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 [...]

In an astonishing coup, the Royal New Zealand Ballet has just announced that Ethan Stiefel, currently principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and dean of the School of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, will be its next artistic director, taking up the position in the second half of 2011. [...]

Inspired by a comment on my August 2010 post regarding Olga Spessivtseva in Australia, I went back to that amazing National Library of Australia resource, Trove, and began looking again for passenger lists around the end of 1934 that might contain the names Olga Spessiva or Leonard G Braun.
It appears that Spessivtseva and Braun left [...]

The interview with Paul Knobloch recorded by Stateline Canberra during Paul’s recent Australian visit screened on  Friday 24 September. Its online availability will, it seems, expire in December so it’s worth having a look before that happens.  In addition to the words from Paul and  his mentor, Jackie Hallahan, there are some photos of Paul [...]

For those who may not have read the interview by Alan Helms with dance critic Alastair Macaulay, published recently in the summer issue of the ballet.co magazine, I recommend it. It is quite long but a totally fascinating read.
One of the highlights of my tenure as curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division in New [...]

Liz Lea reports that her show, 120 Birds, has just concluded its run at the Edinburgh Fringe. She says they ‘did well’ but the reviews suggest she and her dancers did a little more than well. It sounds like a knockout. Let’s hope Lea finds an Australian venue for the show.
Extracts from reviews:
‘Liz Lea mines the [...]

Paul Knobloch, former soloist with the Australian Ballet, is back in Australia briefly to visit his family and conduct master classes in Canberra. Knobloch left the Australian Ballet in 2009 to join Béjart Ballet Lausanne.
Knobloch counts dancing the opening night of a season in Paris, when he partnered Russian-born Daria Ivanova in Béjart’s Webern Opus 5, as [...]