As David McAllister announced his last full season as artistic director of The Australian Ballet, the company formally launched its search for McAllister’s successor. McAllister retires in December of next year after 20 years at the helm but will have significant input into the 2021 program. The new director is not expected to start until…
Category: Dance
Giselle, West Australian Ballet
His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth, September 13 and 14. Was there ever a man who said his life’s ambition was to dance Hilarion? Probably not. He is the spurned lover in Giselle, a gamekeeper who can’t match the allure of his rival, aristo-in-disguise Albrecht. Hilarion offers dead birds to Giselle’s mother to shore up his position;…
Romeo and Juliet, Queensland Ballet
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, August 28. When Queensland Ballet staged Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet in 2014 the then-small company took a huge risk, although one mitigated by bringing in superstars Carlos Acosta, Tamara Rojo and Steven McRae to partner QB principal artists. The gamble paid off. The season was a record-breaking success and, more importantly,…
Natalia Osipova’s Pure Dance, Sydney
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, August 29. Natalia Osipova is the most arresting classical dancer of her generation. Others may have an inner fire that burns brightly but she has a furnace. Osipova is incandescent. For the past six years she has made The Royal Ballet her base and that company’s foundational commitment to story-telling…
Amy Hollingsworth at Expressions Dance Company: warrior for the human condition
Amy Hollingsworth can’t be too specific about the first season she is curating as artistic director of Brisbane-based Expressions Dance Company – details for 2020 will be announced later this year – but she can talk about the philosophy that secured her the job. EDC may have a core of only half a dozen dancers…
Spartacus and Jewels, Bolshoi Ballet
QPAC International Series, Brisbane, June 27 and June 29 The Bolshoi’s pairing of Yuri Grigorovich’s Spartacus and George Balanchine’s Jewels could not be more fascinating. They were made only a year apart, in 1968 and 1967 respectively, and come from the hands of men with a common lineage but different destinies. Their shared birthplace tells the story. Grigorovich…
Synergy, Queensland Ballet
Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Brisbane, June 28 Synergy is a small, unpretentious program that’s partly a place where emerging choreographers can test their capabilities and partly where Queensland Ballet’s Young Artists and members of its Pre-Professional year can get some stage time. Both these things are important aspects of QB’s remit but, at least in this year’s…
Bangarra Dance Theatre: 30 years of sixty five thousand
Bangarra Dance Theatre, Sydney Opera House, June 14 What a marvellous idea to include Jiří Kylián’s Stamping Ground in this celebration of Bangarra’s three decades of dance. It’s a terrifically exciting piece and its presence could be justified simply on artistic grounds. But why now, particularly as Bangarra has never before performed the work of a non-Indigenous…
The Masters Series, Queensland Ballet
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, May 17 and 18 (matinee) Old politicians are never the ones who die in battle, are they? Jiří Kylián’s Soldier’s Mass (1980) isn’t the only ballet to illustrate that poignant truth but it is one of the most affecting. With Bohuslav Martinů’s anguished Field Mass (1939) ringing in their ears, 12 young…
Benedicte Bemet’s Giselle
The Australian Ballet, Sydney Opera House, May 8 For many ballet-lovers the second act of Giselle is what brings them back repeatedly and Maina Gielgud’s much-revived production for The Australian Ballet doesn’t let them down. She created it in 1986, which means that more than a few generations of TAB dancers have been schooled in its…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 