Full Moon, choreographed by Cheng Tsung-lung, Ocho, choreographed by Rafael Bonachela. Sydney Dance Company, Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, May 1. At first glance the two works in Sydney Dance Company’s Orb look quite different but they are close kin under the skin and together make an exceptionally absorbing double bill. Cheng Tsung-lung, who choreographed…
Faster: The Australian Ballet
Sydney Opera House, April 12 The key work in The Australian Ballet’s Faster triple bill was supposed to be Wayne McGregor’s new Multiverse, which premiered at the Royal Ballet in November to largely disobliging reviews. A change in programming quickly ensued. Multiverse was out, Infra (2008) was in. It wasn’t unreasonable to program Multiverse sight…
Raw, Queensland Ballet
Works by Liam Scarlett, Greg Horsman and Christopher Bruce. Queensland Ballet, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, March 17. Death comes to us all eventually but does it have to come so cruelly and so soon to so many? Christopher Bruce’s Ghost Dances was made in 1981 in response to human rights abuses in Pinochet’s Chile…
Melbourne Ballet Company
Concourse Theatre, Sydney, March 12 Melbourne Ballet Company’s new triple bill Being & Time has lofty aspirations. It takes its title from Martin Heidegger and its themes from existentialism, or at least that is what one gathers from the program notes, which baffle more than they enlighten. In the case of MBC resident director Simon…
Calamity Jane reclaimed
One Eyed Man Productions in association with Neglected Musicals and Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, March 10. The high-falutin’ way to describe director Richard Carroll’s Calamity Jane is to say its abundant meta-theatrics put a contemporary, ironic frame around an old-fashioned musical, revealing fresh insights. If that sounds deadly, fear not. The low-falutin’ truth is that…
Adelaide Festival opening weekend
Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, who have signed on as joint artistic directors for three Adelaide festivals (this year, 2018 and 2019), set the bar high on their first opening weekend and floated over it with ease. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it looked easy. It can’t be underestimated how much work went…
David Hallberg, The Sleeping Beauty
The Australian Ballet, Brisbane, February 25 When David Hallberg returned to the ballet stage in Sydney in November last year, in Coppélia with The Australian Ballet, he was coming out of a two-and-a-half year layoff due to injury, the last 12 months of which he spent in Melbourne working with TAB’s medical team. The choice…
Bespoke, Queensland Ballet
Brisbane Powerhouse, February 10. Bespoke is a new-choreography program that shows Queensland Ballet moving up yet another gear and broadening its horizons. So far in Li Cunxin’s artistic directorship new contemporary work on the schedule has either fallen into the annual triple bill, of which there is always only one (although none in 2015), or…
Sydney Festival dance 2017
A wrap of dance seen at the 2017 Sydney Festival … Spectra, Dancenorth, Seymour Centre, Sydney, January 11 The flick of a long rope sends energy snaking through it. It passes a man standing uneasily in the centre of the stage and his head recoils in response. Later, all seven performers in Spectra link arms…
Dancenorth’s Spectra
For the Sydney Festival, Seymour Centre, Sydney, January 11. The flick of a long rope sends energy snaking through it. It passes a man standing uneasily in the centre of the stage and his head recoils in response. Later, all seven performers in Spectra link arms and undulate them as if possessed of a single…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 