When choreographers are asked to make new work for Queensland Ballet’s Bespoke the result can be a program of great diversity, as happened last year, or one that inadvertently seems to have a theme, as was the case this year. If you were going to give Bespoke 2023 one of those overarching titles given to…
Category: Dance
Lucie in the Sky. Australasian Dance Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre, July 14, 2023
Australasian Dance Collective is a small company that thinks big. Very big indeed when it comes to Lucie in the Sky, a piece for six dancers and five drones. The title has nothing to do with the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds although that song’s “girl with kaleidoscope eyes” wouldn’t be out of place in the…
Yuldea. Bangarra Dance Theatre, Sydney Opera House, June 15, 2023
Bangarra Dance Theatre lives and breathes stories of the great southern land. Roaming through time and space it offers a different way of looking at history and place. It opens hearts. It expands minds. New artistic director Frances Rings continues this great work with Yuldea. It takes us beyond the Nullarbor to that most precious of…
Trilogy. Queensland Ballet, Brisbane, June 16, 2023
British choreographer Cathy Marston has made literary adaptations a cornerstone of her work. My Brilliant Career, the closing work in Queensland Ballet’s latest triple bill, Trilogy, joins the illustrious company of Jane Eyre, Dangerous Liaisons, Of Mice and Men and Lady Chatterley’s Lover among others. Miles Franklin’s novel, published in 1901, has at its centre a loveable but maddening creature with outsized desires….
The Australian Ballet at 60: Don Quixote, Identity, Jewels, April-May 2023
The way The Australian Ballet’s calendar works meant Sydney had a unique opportunity to assess the company’s form and direction at the halfway point of its 60th anniversary celebration year. The ballets came thick and fast in the harbour city. After opening in Melbourne – TAB’s home base – in March, Don Quixote moved on to Sydney in…
Three Giselles at Queensland Ballet, Brisbane, April 14 and 15, 2023
Li Cunxin first programmed Giselle a decade ago in his first year as artistic director of Queensland Ballet. He had three leading casts – enough, you would think. Then a spate of injuries, including one on opening night that led to replacement leads dancing the second act, found Li having to scramble to save another performance at…
KING. Shaun Parker & Company, Sydney, February 28, 2023
Shaun Parker & Company’s work never fails to lodge itself tenaciously in the memory. I think of This Show is About People from 2007, Am I (2016) and Happy as Larry (2013) in particular and KING will be another. It’s not a new piece, having premiered in 2019, but has returned to Sydney appositely as part of WorldPride. Next stop, Europe. First let’s…
Four Romeos and four Juliets at The Australian Ballet, October and December 2022
The return of John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet to The Australian Ballet after nearly 20 years is a reminder of how few narrative ballets surpass it for range and complexity. Cranko’s version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, made in 1962 for Stuttgart Ballet, has been in TAB’s repertoire since 1974 and until 2003 was staged relatively regularly. Not all…
Swan Lake. West Australian Ballet, His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth. November 18 and 19, 2022
West Australian Ballet celebrates its 70th anniversary this year and at last has the numbers to enable a Swan Lake. The company decided not to go the safe route of staging a production that could belong anywhere. Instead it has taken inspiration from its location and the history of the place it calls home. The ballet’s familiar…
Instruments of Dance, The Australian Ballet, Sydney Opera House, November 10, 2022
Australian audiences know Wayne McGregor from Dyad 1929, made in 2009 as part of The Australian Ballet’s Ballets Russes celebration; Chroma, choreographed in 2006 and brought into the repertoire in 2014; and Infra, staged by TAB in 2017 but dating from 2008. Obsidian Tear, the opening work in the Instruments of Dance triple bill, is not that Wayne McGregor. Absent…
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