Shaun Parker & Company, Seymour Centre, Sydney, September 11 I FIRST saw Happy as Larry at the Sydney Festival in 2010 and reviewed it for The Australian. I liked it very much then, with a slight caveat, and liked it very much again yesterday. It’s been tweaked a little to advantage, if I recall correctly,…
Category: Dance
When Time Stops
Expressions Dance Company Brisbane, September 10 IN Greek mythology the river Styx marks the point of no return. On one side is life, and on the other death; the ferryman Charon is the intermediary, transporting souls to the afterlife. Natalie Weir has taken this enduring story as the wellspring of When Time Stops, a new…
The Australian Ballet launches a new look
The Australian Ballet’s 2014 season introduces a few surprises IT used to be chiselled in stone. Every mainstage season of the Australian Ballet in Melbourne would have 11 or 12 performances and in Sydney, in the smaller Joan Sutherland Theatre, there would be 20 or thereabouts. It didn’t matter if it was Swan Lake or…
iTMOi, Les Illuminations
Akram Khan Company, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, August 28. Les Illuminations, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Dance Company and Katie Noonan, The Studio, Sydney Opera House, August 28 AKRAM Khan is a choreographer with a hugely inquiring and generous mind. The list of his collaborators is long, stellar and diverse. He’s not a man content…
Elegance, Queensland Ballet
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, August 2 EMMA Lippa is one of Australian ballet’s hidden treasures. She developed her formidable skills as an accompanist at the Bolshoi Ballet then used her gifts for two decades at the Australian Ballet. Lippa has retired from the AB but not from the piano or from ballet, as Queensland Ballet…
Abandon
School of Arts Theatre, Townsville, July 24. I WAS much taken by the concept for Abandon. The word can mean to cut loose in a negative sense, to rid oneself of something or someone; or it can mean a surrender to ecstatic states. Dancenorth’s website promised heightened emotions – euphoria, jealousy, fury, madness and so…
Lucy Green, RNZB, in profile
WHEN Lucy Green stepped on to the stage at Wellington’s St James Theatre on July 21 it was in front of the toughest crowd imaginable. Dancers from every era of Royal New Zealand Ballet’s history were in town for the company’s 60th anniversary celebrations and they’d come en masse to a special matinee performance of…
Swan Lake, RNZB, change of cast
St James Theatre, Wellington, July 19 A SECOND viewing of Russell Kerr’s Swan Lake for Royal New Zealand Ballet introduced two new young leads and further illuminated its strengths and a few weaknesses. Last night the mature, high-octane opening night pairing of Gillian Murphy and Pacific Northwest Ballet guest Karel Cruz gave way to the…
Swan Lake, Royal New Zealand Ballet
St James Theatre, Wellington, July 18 TO mark its 60th anniversary – the first public performance was on June 30, 1953 – Royal New Zealand Ballet is offering graceful tribute to its oldest surviving former artistic director, Russell Kerr, by reviving the Swan Lake he made for the company in 1996. (Company founder Poul Gnatt…
Aurelien Scannella, West Australian Ballet
Aurielen Scannella was announced as West Australian Ballet’s artistic director in August of last year and took up his post in Perth at the beginning of 2013. He succeeded Ivan Cavallari, who is now artistic director of Ballet du Rhin in France. Born in Belgium, Scannella has been a dancer, ballet master and rehearsal director…
