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…
Category: Dance
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…
A new generation rises to the challenge
Sydney Opera House, April 29. THE Australian Ballet’s first staging of Frederick Ashton’s Symphonic Variations alongside revivals of his coolly mysterious Monotones II and lucid, delightful one-act version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is well overdue. Ashton’s choreography hasn’t surfaced at the AB since 2004 (the last time La Fille mal gardée was presented) and…
‘I am in the right place’
Robert Curran was a long-serving principal artist with The Australian Ballet, from which he retired in 2011. He’s now leading a small company in the United States and relishing a role that is both very similar – ballet is ballet, the studio is the studio – and yet very different from his former life. LOUISVILLE…
To each her own
Sydney Opera House, April 2, 4 and 7 TWO and bit years ago, when Paris Opera Ballet came to Sydney with its production of Giselle, I was able to see three excitingly different readings of the title role, two of them from debutantes. We seem to get our fair share of important firsts in Australia….
Highland fling
Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, May 20. IN August Bournonville’s enduringly popular Romantic ballet, a young man dozes by a vast open fireplace and is woken by an apparition, a beautiful winged creature who kisses him. Immediately enraptured, he tries to catch her but she eludes his grasp and, in an effect that never…
Quintett, Frame of Mind
Sydney Theatre, March 9 and 10. IT was a great coup for Rafael Bonachela to secure William Forsythe’s Quintett for Sydney Dance Company. It is a jewel of the contemporary repertoire with so many facets and colours it could be seen again and again without exhausting its possibilities. And to see it danced as was…
Everything old is new again
Capitol Theatre, Sydney, February 20 and February 24. GRAEME Murphy’s Swan Lake has been a touchstone production – and a fortunate one – not only for The Australian Ballet as a whole but for many dancers. At its premiere in Melbourne on September 17, 2002, Simone Goldsmith started the evening as a senior artist and…
The giants inside
Not I, Footfalls, Rockaby. Royal Court Theatre and Lisa Dwan, State Theatre Centre of WA, February 14. Mozart Dances, Mark Morris Dance Group, His Majesty’s Theatre, February 13. THERE were giants inside as well as outside during Perth’s first festival weekend. While Mark Morris and Mozart ruled with joie de vivre at His Majesty’s, Lisa…
