Sybylla Melvyn blazes like a comet in the night sky, although one with a path that can’t be predicted with any accuracy whatsoever. Sybylla is an agent of chaos, crashing her way towards a life much bigger and brighter than she would seem destined for. This wild girl from drought-stricken Possum Gully at the turn…
Author: Deborah
Mama Does Derby. Windmill Production Company, Sydney Festival and Adelaide Festival, January and February 2026
It goes without saying creating new work is always a gamble. When it’s staged as part of a major festival the stakes are even higher. The show has to compete with much more seasoned fare. Odious comparisons may be made and a strong idea may never get to have a second chance. That fate has…
Songs of the Bulbul. Aakash Odedra Company, Sydney Opera House, January 28, 2026
You hear it a lot in foyers. “A short show’s a good show” we cry before heading into the auditorium. It’s shorthand, if you will, for the knowledge that we don’t be detained too long if a terrible performance lasts only 90 minutes or so without interval. It’s kind of a joke but not a…
Prism. The Australian Ballet, Regent Theatre, Melbourne, September 25. Sydney from November 7.
The contemporary triple bill Prism starts its Sydney season on November 7, after which, just for something completely different, The Australian Ballet will dive back into David McAllister’s blingy, ultra-traditional The Sleeping Beauty. It started its national run in Adelaide in July and had a Brisbane season in August. It goes without saying the company is versatile. That’s…
Bad Nature, Australasian Dance Collective, Club Guy & Roni, Studio Boris Acket and HIIIT, Brisbane Powerhouse, September 3, 2025
Two years ago I was at the 2023 Brisbane Festival to see Salamander, the astonishing dance-theatre-visual arts piece by British choreographer and director Maxine Doyle with an extraordinary design by superstar Es Devlin. The dancers were from Brisbane-based Australasian Dance Collective, an organisation that may be small in size but huge in aspiration and achievement….
INDance. Neilson Studio, Sydney Dance Company, August 15 and 22, 2025
Sydney Dance Company’s INDance, now in its fourth year, is a small festival that presents already existing – although relatively new – works in SDC’s black-box Neilson Studio. It’s a pick’n’mix program. Casts tend to be small, there’s not a lot in the way of fancy lighting or sets that knock your socks off. This…
The Sleeping Beauty. The Australian Ballet, Adelaide, July 22-23, 2025.
Tchaikovsky was “charmed and captivated” when asked to write the music for The Sleeping Beauty by the director of the Imperial Theatres, Ivan Vsevolozhsky. Audiences have felt the same since the work’s premiere in 1890. The composer and choreographer Marius Petipa worked closely and harmoniously together and created one of the ballet canon’s enduring masterpieces. The Sleeping Beauty has been…
The Australian Ballet National Tour, Wollongong, July 25, 2025
Whenever I am within cooee of a venue for The Australian Ballet’s regional tour I will be there. Port Macquarie, 2023; Newcastle, 2024; Wollongong, 2025. Other places in other years too. I recall a rather long drive to Bathurst eons ago and a Giselle at The Concourse in Sydney’s Chatswood. I note that TAB now calls this…
Carmen, The Australian Ballet: A new perspective. Canberra Theatre Centre, June 21, 2025
You don’t go back to a ballet again and again just to see the ballet. You go to see what different artists make of that ballet (same with opera; same with theatre). An alternative cast brings its own atmosphere to a piece, or at least one hopes it does. The overall framework of the piece…
Ballet Preljocaj Swan Lake: free screenings around Australia
Queensland Performing Arts Centre is celebrating its 40th anniversary by giving out the presents. Free screenings of Ballet Preljocaj’s contemporary Swan Lake, which had a season just a couple of weeks ago in Brisbane, are available on demand for audiences around Australia and will be shown in regional venues around the state. It’s an extremely generous gift….
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