Shona’s life path

Shona Katrine MacTavish was born in Dunedin on the April 12, 1920 in Dunedin. She was the youngest of four children to Frank Dunlop (a philosophy professor at the University of Otago) and Maud Dunlop, nee Giller. It was three years after her father’s sudden death in 1932, that Shona’s mother decided to take young Shona out of private school Archerfield to travel to Europe. Shona was privately enrolled under the wing of choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser, hoping to be the most brilliant dancer the world had known. Shona traveled extensively. which was catalysed by escaping Hitler’s Europe, Mao’s China, and then South Africa’s apartheid. It was in Sydney at 1948 that she got married to Rev John MacDonald MacTavish and moved together with him to embark on missionary work in China. In January 1955, Donald died from bone cancer. Shona made the decision to move back to Dunedin, where she threw herself into teaching, not only to make ends meet, but also to set the foundation for casting her own productions for Dunedin Dance Theatre.