Dancing Daze - Rock Soundtrack from the ABC TV Series (1986)

 (Various Australian Artists 1986)

Dancing Daze is a 1986 Australian mini series about two sisters from Wagga Wagga who leave their family pig farm to make it as dancers in the big city. The ABC series stars Meryl Tankard as Phoebe Green and Patsy Stephen as Kate Green.

A Dancing Daze soundtrack was released in February 1986, featuring a high profile list of Australian artists and musicians. A second soundtrack album featuring the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was also released. At the ARIA Music Awards of 1987, Wendy Matthews was nominated for the ARIA Award for Best Female Artist for the title track. Martin Armiger was also nominated for ARIA Award for Best Original Soundtrack, Cast or Show Album for the album.

Over time, Dancing Daze has been compared to the successful Australian musical mini series called 'Sweet and Sour', which aired on the ABC TV in 1984 and was based on a fictional band called the Takeaways who were trying to break into the Sydney music scene.

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas discusses Dancing Daze in more detail:

While Sweet and Sour’s place as an iconic 80s Australian cult pop culture phenomena is firmly established, Dancing Daze has for all intents and purposes simply vanished. A number of attempts to source the series has come up empty handed, and there are whispers that it is highly likely to remain unattainable due to a complex web of copyright clearance complications. So all I have for now at least is my memories – hazy, distant, and framed through the admittedly heavily distorted lens of childhood nostalgia – and the small handful of newspaper and magazine articles and interviews that remain.

Dancing Daze Cast
(Note: impossible to find a profile photo for Laurence Clifford)

Reading back, here’s what I have cobbled together about the broader plot: Dancing Daze followed the story of two sisters Phoebe (Meryl Tankard) and Kate (Patsy Stephen), who move to Sydney to pursue their dreams of becoming famous dancers. They grew up in the regional New South Wales town of Wagga Wagga, raised by their aunt and uncle on a pig farm after the mysterious disappearance of their mother (herself an entertainer). With big dreams and little grasp of the realities of life in the “big smoke”, they find themselves developing a community of new friends centred around the Casanova Club, the place to be in the swinging sixties but now neglected and reduced to near-ruins. With their friend Joe (Laurence Clifford) and piecing together the disappearance of their mother through the backstory of the shady Mr Isaacs (Norman Kaye), the girls discover as much about their past as they do their future on their journey towards fame and fortune.

Martin Armitage

Shot in the ABC Studios and on location in Sydney and costing approximately $250,000 to make, each episode ran for approx. fifty minutes. Devised by Chapman and writer Michael Cove, Chapman brought choreographer Chrissie Koltai on board who, despite having no television experience, was a member of the Sydney Dance Company, had taught at both Sydney’s esteemed National Institute of Dramatic Art and the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre, and was the choreographer for the Divinyls’ “Pleasure and Pain” music video the previous year. 

The series’ music director was Martin Armitage, who had worked with Chapman on Sweet and Sour, and who was a successful music producer in his own right as well as one-time guitarist of seminal Australian rock band The Sports. Music for the Dancing Daze rock soundtrackincluded artists like Sharon O’Neill, Jenny Morris, Steven Cummings (also from The Sports), Greg Macainsh (from Skyhooks), David Briggs (from LRB) and one-time Beach Boys member Ricky Fataar.

Lance Curtis and Meryl Tankard

If there was one big name involved in Dancing Daze, however, it was dancer Meryl Tankard in the role of Phoebe.  Born in Darwin and raised in Melbourne, Newcastle, and Penang, Tankard joined the Australian Ballet School in 1973 and joined the company in 1977. After a three-hour audition, she became a soloist with the legendary Wuppertaler Tanztheater of Pina Bausch, a figure memorialised in Wim Wenders 2001 documentary Pina. Homesick, Tankard returned to Australia in 1984, beginning work on Dancing Daze shortly after. “The whole story of Dancing Daze is very close to home for me”, Tankard told Katherine Tulich in an interview for Countdown Magazine. “When I came back to Australia from Germany, I was trying to find something to fit into. The only way to do that is to do it myself, which is exactly what the Green Sisters do.” She continues, “More people know me overseas than here […] most people don’t know who Pina Bausch is, so it’s like starting again.”

