When The Australian Ballet stages Stephen Baynes’s traditional Swan Lake in Sydney from April 1 for 21 performances it will field six couples in the leading roles of Odette-Odile and Siegfried. One of those couples was to have been senior artist Natasha Kusch with principal Daniel Gaudiello, a partnership that promised a great deal. Kusch,…
Author: Deborah
HUANG YI & KUKA
Seymour Centre, Sydney, March 16. CAN a robot dance? It can move, of course, doing whatever its programmer has decided upon and is able to achieve technically, but is that movement dancing? And do we express the title of the work as Huang Yi & Kuka or HUANG YI & KUKA? The first implies a…
80 Minutes No Interval, Swansong
Old Fitzroy Theatre, March 15 “A SHORT show’s a good show,” critics carol to one another, pleased to discover that what we’re about to see will all be over in 60 minutes, 70 minutes, 80 or perhaps 90, straight through. One hundred minutes is usually as long as it gets without an interval, although at…
Vitesse
The Australian Ballet, State Theatre, Melbourne, March 11. VITESSE presents three certified hits from three of the biggest names in contemporary ballet and turns the dial up as the evening progresses. It starts with one of Jiří Kylián’s mysterious appeals to the heart, takes a charge through the cerebral and physical complexities of William Forsythe…
Nelken
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Adelaide Festival, March 9. Peter Pabst’s set for Nelken is one of the most beautiful created for any theatrical event. A dense field of thousands of silk carnations in several shades of pink covers the stage, ravishing in its simplicity and effect. It is absolutely lovely, but disconcerting too. A dance…
Sydney Dance Company
CounterMove. Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, Sydney, February 29. LUX Tenebris – Light in Darkness – is the name of Rafael Bonachela’s new work but it could well have been chosen to describe Sydney Dance Company’s new double bill as a whole. The company’s reprise of Alexander Ekman’s Cacti, which opens the evening, puts the…
Royal New Zealand Ballet: Speed of Light
Auckland Arts Festival, March 2. Francesco Ventriglia was named artistic director of Royal New Zealand Ballet back in September 2014 but hasn’t been able to put his stamp on programming until now. Of necessity his predecessor, former American Ballet Theatre star Ethan Stiefel, was responsible for what was seen on stage in 2015. These things…
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Apocrifu
Perth International Arts Festival, February 25. “In the beginning was the Word,” begins the Gospel according to St John, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But whose god prevails, given that every major religion has its holy book and claims the primacy of its word over all others? Sidi Larbi…
Little Shop of Horrors
Luckiest Productions & Tinderbox Productions. Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, February 23. RESISTANCE is useless Earthlings. Little Shop of Horrors is back and roaring for warm blood. Human blood. Your blood. I doubt it will be denied, at least in cult-musicals circles. The greatly cherished show has an almost mystical following and, with this production, should…
New work at Queensland Ballet
Dance Dialogues, Brisbane, February 20. Classical ballet is the oddest thing. It has a tiny core repertoire – fewer than 20 works; perhaps less than 15 if you’re being very strict – that define it to the world at large. These are the full-length story ballets that audiences will reliably attend year after year and…
