Dance diary. June 2014

Dame Maggie Scott: a life in dance

My biography of Dame Margaret Scott is now in the editing and design phase and is scheduled for release in October 2014. I originally interviewed Dame Margaret for the National Library’s oral history program in 1993 and, while that interview provided a skeleton plan, there was much more to discover, or at least many details to investigate further. And who would have thought I would find material in the Imperial War Museum in London, or the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra? But I did. Dame Margaret’s life is quite remarkable, apart from the role she played in the establishment of the Australian Ballet Foundation and as inaugural director of the Australian Ballet School.

The commission to write the book came unexpectedly and I had a very short time in which to complete the manuscript. But what an exciting journey it has been so far. It has meant, however, that posts to my website have been a little meagre over the past few months. I hope to rectify that situation shortly.

Honours

It was a real, pleasure to see two dance leaders honoured during June. Cheryl Stock was awarded an AM in the Queen’s Birthday honours list and Louise Howden-Smith was the recipient of the West Australian of the Year award for arts and culture.

Stock is Associate Professor in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Before turning to academia, she had a distinguished career as a dancer, choreographer and artistic director with a wide range of companies in Australia and elsewhere.

Howden-Smith made a major contribution to dance over a ten year period as executive director of West Australian Ballet. I have happy memories of her generosity to the media during those years. She is now director of Ochre Contemporary Dance Company, founding director as it happens. The company aims to promote Aboriginal culture through contemporary dance.

It was also good to see that Philip Piggin, who has been involved with community dance in the ACT for many years now, received a 2014 Churchill Fellowship to travel to the USA and the United Kingdom to develop skills and experience in teaching dance to people with Parkinson’s disease.

Press for June 2014 [Online links to press articles prior to 2015 in The Canberra Times are no longer available]

‘Shadowland showcases masters of movement.’ The Canberra Times, 25 June 2014, ARTS p. 6.

Michelle Potter, 30 June 2014

Giselle in the news

It seems that the Australian Ballet will be bringing back Maina Gielgud’s production of Giselle in 2015. Gielgud’s web page indicates that she will be in Australia from late 2014, firstly teaching in Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne and then working on staging Giselle for the Australian Ballet.

This news sent me looking at some of my favourite, easily available online images from Giselle. I didn’t have the opportunity to see Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov in the Ballet Victoria production of 1975. But some of my favourite Giselle photos come from that production, an amazing event when one considers that Makarova defected in 1970 and Baryshnikov did so in 1974 and here they were in Australia in 1975 so early in their careers in the West. Walter Stringer’s photos are often slightly blurry but I think he has captured something of the quality of the performance.

Mikhail Baryshnikov as Albrecht in 'Giselle', Ballet Victoria 1975. Photo: Walter Stringer

Natalia Makarova in 'Giselle', Ballet Victoria 1975. Photo: Walter Stringer — Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova in *Giselle*, Ballet Victoria 1975. Photos: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia

Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov in 'Giselle', Ballet Victoria 1975. Photo: Walter Stringer — Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova in *Giselle*, Ballet Victoria 1975. Photos: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia

In the meantime, Graeme Murphy has been in South Korea workshopping a new version of Giselle. It seems that we won’t see this production in Australia, at least not in the short term. The idea of a Murphy reworking is tantalising and I can’t help wondering why a ballet company in South Korea had the prescience to commission it rather than the Australian Ballet.

I love to see a high quality ‘traditional’ version and still sigh over the Paris Opera Ballet’s production we saw in Australia in 2012. But the most moving production I have ever seen was created by Sylvie Guillem in 1998 for the Finnish National Ballet, which I saw in 2001. On the surface it certainly wasn’t a traditional Giselle, as the photo below indicates, although anyone familiar in the slightest degree with the ballet will recognise the dance sequence from Act I shown here. Below the surface though, I found that not only did it pull at the heart strings but it was deeply and intellectually satisfying as well.

Artists of Finnish National Ballet in 'Giselle', 1998. Photo: © Kari Hakli — Artists of Finnish National Ballet in *Giselle*, 1998. Photo: © Kari Hakli

I wrote about the Guillem Giselle in 2001 for Brolga, then an old-fashioned print journal. I declined to give permission for it to be digitised by Ausdance when they began digitising back issues, but here is a section from it.

