A new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon, Oscar, is the centrepiece of David Hallberg’s 2024 program for The Australian Ballet. It is being made on the company in what is Hallberg’s first full-length commission since taking over as TAB artistic director in 2021. The ballet will interweave aspects of the tumultuous life of legendary wit, playwright, novelist and poet Oscar Wilde with characters and themes from his work and be danced to a new score by frequent Wheeldon collaborator Joby Talbot. Jean-Marc Puissant will design. 

Wheeldon has form with Wilde. In 2007 he made The Nightingale and the Rose for New York City Ballet, based on Wilde’s story of the same name.  

Hallberg’s second big get is Melbourne-based contemporary choreographer Stephanie Lake. This year she made a work called Circle Electric for a tour in which TAB members join with senior students from The Australian Ballet School to bring ballet to regional centres (I saw it in the NSW coastal city of Port Macquarie as part of a triple bill). Circle Electric was made on six dancers. The 2024 iteration will have more than 50. Composer Robin Fox and designers Bosco Shaw (lights), Paula Levis (costumes) and Charles Davis (set) will return for the rematch.

In 2018 Lake made Colossus, the work that really got her career into top gear (it is now a big international festival favourite). Colossus initially had close to 50 dancers but the number has been a bit of a moveable feast as the piece makes its way to various places and the performers are sourced locally. Let’s just say Colossus was made on about 50 dancers and that next year Circle Electric will have a number larger than that.

During his launch of the 2024 program Hallberg asked Lake what the piece might look like in this much expanded form. Lake can’t say yet. Choreographing is “like sifting for gold, trying to find the work as you make it”, she said. 

It will, however, very much bear the stamp of its beginnings. It will, said Lake, be “super rhythmic, super dynamic”. And bigger. Much bigger. 

Circle Electric will be paired with that paean to the ballet classroom, Harald Landers’s Études, which the company hasn’t performed for a decade. It’s “a collision of worlds”, says Hallberg of putting the two works side by side.

Also new to Australian audiences will be Carmen, a take on the Prosper Mérimée story via Bizet’s opera. Choreographer Johan Inger made Carmen in 2015 for the Campañía Nacional de Danza in Madrid and brings the story into the present day. Inger strips it to “its fundamental elements of obsession and brutality”, an approach that won the choreographer the 2016 Prix Benois de la Danse.

During the season video launch Hallberg spoke to senior artist Jill Ogai, who will dance Carmen. Asked why she was attracted to the role, Ogai said it was “so unusual for the central character in a ballet to not be inherently good”. For her this was a big plus. She should look great in it.

Wheeldon gets two bites of the cherry in 2024 when TAB revives his family-friendly Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Other revivals are Peter Wright’s traditional, beloved The Nutcracker and George Balanchine’s Jewels. Jewels was seen this year in Sydney, Melbourne and London. Next year it’s Adelaide’s turn. 

Australia’s other big-two state capital cities, Brisbane and Perth, are unvisited in 2024, although Brisbane at least gets this year’s big 60^th anniversary production of Swan Lake, as does Adelaide. But in Australia it can be extremely hard to get into a suitable theatre at the right time and brutally expensive to traverse the wide brown land with a large company. That’s just the reality.

TAB in 2024

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Sydney, February 20-March 5; Melbourne, March 15-26

Carmen: Sydney, April 10-27

Études/Circle Electric: Sydney, May 3-18; Melbourne October 2-9

Jewels: Adelaide, July 12-18

Oscar: Melbourne, September 13-24; Sydney, November 8-23

The Nutcracker: Sydney, November 30-December 18