‘Kings of the Dance’: City Center, New York, 19 February 2010
Christopher Wheeldon’s comment was thought-provoking. In the film sequence that opened ‘Kings of the Dance’, Wheeldon remarked that the biggest challenge for choreographers working with the eight exceptional artists performing in this show was managing the different styles in which those dancers had been trained. [...]

Dance in performance does not respond easily or well to intellectualising — except in the hands of a truly exceptional choreographer. Dark Matters, a work by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite shown recently at the Sydney Festival, makes that quite clear.
Dark Matters is in two quite discrete sections. The work opens with a man hunched over a [...]

When Stanton Welch’s Sleeping Beauty premiered in 2005 Amber Scott was a relatively new member of the Australian Ballet, having joined in 2001. In 2009, as a senior artist with the company, she danced the leading role of Aurora in the Australian Ballet’s revival of Welch’s work. Her appearance in this demanding role was something [...]

‘Mim’. A personal memoir of Marie Rambert: Brigitte Kelly (Alton: Dance Books, 2009). Available in Australia from Footprint Books or any good bookseller.
Marie Rambert, or Mim as she was familiarly known, brought her company, Ballet Rambert, to Australia in 1947. The company stayed until early 1949 and appeared in Adelaide, Brisbane, Broken Hill, Melbourne, Perth [...]

The Australian Ballet’s triple bill Concord is currently in its Sydney season. It’s at the Opera House until 30 November.
Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929 is as startling as ever, although the cast I saw did not manage to achieve the same degree of technical precision and sense of purpose that made the opening night in Melbourne [...]

Robert Helpmann: a rare sense of the theatre: Kathrine Sorley Walker (Alton: Dance Books, 2009). Available in Australia from Footprint Books or any good bookseller.
Robert Helpmann is a popular subject for biographical and other writing. Apart from the fact that he was clearly a showman both on and off stage making his exploits a source [...]

Spring Dance Season, Sydney Opera House, 16-20 October 2009
The Oracle, Meryl Tankard’s work set to Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, is a triumph. A solo work for Paul White, who dances with astonishing physicality and intensity, it is an example of how affecting a work can be when the creative team has a strongly shared [...]

‘Concord’ (Por vos muero, Scuola di ballo & Dyad 1929): The Australian Ballet, Melbourne, 21 August to 1 September 2009, State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre

Tzu-Chao Chou & Lana Jones in Dyad 1929. Photo: Jim McFarlane. Courtesy: The Australian Ballet
The Australian Ballet finally hit the jackpot! In the dying months of its four year long celebration [...]

‘Select Option’
Quantum Leap, Playhouse, Canberra 29 July-1 August 2009
The dancers of Quantum Leap, the pick-up company of QL2 Centre for Youth Dance in Canberra, are not professional although their enthusiasm for dance is palpable. But the choreographers with whom these young dancers work each year for their annual project are professional. So any review of [...]

A Feast of Wonders: Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes
Edited by John E. Bowlt, Zelfira Tregulova and Nathalie Rosticher Giordano (Milan: Skira, 2009)
In this very handsome volume published in conjunction with the exhibition Étonne-moi: Serge Diaghilev et les Ballets Russes, which opened in Monaco on 9 July 2009, Alexander Schouvaloff has an essay entitled ‘The [...]