June, 2006, Hong Kong Dance Alliance, Hong Kong, 116-124.

(2006) “Falling into value: musings on the gravity of performance as research.” Speculation and Innovation: Applying Practice Led Research in the Creative Industries, Refereed Conference Proceedings, Queensland University of Technology, 30 March---1 April, 2005. http://www.speculation2005.net/Spin_embedded.HTM

(2006) “Recycling Patterns of Text, Music and Dance in Baroqoda.” Brolga: An Australian Journal About Dance, No.25, December 2006, 31-38.

(2005). A narrative of structure: Sue Peacock’s metaphorical moves, Conference proceedings of the Asia Pacific International Dance Conference, Kuala Lumpur, 8-10 July.

(2005). Diversified Moves of a Specialised Ecology: Can This Art-form be Sustainable? Proceedings: Dance Rebooted: Initializing the Grid, Deakin University, July 1-4, 2004., Ausdance, Tertiary Dance Council, Deakin University, Melbourne. http://www.ausdance.org.au/outside/resources/publications/rebooted/rebooted.html

(2004). To Heal, to Astonish, to Know: What will Propel Australian Dance? Proceedings of the CORD/WDA/ICKL International Dance Conference, Taiwan, August 1-4.

2003) “The Embodied Thesis.” Newcastle Mini-conference 2003, Collected Papers, Australian Association of Research in Education, http://www.aare.edu.au/conf03nc/ph03022z.pdf

Parrott, C., and Phillips, M. (2003). The Dance to Know: Transition in an Elite Educational Sector, WACE 2003 Conference, Towards a Knowledge Society, Rotterdam, 26-29 August. http://www.wacerotterdam2003.nl/documents/final_papers_abstracts/177.doc

Other Publications

Phillips, M. (2004). “Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey,” (Book review), Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, vol. 9 no.2, December, pp. 125-7.

(1996). “The View from a Mosque of Words: Nuruddin Farah’s Close Sesame and The Holy Qur’an,” Kenneth Harrow (ed), Marabouts and Muses: Aspects of Islam in African Literature, Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, pp. 191-204.

(1999). “Madame Koto: Grotesque Creatrix or the Paradox of Psychic Health?” in Alice Mills (ed.), Seriously Weird: Papers on the Grotesque, Peter Lang, New York:, pp. 35-49.

(1997). “Ben Okri's River Narratives: The Famished Road and Songs of Enchantment,” Derek Wright (ed.), Contemporary African Fiction, Bayreuth, Bayreuth African Studies Breitinger, pp. 167-180.

( 1995). “Riddles of Wonder, Maps of Pain.” A review of Bessie Head's A Woman Alone and Ben Okri's The Famished Road and Songs of Enchantment in New African Writing and Criticism, Special Issue of CRNLE, vol. 2, pp. 116-22.

(1994). “Engaging Dreams: Alternative Perspectives on Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Writing,” Research in African Literatures, vol. 25 no. 4, Winter, pp. 89

Hassall, N., and Phillips, M. (2000). “A Cartographer of the In-Between: Dance Making with Nanette Hassall,” Brolga, (Australian Dance Research Journal), June.

Updated 20/05/2010