Shirley Andrews - Take Your Partners - Bush Dance instructions

Take Your Partners 208p, hard cover

Australia's first comprehensive study of Australian folk dancing. Compiled by Australia's leading dance folklorist Shirley Andrews. Includes instructions for 70 dances including couples dances to qaudrilles. Written by Shirley Andrews and first published in 1974. The first part of the book (to page 88) traces the history of traditional dance in Australia, from its origins through to the twentieth century, illustrated with many original plates and prints. The second part (pages 89-189) is a complete catalogue of the dances, with descriptions and sample music. The book includes a comprehensive glossary and index of the dances, plus a chapter for musicians.Published by Hyland House Publishing.

Take Your Partners - Bush Dance instructions
Shirley Aldythea Andrews - Scientist and activist: 6 Nov 1915 to 15 Sep 2001

This Obituary by Wendy Lowenstein was originally printed in The Melbourne Age.
On an October Sunday, 150 people gathered in Brunswick Town Hall to make music, dance and sing, and to celebrate the life of a remarkable woman, Shirley Aldythea Andrews.

Born of a single mother, a working journalist, during World War 1, she left her body to science and had asked her friends not to mourn, but to have a party. Some who came knew her as a scientist, others as a dancer and folklorist, a founding member of the Melbourne University Ski Club or a social activist. She also had a great talent for friendship.

In 1934 as Hitler got into his stride, this conservative young woman was impelled to join the Council Against War and Fascism. She enjoyed telling of political awakening. "Two of us were door-knocking in Kew, and at the very first door the woman ordered us off the property with 'You're a lot of communists!'. I was absolutely amazed ... I was really so very middle-class!" Later she did join the Communist Party and passionately supported world peace, industrial health and women's issues. She left the party in the mid-1950s, in protest at Stalin's violent move into Eastern Europe. An early feminist, Shirley graduated in science when women students were barely tolerated.

After working in the university's Veterinary Research Institute from 1939 to 1946, she was for five years with CSIRO. As a senior biochemist at Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital until her retirement in 1977, she worked with Dr John Cade to develop lithium as a new, cheap and effective treatment for bipolar disorder, and also researched the damaging effects of tranquillising bromureide drugs.

With a lifetime interest in dance, she performed with the visiting Colonel de Basil Ballet and studied with Borovansky. As a contributor to the Victorian Folk Music Club and the Folk Song and Dance Society, in 1994 she received the Order Of Australia for her contribution to Australian dance.

She wrote two seminal books on dance, Take Your Partners and Two Hundred Years of Dancing - the latter with Peter Ellis - and researched and organised dance programs until her death.

However, it was in her work as an activist for Aboriginal rights, 1951 to 1968, that she made her greatest contribution to Australian society, though her modesty led to her work being greatly under-recognised.

In 1951 she joined the Victorian Council for Aboriginal Rights. Unlike other groups, the council argued for political solutions, opposing handouts. In 195& she brought together members of nine state-based Aboriginal advancement leagues to form the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement, which later incorporated Torres Strait Islanders. She was a leader in organising a national petition for a referendum to empower the Commonwealth in Aboriginal affairs. More than 100,000 signed the petition, but it took another five years before the 1967 referendum was held. Section 167 of the Constitution omitting Aborigines from the census was repealed, and the government given power to pass special laws for indigenous Australians.

Shirley was fearless and forthright, and although a strong unionist, did not flinch from criticising unions who did not support the rights of Aboriginal workers, or from calling international attention to Australian laws that discriminated against indigenous people.

When amendments to the Social Services Act made some Aborigines eligible for benefits, the Commonwealth failed to inform them of these rights. Shirley took action, with Rodney Hall's editorial assistance, to tell them herself.

Shirley understood earlier than most that "our national wealth is founded on land we took from Aborigines".

More than 30 years later as she joined the Reconciliation march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Shirley Andrews would have recognised - though she claimed no credit for it - her contribution to a more tolerant, inclusive Australia. May her spirit inspire us.

Wendy Lowenstein has been a lifelong friend of Shirley Andrews. She is also author of Weevils in the Flour, Under the Hook and other oral histories of working life in Australia
208pp Illus. Case bound Dust jacket 250mm X 188mm