Guillem as producer and choreographer (after Coralli-Perrot-Petipa according to the program), reconceived the ballet according to her wish for it to be a work that would evoke both the past and the present, and that would be meaningful to contemporary audiences. In program notes she stated:

‘Giselle’s story is a timeless one. To die of love, not so much for a man as for loss of love. Naturally the texts by Théophile Gautier and Heinrich Heine clearly laid down the basic intentions. Over the years, these intentions have been buried beneath set choreographic habits, mainly with regard to gesture, thereby becoming a sort of incoherent language expected to “speak” the story … I wanted to rediscover Giselle and make the blood flow again in the veins of the various protagonists’.*

And elsewhere she is quoted as saying: ‘Even if Giselle hadn’t had a heart attack, the ballet was dying by itself. It was becoming more and more stupid, without any sense’.**

Strong words from Guillem. We know the Gielgud production. As for the Murphy version … we will have to wait.

Michelle Potter, 15 June 2014

NOTES:

* Sylvie Guillem, ‘Waiting for curtain-up’. Program for Giselle, Théâtre du Chatelet, Paris 2000–2001, p. 12.

**Debra Crane, ‘Made for fame’. Dance Now, vol. 9 (No. 4, Winter 2000–2001), p. 16.

I am working on making available in full my article from Brolga and will include it in my dance diary for June.

Ballets Russes in Tokyo

The National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition, Ballets Russes. The Art of Costume, which was shown in Canberra from December 2010 to March 2011, is opening in Tokyo on 18 June at the National Art Center. Installation is underway and the exhibition will be on display until early September 2014. Some new acquisitions, material not seen in the Canberra exhibition, will be part of the Tokyo show.

Did the Ballets Russes companies visit Japan? No, but there is considerable interest in Japan in the legacy of those companies, which was worldwide. It is of interest too that the influence of Japanese art on many of the artists working in Europe around the time that Diaghilev was taking Paris by storm was exceptionally strong. I look forward to reporting on how the show has been curated in Tokyo. It is always an experience to see familiar items in a different setting.

The progress of the hang can be seen on the National Art Center’s website by opening up the Facebook link at the bottom left of this page. [Update October 2020: Facebook link no longer available]

Michelle Potter, 11 June 2014

Dance diary. May 2014

Sydney Dance Company. The Heritage Collection

A few months ago I mentioned very briefly a project being developed by film maker Philippe Charluet in conjunction with Sydney Dance Company to preserve the choreography of Graeme Murphy, which he made as artistic director of the company over more than 30 years. Well, the project is now official and has been announced as part of Sydney Dance Company’s 45th anniversary celebrations. Sydney Dance Company says:

‘Sydney Dance Company is excited to announce that work has commenced on the editing and digitising of film and video recordings of some of the major works created by long-standing Artistic Director, Graeme Murphy AO and his Creative Associate, Janet Vernon AM.

The Heritage Collection will include re-mastered films of many full length evening works created by Murphy on the Sydney Dance Company ensemble during his 31 year tenure from 1976 to 2007, in addition to a new documentary resource of Murphy in conversation, interweaving a myriad of interviews filmed over a period of thee decades, with new footage in which he reflects on his body of work’.

What a treasure this will be for us and those who follow us in the future.

Sydney Dance Company's Salome, choreography by Graeme Murphy. Photo by Lois Greenfield — Artists of Sydney Dance Company in a promotional shot for Graeme Murphy’s *Salomé*. Photo © Lois Greenfield

Pamela Vincent and the Rambert tour to Australasia

Here is another image from the Pamela Vincent album of photographs from the Ballet Rambert’s tour to Australia and New Zealand 1947–1949. Pamela Vincent was courted in Australia by Douglas Whittaker, principal flute player in the orchestra that accompanied the Rambert company. They married in England.

Ballet Rambert in Australia, c. 1948. Collection of Pamela Vincent — Ballet Rambert in Australia. Horseriding excursion, 1948. Collection of Pamela Vincent

British Library and Serge Diaghilev

I was interested to find this link to a comment on Serge Diaghilev’s interest, which grew in intensity towards the end of his life, in rare books.

Press for May 2014 [Online links to press articles in The Canberra Times prior to 2015 are no longer available]

‘Fresh flavour but a little flat’. Review of Don Quixote, Imperial Russian Ballet. The Canberra Times, 7 May 2014, ARTS p. 8.

