THE Australian Ballet has designated 2015 its Year of Beauty, driving the point home with sumptuous imagery. Not since 2009 has the AB’s promotional material had such a romantic feel.

The program, announced on September 16, culminates in a new production of Sleeping Beauty, to be staged by AB artistic director David McAllister, and begins with a Sydney-only revival of Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake. In between are Maina Gielgud’s much-admired production of Giselle, a program of Frederick Ashton works and a Melbourne-only revival of Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella. There is just one contemporary program, 20:21, and a stripped-back version of the new choreography showcase Bodytorque.

In a particularly busy year the AB will appear in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide (twice), Perth, Canberra and Brisbane (although the latter gets only a single outdoor concert) and also visits Beijing and Shanghai.

Last week David McAllister spoke in detail about his choices and his plan to increase the size of the company from 72 to 85 dancers.

DJ: The 2015 season could be described as highly traditional. Are audiences becoming more conventional in their tastes?

DMcA: This year the contemporary program actually outsold everything. Everyone loved Chroma [the mixed bill headlined by Wayne McGregor’s Chroma]. In fact, I was thinking of calling everything Chroma! But a couple of years ago, when we were doing a business plan, I sat down with the dancers and said, “In five years’ time what do you want this company to look like?” The feedback I got was really interesting. We have this motto, “Caring for tradition, daring to be different”, and the dancers said to me loud and clear they felt we were too daring and not caring enough with the repertoire. They want to be doing more of that repertoire they feel is important to them as ballet dancers. So I said okay. I took it on board.

If you look at this year’s repertoire as well as next year’s it does have a bit more of a heritage feel. If they want to be doing that work, I want to do it for them. Equally, there have been irons in the fire for a number of years. Originally we were going to do Giselle last year but then Paris Opera Ballet announced they were coming [to Sydney with Giselle]. So that fell into 2015. It’s been way too long out of the repertoire. It’s great to get Maina’s production back.

Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, which premiered in 2002 and has been rarely out of the repertoire, will be seen in Beijing in October and have a commercial season in Sydney.

That’s exactly what it is [commercial]. That’s something the board has wanted us to do; the board have kept on at us about why haven’t we been more commercial with our seasons. The dates that we [were going to have] in Brisbane were gobbled up by Wicked so we had two weeks available, there were two weeks at the Capitol [in Sydney] and bingo.

Normally in Sydney we have the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra but they are with Opera Australia at that time [February] so we have to factor in the orchestra as a cost. But now that we have an orchestra [the AB recently took over management of Orchestra Victoria] we can bring them up. It’s exciting.

Beijing particularly asked for Swan Lake. It’s opening the dance festival at the National Centre for the Performing Arts [in October 2015]. They wanted our big international success. There will also be a mixed program – Suite en Blanc, [Stephen Baynes’s] Unspoken Dialogues and [Twyla Tharp’s] In the Upper Room.

In Shanghai we’ll do Cinderella and the mixed bill.

Is there a danger of The Australian Ballet appearing to be a one-trick pony with the many repeats of the Murphy Swan Lake?

We’re negotiating to go back to London and they are asking us to bring Swan Lake again. In 2005 it was compromised [the AB season started only days after terrorist bombings in London]. It’s still got currency. I’m cognisant that we shouldn’t do it too often, but it hasn’t been seen in Sydney since 2008. That’s coming on for seven years. The company looks so good in it; it’s in their DNA.

The Ashton program will be seen in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. It features The Dream, which gives its name to the program, plus Monotones II and Symphonic Variations.

The Ashton program has been in and out of planning for the last four years. I finally managed to nail it. The Dream is such an amazing, beautiful ballet, and we haven’t done any Ashton now for 10 years. We did La Fille mal gardee in 2004. The last time we did The Dream was 1980. Symphonic’s never been done. Monotones was done in 1991 and we did Birthday Offering in the 90s. Les Patineurs was even earlier – before I joined the company. There’s a real gap in our Ashton repertoire, and because it played such an important part in the formation of the company I felt it was time to get a bit of Ashton happening again.

I know Dame Peggy van Praagh wanted the company to do Symphonic but Ashton wouldn’t let anyone much do it except for the Royal Ballet. I really wanted it. [Rights owner] Wendy Somes and I have been having these discussions and I was thrilled she thought it would be good for us to do it.

The Ashton style – lyrical, with luxurious and expressive use of the upper body and filigree footwork – is notoriously difficult.

I saw the Royal do Scènes de ballet and remember watching it and saying, “Now I know what the Ashton style is, and the RB do it like no one else. They were unbelievable. The use of body, that quickness of the footwork. It was so beautiful. I thought, “It’s going to be really good for us to attempt that. It is very different to what we do so it will be interesting to have that challenge. We’re going to send some of the principals over to work with Anthony Dowell [who owns the rights to The Dream and who is unable to travel to Australia to stage the ballet]. We wanted him to come out, but he can’t.

