Farewell and thank you
This is the last e-news for the year, and my last e-news as editor of Dance Australia. After 35 years bent over a keyboard, it is time to hand over to a new editor.
I am so lucky to have had a career that combines what I love: writing and dance. It has been exhilarating, inspiring, rewarding, daunting and always, always, interesting. If ever there were times when I thought of moving on to another job, something has always popped up and rekindled the flame.
A magazine is much more than its editor, of course: it is especially about the writing. I have been lucky to have worked with many wonderful, generous writers, many of whom are now friends. All of them have made this magazine what it is: with their conviction that dance is an important and glorious art form; with their insights, intelligence and willingness to put their opinions on the line; and with their ability to express in lucid prose the fleeting, ephemeral thing they witness on stage so that readers can see it too, and share the joy.
And what is a magazine without pictures? Dance Australia has benefitted from so many brilliant photographers, artists in their own right, capturing those marvellous moments and movements for the reader to treasure at their leisure.
Hidden behind the scenes have been the layout artists, who somehow put together my excess of photos and texts – always far more than can be squeezed in! – and make the pages look clean and beautiful. Even more hidden but equally important is the whole apparatus that goes into publishing a magazine: the folk in production, subscriptions, accounts, digital, promotions and other departments.
I especially want to put on the record my thanks to Dance Australia's current sales manager, Carol Roselli. Dance Australia is a commercial publication and survives on advertising revenue; it does not receive the sort of government grants on which most other arts organisations depend, so her work is vital to our survival as an independent publication.
And finally, my thanks to Yaffa Media, which owns Dance Australia, and has stood by the magazine through the many storms that have hit publishing and journalism over the decades, such as the GFC and revolutions in technology. (The company celebrates its 100th anniversary this year – amazing!)
The new editor is Olivia Weeks, who most of you now will have met on our e-news and website. I wish her as rewarding a time as I have had. 
– KAREN VAN ULZEN