Sydney Opera House, August 19. LET’S not talk in the past tense about Sylvie Guillem. She may be on her farewell tour but she is still one of the greatest of the greats. Until December, when she calls it quits, she is still a dancer and still a superstar. At 50 she leaves the stage…
Category: Dance
Robert Curran attracts $US1 million gift for Louisville Ballet
IN his first year as artistic director of Louisville Ballet, in the US state of Kentucky, former Australian Ballet principal dancer Robert Curran has attracted a donation of $US1 million to the company. It is believed to be the largest gift received from an individual donor in the company’s 63-year history, says Louisville Ballet director…
On View: Live Portraits
Performance Space at Carriageworks, Sydney, July 17 HOW can we know the dancer from the dance, asked W.B. Yeats. It’s a question embedded in Sue Healey’s absorbing On View: Live Portraits, a piece that incorporates the moving image, live performance and, for 10 minutes at the beginning, the dancer as museum object. When the doors to…
The sweetest choice
CARRIAGEWORKS is Sydney’s other great secular cathedral. This vast late-19th century industrial space, originally built as railway workshops to make train carriages for the growing city, is less than a decade old as a centre for contemporary arts and doesn’t have the instant-recognition factor of the Sydney Opera House, but it, too, is awe-inspiring in…
Flying high
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, June 26. TREY McIntyre is a prolific American choreographer who has made more than 100 works – he is only 45 – and is widely known and admired in the US. When he announced last year he was closing his Trey McIntyre Project as a fulltime ensemble to concentrate on a…
Heart and soul
Sydney Opera House, June 11 IN Frances Rings’s Sheoak, her new work for Bangarra Dance Theatre, there is a greatly touching section for two women, on the Sydney opening night danced by Elma Kris and Yolanda Lowatta. The duo is one of protection, nurturing and teaching, and was enriched immeasurably by Kris’s radiant maturity and…
Everything old is new again
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, May 29 and May 30. WHEN Serge Diaghilev decided to stage The Sleeping Beauty in London the monumental Russian Imperial-era ballet was not an obvious stablemate for the modernist dance works he had introduced with his Ballets Russes. But Diaghilev had his reasons. There was Tchaikovsky’s music, which he admired…
Light and shade
Sydney Opera House, June 3 MARK Morris is a master of light. You see this in all sorts of ways: the deeply satisfying structures where formality is leavened by little quirks and surprises; unassuming costumes that flatter bodies and let you see the dance; and clarity of purpose that means the viewer is in no…
Soulmates
American Ballet Theatre, May 28 IN the life of an inveterate dance-lover there are many Giselles and many new insights into the ballet and its characters, or at least one always goes in hope that will be the case. Details and nuances that create character register differently with each exponent. How does Giselle react when…
Room at the top
Giselle, American Ballet Theatre, May 23; La Sylphide, New York City Ballet, May 24; All Robbins, New York City Ballet, May 26 IF this had been The Australian Ballet, this is what would have happened. During the curtain calls the artistic director would have come on to the stage, microphone in hand, and elevated the evening’s Giselle…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 