Michelle Potter, 31 May 2014

Imperial Suite. The Australian Ballet

10 May 2014 (evening), Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House

It is a long time since I have had a seat in the circle for a ballet performance (in any theatre come to think of it), but that’s where I was seated at the Sydney Opera House for Imperial Suite, the Australian Ballet’s mixed bill of Ballet Imperial and Suite en blanc. It was certainly exciting to see Ballet Imperial from that vantage point. Looking down on a George Balanchine work gives a stunning view of the patterns of his choreography—the circles, squares, diamonds, straight lines, and flowing waves of dancers threading their way through the arched arms of other dancers—provided of course that the work on view is well danced and well staged. Which it certainly was at this performance. The ballet was beautifully led by Lana Jones and Adam Bull, with Jones the shining ballerina and Bull the gallant Balanchinian partner.

Adam Bull and Lana Jones in 'Ballet Imperial', 2014. Photo courtesy of the Australian Ballet — Adam Bull and Lana Jones in *Ballet Imperial*, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Australian Ballet

There were some particularly lovely moments in the pas de deux in the first movement. I loved the backwards hops on pointe with the leg in arabesque after Jones rose from a swoon-like fall with her arms around Bull’s neck, and also a little later her lift of the leg to second position followed by a slow pull in to retiré, followed by the same sequence of movement on the other side but at double speed. Both were exciting to watch and Balanchine is so good at showing these things more than once so we don’t miss them! And of course Bull was there supporting all these technical feats. Both dancers allowed us to see Balanchine’s exquisite musicality.

Hugh Colman’s new tutus are just gorgeous. Regal in blue and black and one or two complementary shades for the soloists, they are made with sharp lines to the skirt so they seem to represent the cut of a diamond or other precious stones, and they are decorated with a silver sash-like decoration at the back. Very imperial!

What a joy the performance was and it inspires me to say ‘thank you, thank you’. And with Eve Lawson on board as a repetiteur with the Australian Ballet—and what an asset she is—I am looking forward to (or perhaps ‘hoping for’ are better words) a revival of Theme and Variations soon.

Serge Lifar’s Suite en blanc closed the evening. It is certainly a classically-based work and has many interesting features. Its opening scene as the curtain rises, with dancers arranged on several levels on the stage and clad in various white costumes with a very slight touch of contrasting black, usually generates a round of applause, as it did on this occasion. But Lifar’s limitations as a choreographer are, perhaps unfortunately, highlighted by placing Suite en blanc on the same program as Ballet Imperial. Suite en blanc looks very static in comparison and movement is in no way a static event.

Nevertheless, there were some outstanding performances from some cast members and it is always special to see good dancing. Amber Scott and Rudy Hawkes performed stylishly in the pas de deux and Scott was a stand-out in the ‘Variation de la flûte’. But I especially admired Ako Kondo for her technical accomplishments in the ‘Pas de cinq’ and Laura Tong for a beautifully languid and delicious ‘Variation de la cigarette’.

Ako Kondo in 'Suite en blanc', the Australian Ballet, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Australian Ballet — Ako Kondo in *Suite en blanc.* TheAustralian Ballet, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Australian Ballet

Michelle Potter, 11 May 2014

Chroma, Art to Sky, Petite Mort & Sechs Tänze. The Australian Ballet

10 May 2014 (matinee), Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House

What an inspiring performance the Australian Ballet gave of Wayne McGregor’s Chroma. Not an easy ballet to bring off, but all the diverse features that make McGregor’s choreography so eminently watchable were there. Limbs extending through space, off-centre partnering, moves that were in turn twisted, contorted, angular and sometimes smooth and undulating. And all were all set cleanly and articulately against John Pawson’s stripped back, white box space with its rectangular ‘window’ of changing colours. McGregor is a master at exploiting the balletic body to produce astonishingly shaped movements—movements of the twenty-first century perhaps? What I especially like is that his choreography make us see how perfectly amazing the balletic vocabulary can be.

I particularly admired Vivienne Wong’s performance throughout the work and also a powerful trio from Brett Chynoweth, Rudy Hawkes and Andrew Killian—fast, assertive dancing from them all. But it was a duet from Lana Jones and Daniel Gaudiello that stole the show for me. McGregor’s choreography suits Jones with her strong, unassailable technique and Gaudiello has such a way of adding his own signature to everything he does while still remaining true to the intentions of the choreographer.

