Dancehouse acknowledges the passing of Al Wunder.

Al has been a prominent and influential figure across Melbourne dance and performance improvisation communities. The strength of the community, practices, and enthusiasm he inspired continue with generations of  teachers, collaborators, leaders, practitioners, and fans who continue Al’s legacy at Dancehouse and well beyond.

Thank you Al.

Al Wunder Obiturary, The Age

AL WUNDER

The Grandfather of Improvisation

Al Wunder, often referred to as ‘the Grandfather of Improvisation’, died peacefully at our home in Ballarat on September 8^th 2026. He was also a penguin!

Al danced and taught with the Alwin Nikolais Company in New York through the 1960s. His favourite class was Improvisation.

Al was enticed by California’s sun and lifestyle and moved to Berkely. There he gradually formed his own teaching style of improvisation. His classes were very popular in their break away from more formal modern dance technique (as it was called then) yet they were different from the conceptual often political Happenings in the early 1970s. Al shared a studio with Terry Sendgraff and Ruth Zapora where they each developed their own improvisational focus: Motivity on trapezes, character based Action Theatre and Al’s more abstract movement based Theatre of the Ordinary. Their work influenced many people.

I met Al in Berkely when he came to a solo show by Terry where I was the guest artist. He then  started teaching again after a back injury and focussed on making his beautiful wooden Hum Drums. I attended his classes and we had many deep discussions about creativity, teaching and dance. We connected. Long story but Al followed me home to Melbourne the next year, 1982. He loved it here and stayed.

Melbourne was the scene of Al’s further development of Motional Improvisation and Performance Workshops. His focus through teaching was to enable people to become aware of their own creative self and to have the confidence to perform in an open improvisation format. His medium was movement and voice.  Al’s classes became popular and a small community of both students and audiences developed around his two major studios at Cubitt St Richmond and Cecil St Fitzroy. For several years he performed with a small group, Theatre of the Ordinary, comprising Lynden Nicholls, Andrew Morrish, David Wells, Gill Shaw and later Peter Trotman and Rinske Ginsberg and Lynne Santos. We were breaking new ground, or that’s what it felt like!

Many of Al’s students have gone on to develop their own improvisational styles and have taught and performed both locally and internationally (Andrew Morrish, Peter Trotman, David Wells, Born in a Taxi, John Britton, Scott Wright from ERTH to name a few.)  Others have been strongly influenced by Al’s use of positive feedback and have embedded that into their professional work in different areas.

Al’s generous, gentle and kind spirit will definitely be missed. He inspired many through his humility and simple genius.

— Lynden Nicholls