The Australian Ballet’s 60th anniversary celebrations came to a close in Sydney with Swan Lake and with promotions for 16 dancers – about 20 per cent of the company. TAB ended 2023 with 67 dancers although that number will increase to 77 when three new soloists and seven new corps de ballet members join next year. Swan Lake was…
Category: Dance
Leanne Benjamin named Queensland Ballet’s new artistic director
Leanne Benjamin has been named Li Cunxin’s successor as artistic director of Brisbane-based Queensland Ballet. She is the sixth AD in the company’s 63-year history and the first woman to be appointed to the position. She will start at QB mid next month. It’s a home-coming for Rockhampton-born Benjamin, who spent most of her career…
PPY23 Revealed. Sydney Dance Company, Carriageworks, December 12, 2023
At the end of PPY23 Revealed there were huge shouts of joy from the young dancers who had just performed. For about half of them – and there were more than 50 in total – it was a graduation performance, their two years as participants in Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year program now done and dusted. They…
Up Close: Somos. Sydney Dance Company, Neilson Studio, November 1, 2023
Up close is right. It’s likely you’ll never get nearer the spectacular Sydney Dance Company bodies than this. SDC is usually seen in the conventional 900-seat Roslyn Packer Theatre just across the road from the company’s home in Sydney’s Walsh Bay. Up Close: Somos is staged in SDC’s Neilson Studio for a maximum of 150…
The Australian Ballet names Stephanie Lake its new Resident Choreographer
The Australian Ballet’s announcement today that Stephanie Lake is to be its new Resident Choreographer from the beginning of next year is very good news indeed. Lake is one of the country’s most sophisticated makers of dance and one of the most wedded to the joys and trials of being human. In everything she does,…
Swan Lake. The Australian Ballet, State Theatre, Melbourne, September 19-20, 2023
Tradition reigns in The Australian Ballet’s new Swan Lake, based on a fondly remembered 1977 production by former artistic director Anne Woolliams. Nearly 50 years on it’s still recognisable as her work, albeit with lashings of 21st-century glamour. Swan Lake is the main event in artistic director David Hallberg’s celebration of the company’s 60th anniversary and in what…
Salamander, Brisbane Festival, September 2, 2023
In 2019 Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina, then new in her role, travelled the substantial width of Australia to attend the Perth Festival, as you do. There she met British chorographer and director Maxine Doyle, who was in Perth to work on a dance piece called Sunset with local choreographic centre STRUT Dance. And, as you…
Ty King-Wall is Royal New Zealand Ballet’s new artistic director
There should be much rejoicing in New Zealand dance circles today with the announcement that Ty King-Wall is to be Royal New Zealand Ballet’s next artistic director. It’s a homecoming for King-Wall, who made his dance career with The Australian Ballet but was born in New Zealand and started his dance studies there. His appointment…
The Australian Ballet in 2024
A new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon, Oscar, is the centrepiece of David Hallberg’s 2024 program for The Australian Ballet. It is being made on the company in what is Hallberg’s first full-length commission since taking over as TAB artistic director in 2021. The ballet will interweave aspects of the tumultuous life of legendary wit, playwright, novelist…
echoes of VAN GOGH, West Australian Ballet, Perth, September 8, 2023
Wubkje Kuindersma’s new echoes of VAN GOGH for West Australian Ballet looks wonderful. The artist’s work is everywhere in Tatyana van Walsum’s designs, almost overwhelmingly so. Intense colours flood the eye as sweeping brush strokes are projected on a wide curved wall, some of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings are reproduced on a grand scale and…
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