McAllister felt the company needed a new Sleeping Beauty. Stanton Welch’s 2005 production had two sell-out seasons and covered its costs in the first season, but was considered flawed in some respects. It will not be revived.

We needed to do another Sleeping Beauty. I could have brought in a production – Marcia Haydee’s, or Peter Wright’s. Then I thought, maybe I should have a crack at it. Why not? In my career I’ve always thrown myself in at the deep end. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. I’m seeing my production in the way Maina approached hers and Peggy approached hers. There will be choreography and I will be choreographing, but in the style of Petipa and embroidering what the existing choreography is. That’s why I’m not crediting myself as a choreographer. I’m a curator, I guess, of Petipa’s choreographic input. It’s exciting. It is an apprenticeship, seeing all of those productions I’ve commissioned in my time and being in all those productions in the past. Watching Alexei creating Cinderella last year was just amazing. Being in the studio with Graeme and Janet [Vernon] when they did Swan Lake and Firebird and Nutcracker – you get a sense of what you like, what you don’t like. If I’d commissioned someone to do a Sleeping Beauty I would have annoyed the shit out of them.

The one contemporary program, 20:21, offers George Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements, a revival of Tharp’s In the Upper Room and a new work from resident choreographer Tim Harbour. It will have unbroken seasons in Melbourne and Sydney, despite the success this year in Sydney of what McAllister calls his “zipper”, two programs in repertory sharing the season of 20 performances. Did the zipper not work?

It went off like a frog in a sock. Played to 93 per cent capacity over the whole season. We were desperately trying to do it again this year. When the Brisbane dates fell out [due to Wicked] it all went in a heap. We were going to do 20:21 and Ashton in a zipper but didn’t have time to get it up for Sydney. [The logistics are complicated, but essentially a Brisbane season would have allowed some of the work to be rehearsed and performance-ready earlier in the year.] The zipper’s going to come back in 2016. The thing is having two mixed programs that are quite different. [This year’s] Ballet imperial was so different to Chroma. That’s the plan going forward. But we have to have something in the bag or premiere it somewhere else for it to work. In 2016 we can do it without compromise. It’s a great concept.

Has Bodytorque been pushed aside?

We sandwich Bodytorque in wherever we can. It’s never really had a home. It did [physically] in the Sydney Theatre but sometimes it was in October, sometimes in May, wherever we could shove it. Next year, the Canberra time just ate the Bodytorque opportunity. I didn’t want to lose it completely, so said let’s think creatively about how we can have Bodytorque humming along. I got the idea for the up-late, pop-up Bodytorque. As with the 50^th anniversary year [in 2012], I couldn‘t find space for it. It tends to be the first thing that drops off. It was a bit the same this year, but I said, no, we’re not going to give it up. It will be in both the 20:21 and Dream programs as an add-on after performances.

How does it work? It will be on the stage. We’ll invite the audience to stay. We’re still working through the logistics. I think we will be in touch with people who will be in the audience on the nights we’re doing it and ask them to register. Then we’ll know how many people will be there. We will also build a Bodytorque group – groupies – through social media networks. Those people will just turn up for the [Bodytorque] show and then we might have a bit of a drink afterwards. There will be just one 15-minute piece.

The Australian Ballet nominally has 72 dancers, although in practice usually 69 or 70. McAllister wants to increase that to 85 by 2017.

It’s to enable us to do other things – children’s ballet for instance. We’ve been talking about this for two years. Every time we get to the logistics of staging it we can’t do it. In 2016 and 2017 we’re hoping to add eight and then seven into the company. It’s primarily to work on the kids’ ballet, regional touring and the choreographic program. But I don’t want to start AB II. That’s not what we want. It just gives us a bit more flexibility. We’re not going to be staging two seasons at the one time. Well, we’ll be doing a kids’ ballet while we’re doing mainstage, but we’re not trying to double our coverage. This is a way of extending our reach and giving our dancers a little bit of breathing space. We do a lot of shows and the dancers are highly worked. And I want to be able to field 24 swans in Swan Lake and 24 Shades in Bayadere without having to employ [extra] people, which we currently do. We want a company closer in size to the Royal Ballet.

Next year McAllister will overtake Maina Gielgud as The Australian Ballet’s longest-serving artistic director – she reigned for 14 years – and is contracted until 2017.

What happens then? I don’t know. I’ve been very honest with the board. I’ve said I don’t see this job as a right. I’m well aware of the length of my service. They’ve said they are very happy with what I’m doing. We’ll keep the dialogue going.