Dancing Daze Chorus Line

As Campion describes it, the concept was fairly straightforward: “It was the classic story of a group of young people who, in 1986, want to make a dance troupe”, a description mirrored by many critics at the time of its broadcast. Paul Kalina, for example, noted that like Sweet and Sour, Dancing Daze “celebrates the trials of youth pursuing its ambitions and realizing goals that, previously, were only dreamt of”. But it was precisely how Dancing Daze brought this to life that impressed other critics and that resonates so profoundly with me personally on this strange little journey of recollection. 

Barbara Hooks describes the series’ opening scene (one I either vaguely remember or have simply conjured up via wishful thinking) where we first meet Phoebe and Kate “as ankle biters on their aunt and uncle’s farm giving an impromptu concert to anyone who will watch, including a piglet.” The fairy tale quality of descriptions like this – Kalina even calls it “essential ‘wish-upon-a-star’ stuff” – make it clear why it would have appealed to me as a child. But perhaps there was just something more simply about its very energy that I tapped into as a kid: as Hooks put it, “Dancing Daze is, in the parlance of the young, an ‘ace’ show.”

In retrospect, this “aceness” had a fundamentally gendered quality. In her enthusiastic review, Susan Molly pegged that the secret to its success was that “Dancing Daze has slotted into the 80s mood of fun, happy endings and fantasy adventure as much as Madonna did when swishing round in that Girls’ Own Annual Desperately Seeking Susan, or as Cyndi Lauper did when she sang ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’.”

Kate (Patsy Stephen) and Phoebe (Meryl Tankard) in their tulle frocks

The image I recall most strongly of watching the series as a child is that of two young women in explosively frothy 80s tulle frocks leaning on a tree in a Sydney park, dreaming of becoming famous dancers, and declaring in delighted, determined unison: “fortune favours the bold!”. 

Forgotten as it may be, Dancing Daze also consolidated the professional collaboration between Campion and Chapman, which spawned some of the most important and enduring Australian films ever made through the sheer force of their joint will. Eradicated as they may be from the Australian popular imagination, Kate and Phoebe were ultimately proven right: fortune favours the bold.  [Extract from - Stardust Memories: Cinephilia and Nostalgia, Issue 87. 2018]

Soundtrack Blues Review

Rock by Lisa Wallace
(Canberra Times, 16th Feb, 1986)

Soundtracks can be a problem, especially if you have not had the advantage of viewing the accompanying movie, series or episode. Such is the dilemma with 'Dancing Daze'.

The series begins on the ABC tonight, following the adventures of two talented sisters as they seek fame and fortune in the world of contemporary dance, and if the talents assembled on film arc as good as the talents harnessed on this piece of vinyl, the show should be a grand success.

Under the talented wing of Martin Armigcr, one-time guitarist for The Sports and musical producer of Auntie's 'Sweet and Sour' series, we have Marc Hunter, Jane Clifton, Jenny Morris (pictured left) , Mark Williams and Wendy Matthews (pictured below). But perhaps it's the names behind the songs that give strength to this latest ABC offering.

Sharon O'Neill, Rick Fataar, Jennifer Hunter-Brown, Steve Cummings, Greg McAmish (Ed. Should read Greg Macainish) are all contributing songwriters, and as you can imagine, the backing vocals and supporting bands are top notch.

There are a few forgettable songs on the album — notably 'Can I Dance' and 'Second Opinion' — but a few others could well make their way up the treacherous top 10 in days to come.

Marc Hunter (pictured left) makes a welcome reappearance on vinyl with two offerings, one a very unHunterlike ballad, but the second, 'Phoebe' is a better, saxier, bluesier number more reminiscent of late nights in Stranded or the Strata.

