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Books Leap of Faith: My Dance Through Life, Be Jubilant My Feet: Using Dance in Worship | ||
Shona Katrine Dunlop MacTavish (born 1920 in Dunedin) is a New Zealand dancer, teacher, author, critic, choreographer and pioneer in liturgical dance in the Asia-Pacific.
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Biography
Shona Dunlop studied with expressionist dancer and choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser in the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna during the 1930s; she then joined the Bodenwieser Ballet. They were forced to leave Europe in 1938 because many of the dancers were Jewish, they were then based in Australia, touring later in New Zealand during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
She married McDonald MacTavish on 26 June 1948, and lived as a missionary with him in Africa and China. She opened her own dance studio in 1958 and by 1963 she had set up the performing group, Dunedin Dance Theatre. She continued to be actively involved in dance into her 80s. In 2001, MacTavish was awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree by the University of Otago. She suffered serious injury in a crash in 2012 and stopped driving after that.