Meryl Tankard

Renowned and award-winning director/choreographer Meryl Tankard began her career as a dancer with the Australian Ballet. She later moved to Europe to join Pina Bausch’s Wuppertaler Tanztheater where she performed as soloist for 10 years.

Since Meryl’s return to Australia she has worked with Opera Australia, the Australian Ballet, and the Sydney Theatre Co. and she began choreographing and producing her own work including Echo Point, Travelling Light and Two Feet.

In 1989 she started her own company in Canberra, creating many innovative works and touring Internationally.

In 1993 she was appointed Artistic Director of Australian Dance Theatre and further demand for her work saw the company tour to over 15 countries. During this time she created a rich repertoire of full-length works including Furioso, Aurora, Songs with Mara, Seulle, Rasa, Inuk and Possessed and was the first Australian company to perform at the prestigious Brooklyn Academy of Music, USA.

Since 1999 Meryl has been working freelance and created Bolero for the Lyon Opera Ballet, Petrushka and Merryland for Netherlands Dance Theatre 1 and 3, and choreographed for Lloyd Webber and Disney musicals in London and on Broadway. In 2000 she conceived and directed  Deep Sea Dreaming for the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games with music by Elena Kats-Chernin.

In 2007, collaborating with Taikoz Kaidan, she created Kaidan, which was produced by the Sydney Opera House for the Sydney Festival.

Meryl Tankard was awarded a two-year Fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2004 to further develop her professional relationship with composer Elena Kats-Chernin and to develop two new works together:

• A musical theatre piece inspired by the life of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec which she hopes will be produced within the next year
• A film script based on the ballet story Giselle.

Meryl directed a one-hour DVD (filmed by Regis Lansac) on the Toulouse Lautrec workshop held in 2006 and continues to work on her second draft of the film script.