The title track 'Dancing Daze', written by Sharon O'Neill is very Kim Wilde-ish, resurrected on side two, as these type of albums seem to do, in a slower, more instrumental version.

Unfortunately Jane Clifton's (pictured right) short foray on to the album, 'Disaster' is one — very jagged and rasping, nothing like her best. In fact all the "known" stars appear quite restrained, whether by their lyrics or boredom with the project I can only guess.

So, after all that rousing praise, I have to say this is not a bad album, perhaps a touch indulgent and a wee bit repetitious, but as already lamented, it is hard to imagine the scenes which would accompany such boppy numbers as 'Dare to be Bold' and the jovial 'Casanova Club'. Once onscreen, they may well take on a life of their own and please both eye and ear.
Perhaps.

Also available through ABC records is the "classical" version of 'Dance Daze', featuring the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David McBride with guest appearances by Jane Clifton, Jason Morphea, Chris Abrahams and The Green Sisters.
Tracks include 'Adagio for Strings', selections from 'Swan Lake' and 'Prelude to Parsifal'.

[Article sourced from trove.nla.gov.au]

Dancing Daze - 1986 Australian TV Promo

It is also worth noting that "Dancing Daze" / "Last Chance To Dance" was released as a 7'' single in 1985, and also as a 12" single featuring an extended mix of Dancing Daze on purple vinyl. "Might Have Been" / "Second Home" was released as a follow up 7" single in the same year. [See Below]

Single Releases

This post consists of FLACs ripped from vinyl and includes full album artwork and label scans.  A big thank you to blog follower Dominic Tolli for generously offering this high quality rip and assorted references for today's post.  Thanks mate.

From a collector's point of view, this album is desirable for many reasons: Its importance as a close cousin and followup release to the iconic Sweet and Sour show and the inclusion of two rare tracks by Marc Hunter, which have not appeared in any other shape or form.   This album is definately a worthy addition to your record collection if you can find a copy.  This album was also released on cassette (see below), however it has never been released on CD, surely an oversight on the part of the ABC !

Track List:

A1 Wendy Matthews, Jenny Morris – Dancing Daze (Sharon O'Neill)

A2 Mark Williams – Can I Dance (Mick Walter - Glen Muirhead - G. Lungren)

A3 Mark Williams – Second Opinion (Jenny Morris - Richard Fataar)

A4 Wendy Matthews –  Dare To Be Bold (Sharon O'Neill)

A5 Marc Hunter – You're So Curious (Jennifer Hunter-Brown - Michael Hegarty)

A6 Jane Clifton – Disaster (Stephen Cummings - Dean Richards)

B1 Mark Williams – Against The Dance (Martin Armiger)

B2 Martin Armiger, Sherlie Matthews –  I Love It When We're Dancing (Greg Macainsh - David Briggs)

B3 Jenny Morris, Mark Williams, Wendy Matthews –  Might Have Been (Martin Armiger - Michael Cove)

B4 Marc Hunter –  Phoebe (Martin Armiger)

B5 Larry Van Kriedt –  Casanova Club (Larry Van Kriedt)

B6 Wendy Matthews –  Lost In A Dancing Daze (Martin Armiger)

Musicians:

Alto Saxophone – Tony Buchanan

Backing Vocals – Maggie McKinney, Mark Williams, Naomi Eyers, Wendy Matthews

Bass – Clive Harrison, Jeremy Alsop, Lloyd Swanton

Drum Programming, Keyboards, Guitar, Producer – Martin Armiger

Drums – Ricki Fataar

Guitar – Larry Van Kriedt, Mark Punch

Keyboards – Chris Abrahams, Glen Muirhead, Rick Chadwick

Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Jason Morphett

Trumpet, Flugelhorn – Kevin Dubber

Dancing Daze Link (279Mb)