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…
Category: Dance
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….
Rapid reboot at Alberta Ballet
There’s a vibrant spirit of renewal at Canada’s Alberta Ballet, the Calgary-based company that next year celebrates its 60th anniversary. Artistic director Francesco Ventriglia has been in place for only 18 months but is moving rapidly on multiple fronts. He has already increased the size of the company, is putting the classical tradition front and centre…
Patricio Revé news the bright spot at Queensland Ballet’s time of woe
It’s been known for some time that Queensland Ballet is in financial difficulty. This week we discovered it is in the process of cutting staff from behind the scenes and within its company of about 60 dancers. It’s a heartbreaking reversal of fortune for the company remade and substantially expanded under the artistic directorship of…
Romeo & Juliet. Queensland Ballet. Lyric Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane, March 22 and 26, 2025
It’s all change at Queensland Ballet. Again. The company is far from being the only arts organisation experiencing some turmoil – here’s looking at you, Opera Australia – but every company’s woes are its own. These are interesting times as QB continues to regroup after the retirement of transformational artistic director Li Cunxin. Li left…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 