Potter, Michelle, 1944-

Dancer, dance writer and curator, oral history interviewer. Michelle Potter was born in Sydney and learnt to dance with Joan and Monica Halliday, Ronne Arnold and Valrene Tweedie. She began her professional career in 1959 and in the mid 1960s she worked with Tweedie's choreographic ensemble, Ballet Australia. In the 1970s and 1980s, she taught for Janet Karin and Bryan Lawrence at the National Capital Ballet School in Canberra, and choreographed and appeared in numerous productions. In the 1980s she completed a doctorate in art history and dance history at the Australian National University. Between 1988 and 1990 she was the National Library of Australia's Esso Fellow in the Performing Arts, and, in 1996 curated a national touring exhibition, Dance people dance for the Library. From 1997-2001 she managed the Keep Dancing! project at ScreenSound Australia. Her articles and reviews have appeared in many journals and newspapers. In 1994 she founded Brolga: an Australian journal about dance. She was appointed inaugural curator of dance at the National Library of Australia in 2002, and in 2006 became curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Potter received the award for services to dance at the 2003 Australian Dance Awards.