Dr Cathy has been Executive Director of Ausdance ACT since 2020 and Creative Director of the organisation’s flagship Youth Dance Festival for five seasons. Her tenure includes producing the Festival’s 40th Anniversary celebrations and leading a successful online pivot during COVID, ensuring continuity, access and sector support at a critical time.

Under Cathy’s leadership, Ausdance ACT has received two Canberra Critics Circle Awards for Dance.Focus and Youth Dance Festival and delivered a reinvigorated Australian Dance Week, presenting up to 30 events annually. These programs have highlighted the diversity and strength of Canberra’s studio-based, community-led and professional dance sectors, while commissioning and supporting local professional artists.

Cathy serves on the Ausdance National Board, where she has been instrumental in recent board restructuring to better reintegrate the national and state network and strengthen advocacy and support services for the Australian dance sector. Previously, she was voluntary President of Ausdance SA, overseeing Creative Gatherings for the Panpapanpalya World Dance Congress 2018, where 12 dance leaders created site-specific works performed at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and SAHMRI. This project was nominated for a Department of the Premier and Cabinet Ruby Award for Best Community Event. She also contributed to an interdisciplinary dance and health research project at UniSA, published by Ausdance National.

Trained at NIDA, Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts (London), and to RAD Advanced standard (accepted into WAPAA), Cathy holds a BA (Hons) and has over 30 years’ experience as an actor, dancer, choreographer and producer across theatre, feature film, television and voiceover. Her screen credits include AACTA-awarded and nominated films The Nightingale, The Babadook, Cargo and Cut, alongside recent work as choreographer on With or Without You and the Stan series The Tourist. She has performed with State Theatre SA, State Opera SA, Australian Dance Theatre and Country Arts SA, many Adelaide Festivals and Fringe Festivals and produced award-winning dance theatre, site-specific and touring works nationally to major performing arts venues like the Studio Sydney Opera House. 

Cathy was awarded a Doctorate for her research on Adelaide dance music culture, soon to be published by Routledge UK, and has presented lectures, forums and seminars nationally and internationally.