Artists of the Australian Ballet in 'Chroma', 2014. courtesy the Australian Ballet — Artists of the Australian Ballet in Wayne McGregor’s *Chroma*, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Australian Ballet

Stephen Baynes’ new work, Art to Sky, began with some lovely, lingering choreography, beautifully performed by Leanne Stojmenov and Gaudiello again. It was romantic, softly falling from step to step. The corps de ballet also had some memorable choreography in the opening sections, surprising at times and always pure and fresh. But after that there were a few too many somersaults, cartwheels and legs in the air, not to mention twee sections of humour that didn’t quite work. It is a little problematic too that one of George Balanchine’s most exquisite ballets (in my mind anyway) is Mozartiana danced to the same music, Tchaikovsky’s Mozartiana, that Baynes chose for Art to Sky. Balanchine has a habit of lingering in the mind, making it hard to accept anything else to the music he uses.

Hugh Colman’s shadowy, upstage portal that comprised the set, lit by Rachel Burke to give a hint of the mysterious, were strong additions to the look of Art to Sky. Colman, Burke and Baynes work well together as collaborators and bring a sense of visual cohesion to each other’s work.

The program concluded with Jiří Kylián’s companion pieces, Petite Mort and Sechs Tänze and it was a treat to see some more Kylián back onstage with the Australian Ballet. It was interesting to have Kylián on the same program as McGregor, as also happened last year with Bella Figura and Dyad. Kylián, too, pushes the dance vocabulary and gives us a surprising array of movement, but he adds a degree of humanity and humour to his works that McGregor passes over (at least in Chroma, although perhaps not to the same extent in others of his works).

This mixed bill was a relief from the full-length ballets that we are told draw the best houses. To me the house looked pretty much full for what was a diverse and well danced program. I’d like more in this vein.

Michelle Potter, 11 May 2014

Featured image: Natasha Kusen and Andrew Killian in a study for Petite Mort. The Australian Ballet 2014. Photo: © Paul Scala

Natasha Kusen and Andrew Killian in 'Petite Mort'. Photo Paul Scala. Courtesy the Australian Ballet

Paul Knobloch joins Sydney Dance Company

Good news from Canberra dancer Paul Knobloch who will be joining Sydney Dance Company for its upcoming 45th anniversary tour to Western Australia, Queensland and regional New South Wales. The company will be taking their multi award winning work, 2 One Another, on this tour which will take in small and large cities from Perth to Mackay to Dubbo. Earlier this year Bonachela explained his interest in regional touring:

‘The regional touring is something very close to my heart because I come from a very small town myself. I believe that we can change people’s lives through dance. We need to benchmark ourselves against leading companies overseas but we need to be seen across Australia as well’.

Knobloch has been teaching in Canberra just recently at the Canberra Dance Development Centre and it is good to see him returning to his performing career once more. The tour begins in Perth on 18 June and runs through until August finishing up in the New South Wales central western city of Orange.

Paul Knobloch. Photographer not identified

For more about Paul Knobloch’s career see the posts at this link.

Michelle Potter, 9 May 2014

Gailene Stock (1946—2014)

Gailene Stock, most recently director of the Royal Ballet School, has died from complications resulting from a brain tumour. Stock had been ill since 2013. Born in Ballarat, Victoria, and named Gail Stock by her parents, she changed her first name to Gailene at the request of Peggy van Praagh, artistic director of the Australian Ballet, who thought that the name ‘Gail’ was too short.

Gailene Stock and Gary Norman, Melbourne 2012. Photo © Jean Stewart

Stock was the middle child in a family of three girls born to Roy and Sylvia Stock. When Stock was quite small, the family moved to Perth, Western Australia, when her father, a journalist, took a job there. It was in Perth that she took her first dance lessons. When the family moved to Melbourne after a short time in Perth, Stock took up dancing more seriously at the Himing School of Dance where she studied the Cecchetti syllabus. As a teenager she studied with Paul Hammond who prepared her for her major examinations of the Royal Academy of Dance. Her dance training was interrupted for two long periods, however, first as a result of a severe bout of poliomyelitis and then following injuries sustained in a serious car accident.

