Stuttgart Ballet’s appearance in Melbourne comes thanks to The Australian Ballet, under whose banner Stuttgart’s Sleeping Beauty is being performed while TAB is tied up with its tour to the United States with Christopher Wheeldon’s Oscar. It’s a delectable gift. Marcia Haydée, John Cranko’s indispensable muse during his transformative artistic leadership of Stuttgart in the 1960s and early 1970s,…
Tag: The Australian Ballet
Flora. The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre. The Regent, Melbourne, March 12. Sydney until April 18, 2026.
I saw Flora at its premiere in Melbourne in March and was struck anew by the breadth of artistic director David Hallberg’s vision for The Australian Ballet. Hallberg’s counterpart at Bangarra Dance Theatre, Frances Rings, is his equal in daring. Both companies are leading forces in Australian dance but would seem to be strange bedfellows. Stylistically and…
Prism. The Australian Ballet, Regent Theatre, Melbourne, September 25. Sydney from November 7.
The contemporary triple bill Prism starts its Sydney season on November 7, after which, just for something completely different, The Australian Ballet will dive back into David McAllister’s blingy, ultra-traditional The Sleeping Beauty. It started its national run in Adelaide in July and had a Brisbane season in August. It goes without saying the company is versatile. That’s…
The Australian Ballet National Tour, Wollongong, July 25, 2025
Whenever I am within cooee of a venue for The Australian Ballet’s regional tour I will be there. Port Macquarie, 2023; Newcastle, 2024; Wollongong, 2025. Other places in other years too. I recall a rather long drive to Bathurst eons ago and a Giselle at The Concourse in Sydney’s Chatswood. I note that TAB now calls this…
Carmen, The Australian Ballet: A new perspective. Canberra Theatre Centre, June 21, 2025
You don’t go back to a ballet again and again just to see the ballet. You go to see what different artists make of that ballet (same with opera; same with theatre). An alternative cast brings its own atmosphere to a piece, or at least one hopes it does. The overall framework of the piece…
The year in review: 2024
It’s been a few years since I’ve done a year’s-best list. Everyone loves a list, including me, and it’s fun to see what others found memorable. But while I’m always happy to share my opinions about live performance it’s a bit of a mug’s game to say this thing was “better” than that thing when…
Oscar. Choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon. The Australian Ballet, Melbourne, September 13, 2024. Sydney, November 8, 2024.
Can something be simultaneously too much and not enough? That was the case for Oscar Wilde in his tumultuous, ill-fated, on-off relationship with the mercurial Lord Alfred Douglas and it’s the case with Oscar, Christopher Wheeldon’s new full-length work for The Australian Ballet. The extraordinarily rich score by Joby Talbot and Wheeldon’s abundant storytelling gifts join…
Royal New Zealand Ballet artistic director Ty King-Wall
Ty King-Wall finished his ballet career at the top, retiring from The Australian Ballet as a principal artist. By the time he stopped dancing in 2022 he had two young children, one born just weeks before his final performance. His wife, former TAB principal Amber Scott, made her farewell to the stage last year. King-Wall…
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…
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…
