The Sleeping Beauty. Queensland Ballet

24 October 2015 (matinee), Lyric Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane

After my Australian Ballet brush with Beauty I was longing to see another production and so took a flying visit to Brisbane to see what Greg Horsman had done with this classic of the ballet repertoire. Horsman’s Sleeping Beauty was originally made for the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2011 and is being performed for the first time in Australia by Queensland Ballet. I did not see the international stars who have been engaged as special guests for the season, which did not bother me as it was the production that particularly interested me.

The Fairies and their Cavaliers in Queensland Ballet's 'Sleeping Beauty', 2015 — The Fairies and their Cavaliers in Queensland Ballet’s *Sleeping Beauty*, 2015

Horsman has made some small changes to the story, some of which may well be as a result of working with a medium-sized company in both New Zealand and Queensland. Perhaps the most startling change is that Catalabutte, assistant to the King, and Catalabutte’s wife, Lady Florine, are cats. This at first is a shock. But they are so beautifully, and at times humorously, worked into the story—their dance together in the last act takes the place of Puss and Boots and the White Cat—that suspending disbelief is easy. Jack Lister as Catalabutte made a strong impression throughout, but especially as he pursued the Bluebird in the wedding scene.

There is also quite a lot of mime as explanation of the story. This is not an innovation, of course, but unless well done mime passages tend to get lost in translation as it were. The dancers of Queensland Ballet have, however, been well coached in this aspect of the ballet and they have an expansive quality to their gestures. Everything is perfectly clear. Nothing drags along.

The dancing itself had some ups and downs. The corps de ballet worked nicely together for the most part and Teri Crilly and Camilo Ramos stood out as the lead couple in what is usually the Garland Dance (although in this production there were no garlands). Ramos, who has a wonderful stage presence as well as a stellar technique, also danced strongly as one of the Prince’s friends in Act II. The fairies, too, danced nicely throughout, although my eyes kept turning to the Orange Fairy of Grace danced by Lisa Edwards. I loved the charm with which she performed and the delicious fluidity of her movement. She shone.

I found Yanela Piñera, Queensland Ballet’s 2015 guest principal artist, very engaging as Aurora. Piñera handled the rose adagio and the final grand pas de deux with strength and attack, but what really stood out was her joyful presence throughout. She involved herself in everything, and with everyone. She smiled, made eye contact, and used her head and arms beautifully. It was a real pleasure watching her.

Hao Bin as the Prince did not, however, always live up to my expectations. I enjoyed his acting at the start of Act II where he kept himself apart from his friends in the forest as he pondered the lack of love in his life. But once he started dancing I found him a little wooden. I wished he would move his upper body with more fluidity and use his feet more strongly.

Gary Harris’ sets are gorgeous. His interiors recall Gothic architecture with its emphasis on soaring space; his exteriors are airy, beautiful places in which the story can unfold; and the final scene with its starry background provides an especially elegant setting for the wedding of Aurora and the Prince. His work was evocatively lit by Jon Buswell.

The jarring elements for me in Harris’ design input were the costumes for the two Bluebirds, although perhaps it was the very heavy eye make-up they wore that made the costumes seem over the top compard with the general elegance of the last scene. Teri Crilly was a lovely female bluebird. Whether listening, fluttering her hands, or simply executing a step, everything was performed cleanly and with great style. Her partner, Zhi Fang, seemed very nervous and so did not really show himself to advantage.

Nigel Gaynor conducted a vibrant Queensland Symphony Orchestra where tempi, volume and orchestral colour contributed to the unfolding of the story and to the development of the characters in the ballet. The orchestra added an extra emotional layer to the performance and it was such a pleasure to be hearing this kind of collaboration between music and dance. From 2016 Gaynor will take up the position of principal conductor and music director of Queensland Ballet.

I came away from this Queensland Ballet performance loving the passion that the dancers put into their performance, despite the odd stumble or other mishap. But most of all I came away thrilled that the collaborative elements of music and design were working to enhance the dance, rather than ignoring it or trying to outdo it.

Michelle Potter, 25 October 2015

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

James Batchelor. New choreographic perspectives

James Batchelor’s performance installation, Island, developed as part of a Housemate Residency at Melbourne’s Dancehouse and presented in Canberra in April 2014, has had some outstanding critical response. It received a Canberra Critics’ Circle Award in 2014, was lauded by two separate reviewers in the Dance Australia Critics’ Survey for 2014, and was shortlisted for a 2015 Australian Dance Award in the category Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance.

But it was also noticed by an academic, Professor Mike Coffin, from the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Marine and Antarctic Sciences, who happened to be in Canberra during the season of Island and chanced to go along to a performance. Professor Coffin contacted Batchelor after the show and the ensuing conversation so impressed Coffin that he invited Batchelor to accompany a research voyage to the Southern Ocean.

