The stars were out and so was the moon. The audience gathered, as always, on the terraces at City Beach’s Quarry Amphitheatre with the traditional picnic baskets and wine to hand. The dancers of West Australian Ballet warmed up on the open-air stage and all was as it usually is. Except, that is, for the…
Tag: Lucas Jervies
The Australian Ballet ends 2023 with Swan Lake and 16 promotions
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…
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…
The Australian Ballet On Tour. Glasshouse Port Macquarie, August 19, 2023
The Australian Ballet’s recent appearances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden got plenty of attention here and in the UK. Travelling somewhat under the radar was another touring venture, a triple bill taken to eight cities in Victoria and NSW. Think Geelong, Albury, Griffith, Dubbo and so on. (Other states are visited in alternate…
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…
Hidden Sydney and other current theatre
Poor old Kings Cross. It used to have a bit of glamour back in the day, what with its famous crims, flamboyant, unconventional characters and nightclubs that could attract international performers. Now a stroll up Darlinghurst Road of an evening is an exercise in swerving around backpackers and wondering how the small businesses manage to…
Thrills and spills: the year in dance
We’ll get to the year’s most interesting work and dancers shortly but 2015 was also notable for offstage developments, particularly at Australia’s three leading classical companies, The Australian Ballet, Queensland Ballet and West Australian Ballet. So let’s begin there. OFFSTAGE The national company At The Australian Ballet, David McAllister became the company’s longest-serving artistic director, surpassing…
Beauty in the eye of the beholder
Revelations in New York, stars made at The Australian Ballet, Alina Cojocaru in Brisbane and more … The Australian Ballet dubbed its 2015 season A Year of Beauty. Giselle, Swan Lake, Cinderella and Frederick Ashton’s The Dream were on the program, lovely ballets all, but essentially teasers for the main event – the new Sleeping…
Into the woods
Melbourne, September 15 THE Australian Ballet and its audiences have a great deal invested in David McAllister’s new Sleeping Beauty, in both senses of the word. The first is financial: this Beauty cost more than $2 million to produce and 70 per cent of its financing was provided by ballet-lovers. The program lists hundreds of…
‘I am in the right place’
Robert Curran was a long-serving principal artist with The Australian Ballet, from which he retired in 2011. He’s now leading a small company in the United States and relishing a role that is both very similar – ballet is ballet, the studio is the studio – and yet very different from his former life. LOUISVILLE…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 