The Hanny Exiner Memorial Foundation (HEMF) has the pleasure of awarding this year’s Achievement Award to Jane Guthrie. This belated formal acknowledgement of decades of work in the field of Dance Movement Therapy in Australia has occurred against her wishes. She never wanted to be recognised while still being involved in HEMF. Today, we finally honour her as a respected elder of the Dance Therapy community. Jane is a humble woman who continues to work with others towards promoting the healing power of dance and maintaining and expanding this community.
As a young woman, Jane began her career as a physiotherapist and worked in London with children with profound disabilities. In 1974, she joined Elizabeth Loughlin at Noah’s Ark Toy Library in Melbourne, where she worked with mothers and children with multiple disabilities and groups of children. She credits Elizabeth as having had an incredible influence on her development as a therapist. In the 1980s, she was joined by Jan Deans. Their years of working together formed the basis of their book entitled Come Join in the Dance, which is a rich resource of movement activities for children with special needs.
In the late 1970s, Hanny Exiner and Phyllis Lloyd established the Graduate Diploma in Movement and Dance at the Institute for Early Childhood Development in Kew. Karen Bond later joined the faculty. Jane was one of their first students. This encounter further inspired and informed Jane’s practice. It was to be a long and rich association that was the seed for the future of dance therapy in Australia.
Jane extended her study by training with Dr Marcia Leventhal, who came to Australia in the late 1980s. As a result of the interest in dance therapy, the International Dance Therapy Institute of Australia (IDTIA) was formed and continues to the present. Meanwhile, between 1982 and 2006, Jane worked at the Epworth Hospital in Richmond (formerly Bethesda) as a physiotherapist. After the merger with the Epworth Hospital, Jane’s role was extended to include being Deputy Manager of the Physiotherapy Department, Team Leader and Senior Physiotherapist. She is a pioneer in integrating physiotherapy and dance movement therapy with people with acquired brain injury and is instrumental in setting up the specialised multi-disciplinary unit to work with these patients. Her Master’s thesis was an evaluation and documentation of some of this innovative work.
Jane has worked tirelessly for many decades to help promote, extend and deepen the practice of dance movement therapy in Australia. Together with Denis Kelynack, Jane was a founding member of the Dance Therapy Association of Australia (DTAA), which became incorporated in 1994 after the intense work by the Ausdance Steering Committee led by Andrew Morrish. In 2014, the DTAA expanded to represent Australasia. Heather Hill was the inaugural president. Jane took up this role from 2007 to 2015. The DTAA sits on the shoulders of the elders. Jane has strong shoulders. Their vision was to have dance therapy recognised as a profession. Senior practitioners Kim Dunphy, Sally Denning and Sandra Lauffenburger began working on the competencies and the documentation for the application as a member organisation of PACFA, the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia. Jane was a strong influence in pursuing this goal. In 2003, the DTAA became part of the umbrella organisation where professional members who met the criteria could also apply to be registered with PACFA.
The first of many dance therapy conferences took place in 1997, entitled “Weaving the Threads” and Jane was an integral part of the organising committee. From this successful event, the first of the Dance Therapy Collections was published, highlighting the work of emerging dance therapists in Australia. Jane was an editor and a contributor. She would go on to write many articles, co-author others, and edit other publications with the help of Naomi Aitchison and Heather Hill.
Jane and Naomi took on the responsibility of working on The Quarterly, the DTAA informative newsletter. In 2002, it became the journal “Moving On”. It was an ambitious undertaking to publish four volumes a year. Much later, it came out biannually. Contributions were sought from here and overseas, providing prestige to the authors and widening the scope of practice.
The DTAA provided many opportunities for professional development. The workshops were also open to interested participants. Jane generously hosted the overseas dance therapists. Her own professional development took her to the ADTA conference in Brooklyn, New York City, in 2010, and to Minneapolis in 2011. In San Diego in 2015, she presented her paper. She wrote many articles based on her reflections, which were rich and informative. Always open to new experiences, she went off to Canada to train in Laban Movement Analysis. This rigorous training took two years.
Dance therapy units were taught as part of a Creative Arts course at Melbourne University. When this terminated, Denis Kelynack, Linda Murrow, Heather Hill and Jane met to find a way of continuing to promote the study and teaching of dance therapy. Together, they developed a curriculum to teach at RMIT University as part of the Graduate Diploma in Visual and Performing Arts. She lectured there from 2003 to 2006. When this course also ended she and others negotiated to offer a post-graduate dance-movement therapy program at the Phoenix Institute. Kim Dunphy and Sue Mullane lectured there until the owner sold it and the course collapsed.
In 2017, Jane and Heather attended the Body-Mind Centring Conference with Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen entitled “Thinking Body Moving Minds”. A wide range of somatic therapists came together. Jane and Heather saw the commonalities and an opportunity to share ideas with dance therapists. Conversations took place with Kim Wishart and Angela Clark, and a symposium was proposed. It was a massive undertaking because it spanned many practioners from diverse fields of body and movement therapies. As Heather said, “She is a master weaver able to bring disparate elements together”. Jane’s experience in practical matters made her very capable of planning the symposium on Embodiment, which was held in 2020. Subsequently, The Art of Embodiment was published in 2021, and Jane was part of the editorial team.
Jane continues to be involved in dance therapy through her work with HEMF. Her contribution has been singularly awesome. Her vision, persistence, stamina, generosity, intellectual ability and guidance are embedded in the work she has done in establishing dance therapy as a profession in Australia.
We would like to acknowledge Naomi, Heather Hill and Sandra Lauffenburger for their input in writing this citation. Naomi captured Jane beautifully back in 2002, recognising “her vision and ability to navigate and steer through uncharted waters, and above all, her humanity, kindness and integrity.” Our last correspondence with the late Naomi was in January this year, when she wrote, “I’m so glad this is happening.”
Jane, on behalf of HEMF and the many people you have taught, supported, organised, mentored and inspired—thank you. HEMF Convenor, 2026
Citation created by Anna Ganz & Mandy Agnew