Batchelor and visual artist Annalise Rees, who is undertaking a PhD at the Institute, will set sail with a team of international scientists in January 2016 on board the RV Investigator heading towards Heard and McDonald Islands. The scientific aim of the voyage, Batchelor says, is to produce three-dimensional, high-resolution maps of the seafloor surrounding the islands to reveal relationships between submarine volcanoes and biological activity in the Southern Ocean.

RV Investigator port view — RV Investigator, port view

Batchelor completed his degree at the Victorian College of the Arts only in 2012 and, for a choreographer in such an early stage of his career, this invitation is an astonishing event. He hopes to develop a new performance work based on the experience and says of his and Rees’ participation in the voyage:

Our roles as artists will be to document and analyse processes taking place on the voyage and to form a creative dialogue about ways research findings can be interpreted and communicated.

Batchelor’s work emerges from unusual and often highly intellectual thought processes. Island, for example, set out to investigate the role of structure in how we perceive and respond to the environment. He says his question as he prepares to undertake this new adventure is: Can the environment be constituted into another physical language? He hopes that he and Rees can create a mapping system that utilises movement, sound and installation.

If Batchelor’s previous work is anything to go by, the performance work that will no doubt emerge as a result of the voyage is likely to be exceptionally accessible, notwithstanding its intellectual framework, and visually fascinating as well.

My review of Island is at this link.

Michelle Potter, 24 October 2015

Featured image: James Batchelor and Amber McCartney in Island, Canberra 2014. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Elise May in Natalie Weir's 'Carmen Sweet.' Expressions Dance Company. Photo: Dylan Evans

Carmen Sweet. Expressions Dance Company (3)

9 October 2015, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, Queanbeyan

This text is a slightly expanded version of my review, which appeared in The Canberra Times on 13 October 2015. A link to the online version of the review is at the end of this post.

Natalie Weir’s Carmen Sweet for Expressions Dance Company is simply sensational. Made for just six dancers with stunning, minimal design and powerful lighting, it demonstrates very clearly that less is more.

Jack Ziesing, Elise May, Riannon McLean, Samantha Mitchell in Natalie Weir's 'Carmen Sweet'. Photo Dylan Evans — Jack Ziesing, Elise May, Riannon McLean, Samantha Mitchell in Natalie Weir’s *Carmen Sweet*. Expressions Dance Company. Photo: © Dylan Evans

Carmen Sweet follows the familiar story of Carmen as we know it from the opera, at least in essence. Two men vie for Carmen’s love. She plays with the power she wields over them before one kills her. But in typical fashion, Weir has directed the story to accommodate her tiny company, and has taken a psychological look at the personality of Carmen. We encounter three Carmens, a young, flirtatious Carmen (Rebecca Hall), a sensual, fiery Carmen (Michelle Barnett) and a mature, knowing Carmen (Elise May). But that they are three shades of the one character is made clear in some exceptional choreography. Especially memorable is the scene where Carmen moves her affections from Don José, the soldier (Jack Ziesing), to that of Escamillo, the matador (Benjamin Chapman). Weir has choreographed this moment as a kind of ballroom dance for five people dancing as one. The three Carmens form the middle of the group with a man at each end. With changes of direction that are quite hypnotic, the leadership of the dance moves back and forth from Don José to Escamillo.

As the Fortune Teller who warns Carmen of her impending death at the hands of Don José, Daryl Brandwood gave a powerful performance. His expressive body curved and curled as he stalked around the older Carmen. He took her head in his hands and turned her gaze towards her younger counterpart, forcing her to watch as the impending murder was played out. And the final moment in this scene was set up on the diagonal for maximum theatrical impact. Our eyes were drawn back and forth from the demands of the Fortune Teller upstage, to prefigured death downstage as Ziesing hovered over the body of Carmen.

Elise May and Daryl Brandwood in Natalie Weir's 'Carmen Sweet'. Expressions Dance Company. Photo: Dylan Evans — Elise May and Daryl Brandwood in Natalie Weir’s *Carmen Sweet*. Expressions Dance Company. Photo: © Dylan Evans

The final scene is also choreographed on the diagonal and gives us another look at the three Carmens as one. Shrouded in moody lighting (Ben Hughes and Amelia Davis), one by one the three women fall smoothly onto the sofa, which has been moved downstage, each one not quite covering the other. Upstage the murderer, Don José, is a tense and lonely figure, his empty hands stretched forward. It is a startling image that again invites us to cast our eyes from one grouping to the other.

Weir has skilfully used the Rodion Shchedrin score, which is an arrangement for strings and percussion of extracts from music by Georges Bizet. She has, of course, used well-known melodies to identify the various characters. Escamillo, for example, enters to the familiar music that accompanies the Toreador Song in Bizet’s opera. But Weir’s skill is also noticeable in the way her choreography matches Shchedrin’s percussive sounds, exemplified especially in the last solo by the sensual Carmen where her pizzicato-style movements match beautifully with the notes.

