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…
Tag: Eleanor Freeman
New work at Queensland Ballet
Dance Dialogues, Brisbane, February 20. Classical ballet is the oddest thing. It has a tiny core repertoire – fewer than 20 works; perhaps less than 15 if you’re being very strict – that define it to the world at large. These are the full-length story ballets that audiences will reliably attend year after year and…
Queensland Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty
Lyric Theatre, Brisbane, October 23 and October 24 It is something of an understatement to say Greg Horsman knows The Sleeping Beauty well. Not only was it the first ballet he saw, the one that made him want to be a dancer, it was a key role for him. Among the stages on which he…
Affecting ardour
Queensland Ballet, Lyric Theatre, Brisbane, June 27 KENNETH MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet is big in every way. At street level testosterone-fuelled gangs jostle and fight in the marketplace, revelling in their ancient grudge, as Shakespeare called it. Inside the great house of Lord Capulet the tumult is even greater, but is within the hearts of…
Coppelia
Queensland Ballet, Brisbane, April 24 GREG Horsman’s appealing new production of the 19th century comedy Coppelia gives it a human scale and an Australian setting. It is the late 1800s and we are in the South Australian town of Hahndorf, settled in 1839 by German migrants and thus celebrating its 175th anniversary this year. I…
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…
Giselle
Queensland Ballet, Playhouse Theatre, Brisbane, June 21 and 22 BRISBANE is turning into quite the ballet town. All performances of the Bolshoi Ballet’s Le Corsaire and The Bright Stream were sold out and one might have expected the visit from such a starry company to have diverted dollars from the Queensland Ballet. Far from it….
deborah jones: FollowSpot 