Deferring a Royal Academy bursary to study at the Royal Ballet School, Stock joined the Australian Ballet, aged sixteen, for its inaugural season. But the following year, with a year’s leave of absence from the Australian Ballet, she took up her bursary and travelled to London. At the Royal Ballet School her main teacher in the theatre class, where she was placed because she had come from a company to the School, was Pamela May. Outside of the School she took classes with Maria Fay and after a nine month period at the Royal she took classes in Paris and then in Cannes with Rosella Hightower. Her classes in France were to satisfy van Praagh who thought that her dancing was very correct and that she needed a bit of French pizzazz. Before returning to Australia she danced with the Grand ballet classique de France and then with an Italian company.

Rejoining the Australia Ballet in 1965 she was cast in works by Antony Tudor and John Butler and her reputation as an exponent of dramatic roles grew. But after seven years she wanted what she has called ‘new pastures’ and joined the National Ballet of Canada on the recommendation of Rudolf Nureyev. A position as principal with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet followed. She was joined in Canada by Gary Norman whom she married while in Canada.

Gailene Stock and Paul Wright, Ballet Imperial 1967. Photo Walter Stringer — (left) Gailene Stock and Paul Wright in *Ballet Imperial*, the Australian Ballet, 1967. Photo: Walter Stringer; (right) Gailene Stock before leaving for London, Melbourne 1963. Photo: Keith Byron. Images courtesy of the National Library of Australia.

Gailene Stock, 1963. Photo Keith Byron — (left) Gailene Stock and Paul Wright in *Ballet Imperial*, the Australian Ballet, 1967. Photo: Walter Stringer; (right) Gailene Stock before leaving for London, Melbourne 1963. Photo: Keith Byron. Images courtesy of the National Library of Australia.

On their return to Australia Stock danced briefly with the Australian Ballet under Anne Woolliams before having her daughter Lisa and then directing the National Theatre Ballet School. Her next major step was the directorship of the Australian Ballet School which she took on at the end of 1989. Her last role was that of director of the Royal Ballet School. Stock has discussed her approach to her work in London at length in her oral history interview for the National Library of Australia, recorded in Melbourne in 2012. The audio is available online over the National Library’s website.The entire interview is a warm and informative account of her life and career and full of charming and sometimes very funny anecdotes about those she met and worked with during her life. Talking about her earliest dance experiences in Perth she says:

‘My debut on the stage was as a chicken and a hula girl. In the back of my mind I think I was already being a ballet mistress, teacher, director, because when we were doing our chicken dance I looked along the line and saw one of the chickens was very much out of line and lost. So I toddled over and shoved her back into line and got her into place and then went back to my own place and went on with the dance. I’ve always been obsessed with staying in line so it probably started at a very young age.’*

Stock is survived by her husband Gary Norman and their daughter Lisa.

Michelle Potter, 4 May 2014

* Gailene Stock interviewed by Michelle Potter, April 2012. National Library of Australia, TRC 6399.

Island. James Batchelor

30 April 2014, Courtyard Theatre, Canberra

James Batchelor’s Island is a fascinating look at what dance can encompass when it becomes an immersive experience. The work is performed by three dancers, Batchelor himself along with Amber McCartney and Rebecca Lee, and it deals largely with perception. I have to admit to feeling slightly frustrated by dance that purports to deal with highly abstract notions. Often it’s only the words on the program that have anything to say on the subject while the dance is just a series of steps. But Island is different.

James Batchelor and Amber McCartney in 'Island', 2014. Photo © Lorna Sim — James Batchelor and Amber McCartney in Island, 2014. Photo © Lorna Sim

The first hint that Island might be an interesting work comes early, as we enter the performing space in fact. Architect Ella Leoncio is the designer. She has decorated the small black box space that is the Courtyard Theatre of the Canberra Theatre Centre with bright white tape stretched in lines and geometric patterns across the floor and up the walls. A bank of mirrors is attached to one wall, six movable glass (or perspex?) screens are arranged in the centre of the space in two groups of three and six circles of small bright lights are on the floor. What we don’t know immediately is that some of the screens are slightly convex/concave, a little like those Coney Island-style mirrors that distort the image of those who look into them.

The work itself is in three parts performed without interval. It begins with a solo for Lee, which is followed by a duet for Batchelor and McCartney. All three dancers join together for the final section. Batchelor’s choreography exists in many small movements, sometimes quite subtle, other times forceful in response to Morgan Hickinbotham’s score, which is confronting and yet listenable in its diversity of sounds. I especially enjoyed the performance of McCartney who had absorbed Batchelor’s movement style and added something of her own—a strength of purpose perhaps? Her dancing was certainly strong and well-defined.