Bill Haycock’s minimal but dramatic use of colour added extra strength to what was an exceptional piece of theatre. A single, red Salvador Dali ‘lip’ sofa was all that we needed to set the scene of passion and revenge, and the dancers used it to accommodate their outbursts of fiery behaviour. Haycock’s costumes for the three Carmens continued the theatricality. The older Carmen flounced seductively in a long-ish black, flamenco-styled dress, while the younger Carmens wore shorter, sexy red numbers.

And a big bouquet to the six local dancers, each carrying a single red rose, who accompanied Escamillo’s entrance. They performed with all the aplomb of the professionals with whom they shared the stage.

Carmen Sweet is a five star show.

Here is the link to the review as it appeared in The Canberra Times.

Michelle Potter, 13 October 2015

Featured image: Elise May in Natalie Weir’s Carmen Sweet. Expressions Dance Company. Photo: © Dylan Evans

Jesse Scales and David Mack in 'Variation 10'. Sydney Dance Company, 2015. Photo: Peter Grieg

Triptych. Sydney Dance Company

10 October 2015 (matinee), Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney

Sydney Dance Company’s latest offering, Triptych, pays homage to English composer Benjamin Britten, whose compositions, Simple Symphony, Les Illuminations and Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, are at the musical heart of the program. All three works have choreography by artistic director Rafael Bonachela, and the dancers are joined onstage by singer Katie Noonan in Les Illuminations, and throughout the program by musicians of ACO2, the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s string ensemble.

Simple Symphony looks a lot different on the stage of the Roslyn Packer Theatre. In its earlier outing in 2013, at the Studio Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, it was performed on a T-shaped catwalk with the dancers using the whole of a fairly narrow, if long, T-space, and with players from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra providing the accompaniment from a position at the cross bar of the T. This time the musicians sat on a dais at the back of the stage, a ploy successfully used by Bonachela in his exceptional creation, also made in 2013, Project Rameau. In addition, the dancers had a relatively large, rectangular space in which to perform and, all in all, the work was easier to see and to my mind, therefore, more interesting choreographically.

In the 2013 production of Simple Symphony I noticed Bonachela’s use of lifts in particular. This time, although I was still taken by the lifts, I was entranced by the moves in which the female dancers were swept up into the arms of their partner and dipped and swirled melodiously around, and by the beautifully playful endings to the first two sections, which brought gentle laughter from the audience. Nevertheless, ‘Sentimental Sarabande’, the third section, remained my favourite. It was sensuously performed, a lovely duet.

Bernhard Knauer and Janessa Dufty in *Simple Symphony.* Sydney Dance Company, 2015. Photo: © Peter Grieg

Simple Symphony is perhaps Bonachela’s most balletic looking piece, and is light and joyous. In contrast, Les Illuminations, with its background of 19th century French Symbolism via the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, has a more moody quality. Its opening scene shows the four cast members, two men and two women, standing in pools of dark light, looking like mysterious figures from a Symbolist painting. As with Simple Symphony, Les Illuminations was easier to enjoy in a more regular space and Katie Noonan’s rendition of Britten’s songs resonated beautifully throughout the theatre.

Cass Mortimer Eipper and Charmene Yap in 'Les Illuminations' . Sydney Dance Company 2015. Photo: Peter Grieg — Cass Mortimer Eipper and Charmene Yap in *Les Illuminations*. Sydney Dance Company, 2015. Photo: © Peter Grieg

The most exquisite of the duets that comprise the choreography for Les Illuminations was, for me, the final one, ‘Le départ’, between the two male cast members, Richard Cilli and Cass Mortimer Eipper. It was tender, sensual, and filled with moving moments such as those where palms touched and then arms were pushed upward. The final sculptural pose was an emotional ending.

Bonachela’s new creation for this season, Variation 10, was danced to Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. In particular it showed Bonachela’s skills in group work as opposed to the duet structure that characterised Simple Symphony and Les Illuminations. I especially enjoyed a quintet for five ladies and as usual was staggered at how beautifully they moved individually and as a group.

There is nothing like the passion for movement that Sydney Dance Company has, nor the choreographic passion that characterises Bonachela’s work.

Michelle Potter, 11 October 2015

Carmen Sweet. Expressions Dance Company (2)

9 October 2015, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, Queanbeyan

‘Natalie Weir’s Carmen Sweet for Expressions Dance Company is simply sensational.’ So begins my review for The Canberra Times to be published shortly. The text and a link to the online review will appear in due course. [See this link]

In the meantime, I can only say that, after a Sleeping Beauty from the Australian Ballet that was so over-designed that the dancers seemed secondary, and after Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games that used every technological trick in the book throughout the evening, Expressions Dance Company finally (and rightly) made dance look as though it was the centrepiece of the evening. Natalie Weir, her collaborators, and her tiny team of six dancers, deserve the utmost praise for their courage, their exceptional skills, their well-considered focus on what constitutes the danced performance, and their intelligent understanding of the art of collaboration.

Thank you. I am humbled before you. To be continued …

Michelle Potter, 10 October 2015