Sublime performance from Caroline Plummer Fellow in Community Dance

On a clear blue April day on Ōtepoti Dunedin’s iconic St Clair Beach, the 2025 Caroline Plummer Fellow in Community Dance and Otago alumna, Dr Carol Brown, presented the site responsive choreography, ‘Saltlines for Sealion Women’.

Part of the Wild Dunedin Ōtepoti New Zealand Festival of Nature, the performance was a response to climate breakdown and rising tides of global violence. It drew courage and inspiration from the pakake (sealion) community and their return.

Carol performed alongside a group of local female performers, and audience members could listen on headphones to a soundtrack composed for the performance by Dunedin-born Russell Scoones. In one magical moment the performers were followed into the water by an actual pakake.

The title pays homage to the 1939 recording of Sea Lion Woman sung by the African American Shipp Sisters from Missouri. Underscoring the project is the image of salt lines as the thread that links the ebb and flow of the tide with the monitoring of changes in sea levels.

The performance drew a large audience of about 300 people to the beach and plenty of bystander beach goers also enjoyed the experience.

This was a stunning illustration of all that this Fellowship brings to our communities.

“What a gift the Fellowship has been to date: time to deep dive into dances of relation with our human and non-human communities: local women and (at a safe distance) pakake, who now frequent local beaches. Community dancers felt a sense of muscular hope in bringing attention to our coexistence with pakake in the context of care and concern for the environment,” Carol says.

It has also been a coming home for Carol. The renowned dancer, choreographer and artistic researcher is Head of Dance at the Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne. She was born and raised in South Dunedin within walking distance to St Clair beach, where she was a member of the surf life-saving club.  

“I continue to be in awe of the wild surf that pounds the beach behind my mother’s home on Victoria Road, St Clair and swim there whenever I return. It brings me enormous joy, always has done.”

In 1985, Carol completed a History Honours Degree (first class) with Otago and was awarded the prize in her year. Her dissertation on Ethel Benjamin, the first woman to graduate in law in the Commonwealth, was supervised by Dr Dorothy Page and went on to be published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Alongside this, Carol studied dance with the School of Physical Education in the Division of Sciences (dance is now offered within Otago’s School of Performing Arts).

Carol says returning to Ōtepoti for the Fellowship has enabled her to come full circle. She is combining skills she learnt at Otago, further postgraduate studies of an MA and a PhD in Dance with the University of Surrey, and professional practice as a choreographer internationally with deepening artistry through the collective spirit of community practice in situ.

The family behind the Fellowship

This Fellowship in community dance was established in 2003, and honours Caroline Plummer (1978-2003). It’s offered annually for six months, usually February until July, and is open to community dance practitioners, teachers, and researchers from New Zealand and overseas who have a proposed programme of activity, or project, that furthers Caroline's belief and aspirations for community dance in New Zealand.

Caroline’s parents Tony and Bibby Plummer established this Fellowship and continue to be avid supporters.

“Caroline lived to dance and danced to live. She firmly believed in the Gabriel Roth quote ‘Just set people in motion and they’ll heal themselves.’

“We are both humbled and proud that the projects delivered by all the Fellows since the Fellowship was established have touched the lives of so many and varied people in such positive ways.”

Tony and Bibby recently committed a further $100,000 to this fund, which will be released once the University has raised a matching amount. This combined financial support ensures the Fellowship in perpetuity. See below for information on how you can also support this.

Otago’s Arts Fellowships

The University Arts Fellowships have had a turbulent year.

The Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance and the Robert Burns Fellowship in literature will be offered in 2026.

The College of Education Children’s Writer in Residence lost its external funding at the end of 2025. While the College managed to cover the costs this year, it has been paused from 2026 while funding is sought. The University is committed to reinstating this in support of children’s literacy and the importance of our children having stories of Aotearoa, by New Zealand authors.

The Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in visual arts and Mozart Fellowship in music have both been put on pause for 2026. This is not a decision the University came to lightly. It is intended that this hiatus will allow for the endowment funds that support these Fellowships to recover to more sustainable levels, and the University is also reviewing costs and seeking further financial support.

Interested in supporting

If you would like to donate or provide other support for the Otago Arts Fellowships, please email Becs Wilson, becs.wilson@otago.ac.nz or Ph: 021 103 2757.

- Kōrero by Antonia Wallace, Communications Advisor (Humanities)