Lifetime Achievement Award by the Australian Dance Awards
Honours
Lifetime Achievement Award
Ronne Arnold (1938 – 13 February 2020),[1] also credited as Ronnie Arnold, was an African American performer whose Australian-based career spanned some seven decades and encompassed various genres. He was a dancer, choreographer, tutor, singer and actor and dance company founder.[2]
Biography
Arnold was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1938. He was trained in jazz traditions by his family, and his first dance teacher, Nadia Chilkovsky Nahumck, taught him American classical, modern, primitive and Hindu dance styles[1] at the Philadelphia Dance Academy.[3] In 1959, he graduated with a Bachelor of Music majoring in dance from the University of the Arts.[4]
In 1960, Arnold joined the touring cast of West Side Story for Garnet Carroll in Australia, and before he returned to the United States, he was offered a role in musical The Most Happy Fella, after which he decided to remain in Australia permanently. He became a renowned teacher of jazz and modern dance, and choreographed dance sequences for Sydney's Chequers nightclub, as well performing as the Leading Player in the 1974 Australian production of Pippin and appearing with Carlotta in a production of Cinderella as the evil stepmother at the Sydney Opera House.[5][6] He was founder and artistic director of the Contemporary Dance Company of Australia from 1967 to 1972, and academic course director at the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association from 1986 to 2003. After completing a master's degree at the University of Sydney, he began teaching at the Wesley Institute.[3]
