As David McAllister announced his last full season as artistic director of The Australian Ballet, the company formally launched its search for McAllister’s successor.

McAllister retires in December of next year after 20 years at the helm but will have significant input into the 2021 program. The new director is not expected to start until perhaps April, executive director Libby Christie told me yesterday.

Advertising for the position has begun, with applications to close on October 25. The company, which currently has about 80 dancers and  stages more than 240 performances a year, seeks “an inspirational, internationally recognised person with outstanding artistic and leadership qualities”. Among the many qualities required, the candidate must “be able to demonstrate an affinity for Australian culture”.

It’s undoubtedly no coincidence that TAB’s 2020 marketing images were taken in Broken Hill, in the far west of NSW. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Australians live around the edges of the continent, few things evoke Australia more immediately here and abroad than the red dust of the outback.

TAB begins its year in Brisbane with Graeme Murphy’s The Happy Prince, based on the Oscar Wilde story. Murphy has adapted the story with designer Kim Carpenter. Christopher Gordon has composed a new score. The Happy Prince was to have premiered this year but Murphy became ill and was unable to complete the ballet in time. The postponement had its upside: McAllister’s first big commission and arguably greatest success was Murphy’s Swan Lake (2012) and The Happy Prince brings the connection full circle. It will also be staged in Melbourne and Sydney.

The year’s other two full-length works are also new, Yuri Possokhov’s Anna Karenina, a co-production with Joffrey Ballet; and Alexei Ratmansky’s reconstruction of Petipa’s Harlequinade, a co-production with American Ballet Theatre. (Ratmansky has given it “the kiss of life”, says McAllister.) Anna Karenina opens in Sydney then goes to Melbourne and Adelaide. Harlequinade will be seen in Melbourne only next year; presumably Sydney and possibly other cities will see it in 2021.

Two mixed bills will be staged in Melbourne and Sydney. Volt features a new work by resident choreographer Alice Topp and two Wayne McGregor revivals, Chroma and Dyad 1929, the latter created for TAB. McAllister breaks the mould – well, his mould – for Molto by programming a heritage work, Ashton’s A Month in the Country (1976), alongside 21^st century ballets by resident choreographers Tim Harbour (Squander and Glory) and Stephen Baynes (Molto Vivace).

If McAllister was feeling melancholy about his final season launch he hid it well. Looking relaxed and happy, he said the dancers would have much to learn from a new artistic director, as he did from Ross Stretton when Stretton succeeded Maina Gielgud. “It’s an exciting and positive time for the company.”