She had her first dance lessons in Melbourne, Victoria, studying ballet for 10 years with Bruce and Bernice Morrow, who included improvisations at the end of each class.
[2][3] After returning to Australia and living near Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1968, her father having been posted to RAAF Base Williamtown, she continued ballet lessons there.
[2] In 1971 her father died of a heart attack, and she left high school in that year to study ballet in Sydney, passing all three senior exams set by the British Royal Academy of Dance.
[1][3][2] Works in Canberra included Banshee (1989), VX18504 (1989), Nuti (1990), Kikimora (1990), Court of Flora (1990), Chants de Mariage I and II (1991–1992), and Songs with Mara (1992).
[3][7] VX18504 took its title from her father's army service number, with the dance showing the isolation of war and the differences in how men and women process their emotions.
[8] During this time, Tankard also revived Echo Point and Two Feet,[7] collaborated with the theatre director Pierre Bokor on Circo (1991),[7] and created choreography for Opera Australia's Death in Venice (1989).
[11] In 1993 she was commissioned by ABC Television to create a seven-minute dance, "Sloth", as part of Seven Deadly Sins, a series of short films by seven contemporary Australian choreographers.
[7][12][13][14] During her time in Adelaide she also choreographed The Deep End (1996) for The Australian Ballet a second work for Opera Australia, Orphee et Euridyce,[7][11] The Blue Angel for Horipro in Tokyo.
[7][2] In that year, she made Boléro, based on the famous orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel, for the Lyon Opera Ballet,[7] a work in which only the silhouettes of the dancers were shown.
[11] Her 2009 work, The Oracle, a re-imagining of Stravinsky's 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring as a solo piece for Australian dancer Paul White, toured internationally to great acclaim.
The ballet was written and directed by playwright Wendy Beckett, and is based on the life of sculptor Camille Claudel, and her complex relationship with Auguste Rodin.
[22] In November 2022, as part of ICON, An Extraordinary Event, a tribute to Pina Bausch at WAAPA, Tankard's Chants de Mariage 2 was performed for the first time in Perth, using the original 1991 costumes.
Reviewer Rita Clarke wrote: "Tankard's choreography, music and design is stunning, with a visual beauty that leaves you lost for words".
[28][29][4] In 2019, Tankard directed and produced the hour-long film, Re-creating Two Feet, containing footage from 1995 and 2019 performances in Adelaide, Melbourne, Wellington (New Zealand), and Solingen (Germany).
The story is based on Tankard's own experiences as a girl (via a character called Mepsie), as well as those of Olga Spessivtseva, a Russian dancer famous for her portrayal of Giselle, who had a mental breakdown in 1932, becoming a resident of a sanatorium for 23 years.
[30] The film was shown at the Mercury Cinema in Adelaide in March 2019, presented by the J. M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice in association with Maggie Tonkin.
[4] Tankard was the subject of a film herself – a 55-minute documentary called The Black Swan, directed by Michelle Mahrer and produced by Don Featherstone, released in 1995.