When choreographers are asked to make new work for Queensland Ballet’s Bespoke the result can be a program of great diversity, as happened last year, or one that inadvertently seems to have a theme, as was the case this year. 

If you were going to give Bespoke 2023 one of those overarching titles given to triple bills it would be Reflections, a word that handily has different meanings depending on whether one is seeing or thinking. The reflections weren’t just internal to each work. The first and last pieces on the program both used five male-female couples, one of which was more prominent than the others. Remi Wörtmeyer’s Miroirs and Natalie Weir’s Four Last Songs didn’t look like one another on the surface but they shared some qualities, particularly the primacy of the pas de deux. Together they didn’t make for the most stimulating display of new work seen at the annual Bespoke program. 

That’s not a criticism of the individual works. It comes down to a program’s purpose. Bespoke 2023 promised to be “challenging, and always thought-provoking”. It’s Bespoke’s reason for being. And yet this year’s program felt pretty much interchangeable with June’s bluntly named Trilogy, which featured QB associate choreographer Jack Lister’s almost new (that is, never seen here) A Brief Nostalgia and the new My Brilliant Career by Cathy Marston. 

You could certainly argue that the middle work in Trilogy, Christopher Bruce’s classic Rooster, had its counterpart in Bespoke with Paul Boyd’s Tartan. Where Bruce mined the back catalogue of The Rolling Stones for his soundtrack, Boyd went to stirring Scottish folk music. Delightfully entertaining – absolutely. Pushing the boundaries of dance? No.

Wörtmeyer’s elegant, glossy Miroirs – it’s the French word for mirrors – opened Bespoke to sections of the music of that name by Ravel. Daniel Le is more often behind the scenes as QB’s rehearsal pianist. Here he was onstage playing exquisitely, Ravel’s hypnotic, crystalline ripples adding more layers of shimmer and gleam to the work. 

Adelaide-born Wörtmeyer is a Europe-based choreographer who started his dance career at The Australian Ballet where he was always a tremendously vivid presence. Afterwards he became a star at Dutch National Ballet. He’s an artist too, and designed Miroir’s costumes and the spare but effective set of glittering, hanging loops. The dancers looked wonderful in shiny metallic unitards with discreetly sparkling belts and extremely glamorous (and sexy) plunging backs for the women and see-through tops for the men. Each couple was differentiated by subtly different coloured dancewear.

Wörtmeyer’s mostly neoclassical movement was strong and sophisticated. The formal pairing of men with women meant the pas de deux often conformed to the conventional sharing of responsibilities – he lifts, she is lifted – but the women never looked anything less than in charge of their own destiny. Miroirs was entirely non-narrative and kept emotion at arm’s length but Wörtmeyer quietly suggested moments of private, intimate reflection that stick in the memory.

The fluid, fluent movement often had a contemporary flavour that warmed the neoclassical formality. Every now and again, for instance, dancers opened their arms wide and looked like birds preparing to fly. It was beautiful, slightly odd and evocative of freedom. (And possibly was a nod to the second section of Miroirs, which Wörtmeyer didn’t use, titled Oiseaux tristes, or sad birds.) At other times there was a more specific summoning of personal relationships. There was an outstanding and startlingly sensual pas de deux for Brooke Ray and Luca Armstrong, both company artists. (One of the best things about Bespoke is the chance to see dancers from the lower ranks of the company shine.) As the lead couple, principals artists Mia Heathcote and Victor Estévez were by turns playful, tender and composed. They were seen first in regal purple and then in sombre grey for their final pas de deux, danced after Wörtmeyer gave the audience what you would usually think of as a big finish. 

It was an intelligent coda to the piece, offering room for – yes – reflection on the nature of life in general and coupledom in particular.

A last thought on Miroirs. Wörtmeyer’s choreography included, at least to these eyes, fragments of movement that evoked some of ballet’s greatest creators and creations. It felt like homage paid to forerunners; little glints from the past that sparked memories and enriched the present. 

Paul Jackson designed the sumptuous lighting for Miroirs (he lit all three works on the program with distinction). 

Natalie Weir’s Four Last Songs closed Bespoke. Richard Strauss hadn’t intended to write a song cycle but that’s how we think now of these tremendously affecting songs that came right at the end of Strauss’s life and speak of heartache and loss. For her ballet Weir selected the storied 1973 recording of Four Last Songs with Gundula Janowitz and the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan. 

Weir used the seasons and the ebb and flow of the sea as metaphors for our awareness of mortality. Principal artist Lucy Green was dressed in the red of the setting sun while four other women were dressed alike in Noeline Hill’s simple dresses, each in a different colour alluding to a season. Green – the dancer, not the colour – was partnered by fellow principal Patricio Revé, he like the four other men in a neutral colour to suggest, as Weir wrote in her program note, grains of sand on the beach. Any man or Everyman, if you will.

To a filmed backdrop of water advancing and retreating on a beach, Green skipped and hopped as if to avoid getting her feet wet. The line of dancers at her feet brought to mind a multiplicity of things: seaweed washed up, or perhaps sunbathers enjoying the last rays of the sun, although there was also an intimation of death. The dying rays? Weir’s theme was the inexorable path we all must travel.

There were many delicate details, as when Green and Revé gently touched Kayla Van Den Bogert, the green-clad image of Spring, and seemed to remember something from their past. Early in the piece the men leaped with the power and grace of sea currents and rolling waves. Couples held one another closely as if at a social dance and men swirled women who held tightly to their necks. There was striking repetition of a moment when a woman was thrown high by a group of men and fluttered as if a scarf on the wind (first Van Den Bogert in focus and later Green, in a far back corner of the stage). And of the many pas de deux, there were two memorable ones that alluded to life’s sorrows from Lina Kim (Autumn) with Callum Mackie and Sophie Zoricic (Winter) with Rian Thompson.

Four Last Songs was at its most touching in the brief Winter scene because it felt the most natural. Zoricic’s hair was a little dishevelled as she and Thompson desperately held one another. They are both fervent dancers unafraid of showing naked emotion and were greatly moving. At other times Four Last Songs felt just a touch too careful.

On the surface you might think Paul Boyd’s Tartan, to selections of Scottish music, might not fit into the inadvertent theme of reflection but it did indeed. An old man at the point of death thinks back to his youth and it appears before his eyes. It’s a simple idea and an appealing one. QB young artist Taron Geyl was a beguiling younger version of Graeme Collins’s old man and with a lively bunch of friends danced his socks off. Kilts swirled, Boyd entertainingly mixed highland dance with contemporary moves and there was a great deal of joy to be derived from seeing the company’s young artists looking so strong as individuals. Hana Nonaka Aillon was a standout, understatedly compassionate as the man’s young love. The dancers appeared to be having a wonderful time and therefore so did the audience.

It is always – always – dispiriting to see dancers in their full bloom putting on the guise of older people. It looks and feels fake. The casting of former QB dancer Collins was therefore another joy. He is a long way from the first flush of youth and brought maturity and wisdom to Tartan, along with a body that speaks of decades lived. Without him there would have been no work.

Bespoke continues at the Thomas Dixon Centre, Brisbane, until August 5.