WHATEVER you call it – circus, burlesque, cabaret, vaudeville, physical theatre, variety, magic – Sydney apparently can’t get enough of it. In January more than a dozen shows falling somewhere within these porous borders have fetched up, most as part of a mini-festival within the Sydney Festival or from other presenters keen to mine this…
Category: Dance
The urge to perform
I AM not a great fan of audience participation – certainly not for myself, and rarely when I see others roped in. Frequently it involves people making spectacles of themselves or being put in an awkward position they can’t wriggle out of. It almost invariably feels like a power trip on the part of the…
The year ahead
And coming up in 2014 … LAST year it was easy to point to the events in dance one thought would be unmissable (not so very many) and theatre (vast amounts). Mostly performances and productions delivered pretty much what one thought they would and moments of transcendence were few, but I guess they always are….
Dance in 2013
THE Australian dance-lover had plenty to enjoy in 2013, as long as there was a decent travel budget to hand. Paris Opera Ballet returned to Sydney, the Bolshoi had a season in Brisbane, The Australian Ballet premiered a new version of Cinderella by Alexei Ratmansky (Melbourne and Sydney only, although Adelaide sees it in 2014),…
2013: a retrospective
Here’s my take on the year’s high points. As many have noted before me, “best” is a useless word when applied to the cornucopia available in the arts. Here are the people and productions that most inspired me. “A SHORT show is a good show,” we all carol (me and my fellow critics) as we…
QB Nutcracker; David Hallberg at the AB
The Nutcracker, Queensland Ballet, Playhouse, QPAC, Brisbane, December 7 Cinderella, The Australian Ballet, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, December 14 IN many places in the northern hemisphere, but particularly in the US, seeing The Nutcracker at Christmas is as necessary as having gifts and dressing a tree. There’s another necessity too: so popular has The Nutcracker…
Retirement and promotion at the AB
La Sylphide, Sydney Opera House, November 25 IT’S one of the Australian Ballet’s most striking images. Olivia Bell looks at the camera with a cool expression, her head inclined slightly downwards so the effect is of mystery rather than direct challenge. Her hands are on her hips and her weight is placed on her left…
Dance Clan 3
Bangarra Dance Theatre, Bangarra Studio Theatre, Sydney. November 19. ONE of the hot topics of conversation in dance is the under-representation of women in choreography. The situation is much better in contemporary dance than in ballet, but there is still disparity. Bangarra’s Dance Clan 3 therefore had a great deal going for it before a…
The Pilates phenomenon
THERE’S more to getting ready for a ballet performance than donning a stunning costume, doing a stage-worthy make-up and rubbing a rabbit’s foot for luck. Before the curtain goes up there will have been countless hours of rehearsal over weeks and months (not to mention the decade or so of training to get to that…
La Sylphide
The Australian Ballet, Sydney Opera House, November 7 WHAT to do about a ballet as dreamily brief as La Sylphide? In the middle of this year West Australian Ballet took the minimalist approach and added nothing to fill out the evening. Over the years the Australian Ballet has taken several paths. In 1996, under Maina…
