Dance Dialogues, Brisbane, February 20.

Classical ballet is the oddest thing. It has a tiny core repertoire – fewer than 20 works; perhaps less than 15 if you’re being very strict – that define it to the world at large. These are the full-length story ballets that audiences will reliably attend year after year and provide the images that immediately register as ballet: tutus and toe shoes; princely men looking ardent as they support their lady.

Ballet companies revisit these works again and again, with small tweaks or wholesale revisions, new sets and costumes and, crucially, new generations of dancers to make the classics their own.

That can make ballet seem stuck in a loop but there’s an upside too. With the list of popular ballets so brief, companies constantly need contemporary repertoire to balance their annual programs. Why there are so few new story ballets claiming a lasting place alongside Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, The Nutcracker and a handful of other ballets is a perennial, fascinating question -Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale, made in 2014 for The Royal Ballet and National Ballet of Canada looks very like a ballet other companies will want to get their hands on but there aren’t too many others. Meanwhile, the creation of one-act contemporary works proceeds apace and there is a substantial 20^th and 21^st century repertoire to call upon.

The one-act ballet is also a good place for young choreographers to start, and most companies have a program to encourage their dancers to try their hand. The Australian Ballet’s longstanding Bodytorque series has withered somewhat, being reduced last year to a few performances of a work following a mainstage production (Bodytorque Up Late), but West Australian Ballet’s Genesis and Queensland Ballet’s Dance Dialogues are still cemented into their seasons.

I wrote recently about WAB’s Ballet at the Quarry, in which a work by company soloist Andre Santos, In Black, first seen at Genesis in 2014, was expanded for the Quarry, deservedly giving it a substantial audience.

A few days ago I went to Brisbane for Dance Dialogues to see a new work, Fonder Heart, by company dancer Jack Lister, a 22-year-old who has made a few small pieces as well as one for last year’s Dance Dialogues, Memory House, which I now wish I had been able to see. He is a remarkably confident dance-maker, even if at this point he hasn’t developed a strongly individual voice. The spirit and choreographic language of Jiří Kylián are very evident and Lister is not backward in acknowledging the Czech master as an influence. He certainly isn’t alone there.

Lister’s achievement was nevertheless satisfying and heartening. It is no small thing to make a work of about 16 minutes that one wishes would last longer. He made decisions that in a relative beginner are evidence of clear thinking, starting with his choice of music – the second movement of Philip Glass’s Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2000). A small string orchestra establishes a sweet, slightly melancholy melody, soon picked up by the piano and given an individual voice as the soloist at first picks out the tune gently, then embroiders with changing patterns and dynamic shifts. The atmosphere is dreamy and the music very Glass-y: strongly rhythmic and unfailingly melodic. (It’s why choreographers are attracted to his work, and indeed two of my favourite 20^th century dances are to Glass scores – Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room and Jerome Robbins’s Glass Pieces. The momentum is irresistible.)

Lister heard in this music the sound of couples joining, parting and perhaps reconnecting – or not – and created a work for three couples. There’s no budget to speak of for these ventures, of course, but Lister managed to persuade QB to let him have a long table that becomes a seventh actor in the piece as it was moved to and fro, providing a place to sit, to walk on, to be lifted from or supported by. Fonder Heart is abstract but works well with the music to evoke states of mind. It is sleek, sophisticated and intriguing.

Lister understands the power of stillness and separation and has a good grasp of structure. Three couples were woven in and out of the dance with assurance and the viewer’s eye was unerringly focused where it should be. The dance itself was strong, fluid and assertive with formidable partnering and a particularly vivid role for Eleanor Freeman, who was a dramatic presence. At the performance I saw Freeman danced with Vito Bernasconi, Lina Kim with Joel Woellner and Georgia Swan and Alexander Idaszak, and all looked passionately engaged with the work.

So, good news at both QB and WAB, with promising emerging choreographers on their books. As always, however, there seem to be fewer young women putting up their hands to have a go at making new work, although it’s pleasing to see that WAB has works from principal artist Jayne Smeulders in the repertoire and the Quarry season had a group work made mainly by women. It’s a start.