By start time of 8pm Perth’s temperature had dropped a little from its high of 41°C to something, well, not much below that. But the sky was clear and humidity low – a perfect night, then, for West Australian Ballet’s annual open-air season at Quarry Amphitheatre.

The program was mostly chosen by former WAB artistic director Aurélien Scannella – gracefully mentioned by guest artistic director for 2024, David McAllister, in his post-show speech – with a small addition from McAllister. 

McAllister’s decision was wise. The title of Gakuro Matsui’s In 3 min 40 describes its brevity but it had impact and brought a different texture to the evening. In 3 min 40 dived into the highs and lows of love and separation with touching directness, amplified by the choice of music by Ennio Morricone played by Yo-Yo Ma. 

It would be a rare person who couldn’t identify with the emotions summoned by corps de ballet member Kassidy Thompson and demi-soloist Jack Whiter. The two, dressed in everyday clothes, made every intention clear and evocative. 

The piece has very personal meaning to Matsui, a WAB principal dancer, and it showed. He made the piece originally for the company’s new-work program, Genesis, last year, and it was good to see it get a mainstage outing.

British choreographer David Dawson’s Metamorphosis was the headliner piece. It premiered online in 2021 with Dutch National Ballet and was much admired, but there’s nothing like seeing dance such as this live. Metamorphosis is a gorgeous work, performed glowingly to Philip Glass’s five-part piano piece of the same name. Not surprisingly it’s been used by other choreographers, Lucinda Childs among them, for a simple reason. It’s music that sweeps dancer and listener onwards, together.

Dawson’s impetus for the work came with the deepest disruptions of the Covid pandemic but is still potent today. Dawson has described Metamorphosis as “A ballet about hope. To hold on to innocence and the purity of wonderment.” 

To this end everyone is dressed in white, the women in elegant leotards and the men in tights and loose-fitting tops. Dawson’s movement language and the work’s architecture are highly complex and sophisticated and yet a luminous simplicity reigns. Everything feels right. 

Metamorphosis starts with a lustrous pas de deux, on opening night danced by Dayana Hardy Acuña and Oscar Valdés. Their dancing was bountiful, sensuous and with little touches that flickered like a briefly seen light that nevertheless illuminates. It is wondrous how something as small as a whisper or a hand tenderly touching the back of someone’s head can speak volumes. 

After that first movement the rest of the dancers – there are 16 in all including the lead couple – come and go. Sometimes they stand at the back, wheel across the stage from the side or work in pairs, groups of pairs or in whole-company unison.

The flow is constant and varied, again with details that add so much to the texture of the piece. At one point dancers cover their eyes while others put a hand to the heart. Other gestures are much more expansive, arms opening to the heavens. There are nods to the formal classical lexicon, something that never fails to move in contemporary work, and occasional courtly bows that go back even further in dance history. From time to time there are moments of complete stillness, as if a thought were being held.

Metamorphosis circles back to its lead woman and a sense of quiet optimism. It’s a piece that could be seen many times with pleasure and gratitude.

Dawson wasn’t in Perth to stage Metamorphosis but his frequent choreographic assistant and stager, Sydney-born Rebecca Gladstone, was. The dancers looked wonderful under her guidance.

In this all-male line-up (memo for next year: perhaps a woman choreographer or two?) Dawson’s fellow countryman, George Williamson, was represented by two works that topped and tailed the program. The short Wonderers, which came first, was an Australian premiere. The longer Extension to Boom was a WAB commission receiving its first performances in this Quarry season. 

Williamson is a good two decades younger than Dawson so it’s perhaps unfair to say that his work was very much overshadowed by Metamorphosis, but it is the case.

Wonderers looked oddly soft-edged. The movement was athletic, with lots of swirling in the arms and torso, but lacking in force and drama. 

Extension to Boom was danced to muscular music by Bryce Dessner (Concerto for Two Pianos, 2018) that propelled the dancers, six couples, to enjoyably high-energy performances. They looked bright and bouncy in Jonathan Hindmarsh’s colourful costumes and projected loads of personality. Polly Hilton, as always, lit up the stage. She and Juan Carlos Osma were standouts in a sparky line-up but alas the piece stayed firmly on the surface.

Williamson describes Extension to Boom as “a visceral exploration of movement, geometry and a passionate pursuit of physical expression”. But then he speaks of evoking feelings to invite reflection and inquiry. In Extension to Boom he succeeds in the first instance but not in the second.  

Metamorphosis: Ballet at the Quarry runs until March 9.