But what makes Island so interesting is that the audience is encouraged to walk around the space and see the dance/installation from different viewpoints. Again this is something that I usually find annoying as it is more often than not a meaningless exercise. On this occasion however, the mirrors and screens, which were moved into different positions at the end of each section, came into their own. There were some totally absorbing perspectives on Batchelor’s choreography. Depending on where one went it looked enlarged, minimised, stretched out, and any other number of shape distortions. Occasionally Leoncio’s striped walls and floor became an integral part of the dance when they too were reflected into the screens. Then as a foil there was the clean, precise look of dance undistorted when one moved to other positions. Not everyone in the audience was on the move, which was a real shame because they missed a lot.

Leoncio continued her black and white theme in her costumes and make-up with the white extending beyond the costumes themselves to hair, face and even fingernails in some cases.

I really enjoyed this show. Batchelor has an enquiring mind and his work is definitely worth looking at and analysing.

Michelle Potter, 3 May 2014

Dance diary. April 2014

Ballet Rambert Australasian tour

I was delighted to find, during my recent research in the Rambert Archives in London, an album, currently on loan to the Archives for copying, assembled by dancer Pamela Whittaker (Vincent) during the Ballet Rambert’s tour to Australia and New Zealand, 1947–1949. What struck me instantly was the fact that this company enjoyed a similarly social time in Australia and New Zealand as did the Ballets Russes companies that preceded Rambert. I hope to pursue this a little further in a later post but in the meantime the featured image (above) is a photo from Pamela Whittaker’s album. Below is another image from that album.

Ballet Rambert in Australia. Horseriding excursion, 1948 — Ballet Rambert on an outing in Australia, 1948. From the personal album of Pamela Whittaker (Vincent)

Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship 2014

The Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship for 2014 has been awarded to West Australian designer Alicia Clements. For more about Alicia’s work see her website, but below is a costume for the character of Nishi from The White Divers of Broome staged by the Black Swan Theatre Company in Perth in 2012.

Costume by Alicia Clements for Nishi in 'The White Divers of Broome'. Photo © Cameron Etchells. — Costume by Alicia Clements for Nishi in *The White Divers of Broome*. Photo © Cameron Etchells.

Australian Dance Awards 2014

The long list of nominations for the 2014 Australian Dance Awards was released during April. From a Canberra perspective it is good to see a number of nominations with strong Canberra connections, although I wonder whether any or many of them will make the short lists given the fact that so few people outside Canberra will have seen the productions in the flesh. That concern aside, however, I was especially pleased to see Garry Stewart’s Monument on the list for two awards, an individual award to Stewart for outstanding achievement in choreography and an award to the Australian Ballet for outstanding performance by a company. It was also gratifying to see Life is a Work of Art created by Liz Lea and others for GOLD, the group of mature age performers associated with Canberra Dance Theatre, nominated in the community dance category.

Scene from 'Monument', Canberra 2013. Photo: Branco Gaica — Richard House, Rudy Hawkes and Cameron Hunter in *Monument*, 2013. The Australian Ballet. Photo © Branco Gaica

But I noticed that Janet Karin, former director of the National Capital Ballet School, currently kinetic educator at the Australian Ballet School, and also now president of the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science, is again on the list for services to dance education. Fingers crossed for this one as her contribution to the Australian dance scene has been remarkable over many years and in many areas and she deserves recognition from her peers.

Island: James Batchelor

I am looking forward to the opening of James Batchelor’s new work, Island, which premieres tonight at the Courtyard Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre. Batchelor was impressive when I interviewed him earlier his month (see online link below) but seeing in production what one has written about in advance is always challenging. But Canberra needs more dance of the sophisticated variety. So fingers crossed!

James Batchelor in 'Ersatz', Bangkok 2013. Photo © NDEPsixteen — James Batchelor in *Ersatz*, Bangkok 2013. Photo © NDEPsixteen

Press for April 2014 (Online links no longer available)

‘Outstanding skills shown in diversity’. Review of Sydney Dance Company’s Interplay. The Canberra Times, 12 April 2014, ARTS 19.

‘Dedicated Batchelor’. Preview story for James Batchelor’s Island. The Canberra Times, 26 April 2014.

Michelle Potter, 30 April 2014

Featured image: Ballet Rambert enjoying the Australian bush, 1948. From the personal album of Pamela Whittaker (Vincent)