Coralie Hinkley is a poet with an extensive background in dance and choreography. She studied under Gertrud Bodenwieser and joined the Bodenwieser Ballet, one of the first influential dance companies in Australia. She later became a teacher at the Bodenwieser School.
During this time she choreographed the poem 'Unknown Land' by Rex Ingamells, based on imagery found in Ingamells' poetry, and danced to a commissioned score by John Antill.
In 1957, Hinkley was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study dance at a graduate level. The first Australian dancer to receive this award, she moved to New York to work with luminaries such as Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Louis Horst and Merce Cunningham. On her return to Australia, Hinkley worked with Ballet Australia and founded the Fort Street Dance Group in Sydney.
Much of Hinkley's choreography work has been based on the imagery of poems. Her own verse has been described as "source material for creative movement". She has published books on dance, including Creativity in Dance: an imaginative source of creative work for the teaching of dance in education as an expressive art form (1980).
