Carriageworks, Sydney, December 9. SOMETIMES it’s about getting experience, sometimes it’s about getting the kind of exposure that can really pay dividends. Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed program introduces audiences to choreographers who are either completely new to the game or who still fly somewhat under the radar. Last year, for instance, New Breed included…
Category: Dance
Lucinda Dunn: Act II, updated
When I spoke to former Australian Ballet principal artist Lucinda Dunn recently about her new career as artistic director of Tanya Pearson Classical Coaching Academy she was deep in rehearsals for Sydney City Youth Ballet’s The Nutcracker. SCYB is where the academy’s students gain performing experience before – if they are good enough and fortunate…
Ochres, Bangarra Dance Theatre
Carriageworks, Sydney, November 27. OCHRES is embedded in Bangarra history and the memories of dance-lovers. Created in the company’s early days, not long after Stephen Page became artistic director, it had a distinctive style that has continued to serve Bangarra well. Audiences were entranced by the now familiar blend of traditional and contemporary movement, music…
Self Unfinished, Xavier Le Roy
Carriageworks, Sydney, November 17. As the audience entered the large Carriageworks auditorium Xavier Le Roy was already in attendance, looking about in mildly interested fashion. Dressed in nondescript casual wear, he sat at a small table in an otherwise featureless white space, his chin resting in his hand. The lights were up and so, as…
The Australian Ballet’s 20:21
Sydney Opera House, November 5 After a year dominated by Giselle, Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella, the lavish new Sleeping Beauty and Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, the dancers of The Australian Ballet were undoubtedly delighted to dive into the pared-back costumes and sharp-edged choreography of 20:21 (the title refers to the 20th and…
Queensland Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty
Lyric Theatre, Brisbane, October 23 and October 24 It is something of an understatement to say Greg Horsman knows The Sleeping Beauty well. Not only was it the first ballet he saw, the one that made him want to be a dancer, it was a key role for him. Among the stages on which he…
Francesco Ventriglia and Royal New Zealand Ballet
A year into his artistic directorship, Francesco Ventriglia talks about his goals for Royal New Zealand Ballet and his first program for the company “My life is where I can have a theatre, where I can have dancers, where I can have a space to express my creativity. I don’t care if it’s Milan or…
Triptych
Sydney Dance Company with ACO2 and Katie Noonan. Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, Sydney, September 29. BENJAMIN Britten was in his 20s when he wrote the three works to which Rafael Bonachela responds so ardently in Triptych. Innocence, desire, joy, playfulness and sensuality all have their role in the music and the evocation of the…
François Chaignaud, Ken Unsworth and Australian Dance Artists
Dumy Moyi, Carriageworks, Sydney, September 30; Departures, Ken Unsworth Studio, Sydney, October 1. In the recent exhibition of dance and the moving image 24 Frames per Second, staged beautifully and expansively at Sydney’s Carriageworks, I kept returning to one work. It was François Chaignaud’s The Sweetest Choice, a suite of five films, each eight or nine…
Into the woods
Melbourne, September 15 THE Australian Ballet and its audiences have a great deal invested in David McAllister’s new Sleeping Beauty, in both senses of the word. The first is financial: this Beauty cost more than $2 million to produce and 70 per cent of its financing was provided by ballet-lovers. The program lists hundreds of…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 