As Jack Anderson says in a recently published article, balletgoers love Giselle. It has been some time since I have seen this classic of the Romantic repertoire performed live, which I regret. Still very clear in my mind is the Finnish National Ballet’s production of Sylvie Guillem’s staging, which while not the most recent I [...]

Those who have been following posts on this site relating to Nina Verchinina may be interested in an article published in the most recent edition of Brolga: an Australia journal about dance (issue 34, June 2011). This elegantly written article, rather lengthily entitled ‘Designing for Nina Verchinina’s choreographic vivacity: a new light on Loudon Sainthill’s [...]

From Chunky Move, 24 June 2011:
Anouk van Dijk as new Artistic Director
The Board of Chunky Move today announced that Anouk van Dijk will take over as Artistic Director following Gideon Obarzanek’s departure at the end of 2011.

Photo by Silvia Sztankovits
Anouk van Dijk is an internationally acclaimed choreographer, whose work has toured extensively throughout her home country of The [...]

Bolero, by that remarkable duo Meryl Tankard and  Régis Lansac, will have another European outing in April 2012. It will appear on a triple bill program by the Lyon Opera Ballet along with works by William Forsythe and Jiri Kylian. Is there any other Australian choreographer whose work can, over and over again, stand alongside [...]

Rachel Cameron Parker, dancer and dance teacher who has died in London just a few weeks short of her 87th birthday, worked all her life to maintain the classical basis of ballet.
Rachel Cameron adjusting her ballet shoe, 1940s. Geoffrey Ingram Archive of Australian Ballet. With permission of the National Library of Australia. Photo by S. Alston [...]

The New York Times published an article this morning by Roslyn Sulcas, whose critical writing from New York and Europe, is always thought provoking and intellectually probing. The article summarises recent events relating to the future of the Royal Ballet of Flanders, the company led by Australian Kathy Bennetts. The ongoing saga of the company [...]

The ticket said ‘Darcey and Rafael in conversation’. The menu cover said ‘Dance—collaboration, creativity and choreography’. A tall order? This luncheon event associated with the National Gallery of Australia’s current exhibition Ballets Russes: the art of costume featured former Royal Ballet star Darcey Bussell, now living with her family in Sydney, and Rafael Bonachela, artistic [...]

The British-Australian choreographer and dancer Liz Lea recently presented a show at the National Gallery of Australia in which she managed with singular success to rework her popular piece 120 Birds, staged at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2010, from a work for a small company into a one-woman show.
But the irrepressible Lea has another project in [...]

Meryl Tankard reports that her first short documentary film, MAD, has been selected for showing at the 17th World of Women: WOW  Film Festival.
MAD focuses on madness and schizophrenia, explored by poet and writer Sandy Jeffs, who has lived with schizophrenia and all its moods for 34 years.  It features music by Elena Kats-Chernin and vocals [...]

As the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Diaghilev exhibition is being taken down, its curator, Jane Pritchard, has made the startling discovery that there appears to be film footage of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in performance. And we have always thought that no such footage exists! She reports on this remarkable discovery in her latest blog post—’I eat my [...]