Sydney Opera House, April 6 (evening) and 11 (matinee). It would have been the easiest thing in the world to give Graeme Murphy a conventional gala to celebrate his 50 years of association with The Australian Ballet, the company he joined as a member of the corps de ballet in 1968. The idea for the…
Category: Dance
La Bayadère, Queensland Ballet
Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, March 16. La Bayadère is a difficult ballet to take seriously in the 21st century and Queensland Ballet’s new production does it few favours. Despite some fine dancing the abiding impression is of a narrative in sore need of stringent dramaturgical intervention. Greg Horsman’s revision invites – no, demands –…
Adelaide Festival: Split and Memorial
Split, Lucy Guerin Inc. AC Main Arts Theatre, Adelaide. March 3. Memorial, Brink Productions, Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide, March 3. The opening weekend of this year’s Adelaide Festival, the second under the co-artistic directorship of Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, had brilliance and breadth in equal measure. The marquee work was Australian composer Brett Dean’s opera…
A new year dawns at RNZB
Biographies of the new intake at Royal New Zealand Ballet are now on the website after last year’s bruising and very public exodus of a large number of dancers. There are currently 32 dancers pictured on the site, 22 of whom were still standing at the end of 2017. Now the dust has settled it…
to a simple, rock’n’roll … song
Michael Clark Company, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, January 30. In the first part of Michael Clark’s gorgeous triptych of dances there’s an image of quiet, deep reverence enacted by two men, their hands spread and their heads bowed. It could stand for the whole work really, which pays homage to choreographers, musicians and artists…
New short films about dance-makers
Ghenoa Gela won the biennial Keir Choreographic Award in 2016 with a work infused with her Torres Strait Islander heritage while posing resonant questions about meanings inherent in or imposed on Indigenous dance. Fragments of Malungoka – Women of the Sea also won the people’s vote – a result that didn’t surprise at all. Gela’s work…
Force Majeure: You Animal, You
Sydney Festival, Carriageworks, January 6 Heather Mitchell is one of the great treasures of the Australian stage and any chance to see her must be grabbed eagerly, as proved to be the case even in a work as unsteady as Force Majeure’s You Animal, You. Under its founder and former artistic director Kate Champion, Force…
Li and QB: my artists of the year
My first Artist of the Year, in 2015, was operatic mezzo, cabaret sensation, music-theatre star and all-round fine human being Jacqueline Dark. Last year I went for a large, disparate group of people and companies – the independent theatre artists who do tremendous work at low prices, making their art accessible to all often at…
RNZB and the numbers game
What possessed the Board of Royal New Zealand Ballet to assert in its statement of December 15 that 42% of the dancers are either New Zealanders or trained in New Zealand and that next year the goal is to have an even higher percentage? The main thrust of the statement is fine – the Board has…
Independent review of RNZB
Royal New Zealand Ballet today announced it has commissioned an independent review of its employment processes. This follows two weeks of intense scrutiny about dancer turnover, opportunities for New Zealand dancers and working conditions and practices. A welcome move is the undertaking to give company artists a say in decision-making. At the moment there is…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 