What Dancing Through History by Joan Cass Actually Is
Dancing Through History is the autobiography of Joan Cass, who served as a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet from 1962 through the early 1970s before transitioning into writing and broadcasting. The book covers her training under Phyllis Bedells and Ninette de Valois, her time at the Royal Ballet School in London, and her subsequent career in Australia. It is not a technical manual on ballet methodology, nor is it a dense academic text on dance history. It is a memoir written in straightforward prose, aimed at readers who want a candid look inside the professional ballet world during a period when the art form was gaining institutional credibility in Australia. The book remains in demand because it documents a formative era for the Australian Ballet — the period when the company moved from a touring outfit into a permanent institution with national funding. Joan Cass witnessed and participated in that transformation firsthand. She worked alongside artists like Garry Stewart's predecessors in the company, and her accounts of rehearsals, casting politics, and touring conditions provide detail you won't find in official company histories. I've seen students in dance history seminars cite passages from it when discussing the cultural shift that occurred in Australian performing arts between 1960 and 1975. There is also a practical reason people search for it. The book went out of print for several years, which drove up secondhand prices and pushed readers toward digital copies or library borrowing. When it was reissued, availability improved but it still isn't stocked everywhere. That's why finding a legitimate source matters.
How to Obtain a Copy — Legitimately
The most straightforward route is to order the current edition through major Australian booksellers or online retailers. The ISBN for the recent edition is 9780733337551. Amazon, Book Depository, and the Australian publisher's own site typically carry it. If you are outside Australia, shipping costs and import fees can add 30 to 50 percent to the cover price, so check your local retailer first. Libraries are a solid option. The State Library of Victoria and the National Library of Australia hold copies, and interlibrary loan networks can usually source it within five to ten business days for patrons at participating institutions. If you are a university student, your campus library likely has it in the performing arts section or can request it from another university. Ebook versions exist on Kindle and Apple Books, but they are often formatted as scans rather than properly typeset text. The pagination in the ebook edition does not always align with the print version, which matters if you are citing specific passages in an academic paper. I learned this the hard way while cross-referencing a quote for a seminar presentation — the Kindle page numbers were completely different from the printed edition, and my footnote was wrong until I went back and verified against the physical book. If you need to cite the work, get the print version or confirm the ebook's pagination matches your source.
What the Book Actually Covers — And What It Doesn't
The narrative is roughly chronological. Early chapters deal with her childhood interest in dance, her application to the Royal Ballet School, and the adjustment to living in London as a teenager. The middle section focuses on her time with the Australian Ballet, including tours, repertoire choices, and the interpersonal dynamics of company life. Later chapters cover her move into writing and television, which occupies a smaller portion of the book than the dance career does. One thing the book does not do well is provide detailed choreographic analysis or technical breakdown of specific ballets. If you are looking for a deep dive into how Swan Lake was staged in Melbourne in 1965, you won't find it here. What you will find is context — who was dancing what role, why certain productions succeeded or failed, and how funding decisions affected artistic choices. These are the kinds of details that matter when you are researching the institutional history of Australian ballet. A counter-intuitive point that beginners often miss: the value of this book is not just in the dance content. It is equally useful as a primary source for understanding mid-century Australian culture more broadly. The descriptions of touring to regional towns, the reaction of local audiences, the financial pressures on the company — these sections double as social history. I've used passages from it in discussions about how the Australia Council for the Arts shaped cultural output in the 1970s, and it holds up well in that context.
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Common Problems When Reading or Using This Book
The index is sparse. If you are looking for a specific name, production, or venue, you may need to rely on the bibliography and the chronological structure rather than a detailed subject index. This is a limitation of older memoirs in general, and it means you should have a general sense of what you are looking for before diving in. Another issue is that some of the photographs are grainy and poorly reproduced in certain editions. The reissued version improved on this, but it is still not a coffee-table quality photo collection. If you need high-resolution images of company photos from the 1960s, you are better off checking the Australian Ballet's archival materials directly. A practical edge-case I ran into: I once tried to use the book to verify the cast list for a specific performance at the Sydney Opera House in 1968. The text mentions the performance and the general repertoire, but it does not provide a full cast breakdown for individual nights. I had to go to the Trove newspaper archive and search the Sydney Morning Herald reviews from that week to fill in the gaps. If you are doing serious research, budget extra time for supplementary source work. The memoir is a starting point, not a complete reference.
Who Should Read It
People interested in Australian cultural history, dance students looking for context on the development of the profession in Australia, and general readers who enjoy well-written memoirs will all find this useful. People looking for step-by-step dance instruction or technical theory should look elsewhere — this is not that type of book. If you want to understand what professional ballet life was actually like in a national company during its formative years, Dancing Through History Joan Cass remains one of the more honest accounts available. It does not romanticize the work, and it does not shy away from the political and financial frustrations that came with building a career in the field. That balance is what makes it worth reading, and it is why it still comes up in conversations about Australian performing arts history decades after it was first published.
