Farewell to a year of dance, 2023

In Maori custom an address or oratory always opens with acknowledgment of those recently deceased, recognising ‘the mighty totara trees that have fallen.’ That puts Jon Trimmer right up there in the first line since he is/was unarguably the hero of New Zealand dance. Knighted for his unmatched artistry, and the longevity of his fabled performance career, Jon was loved by so many—for all the roles he danced but also for the plain common decency in the man. Fastidiously professional about his own work, he was always interested in the work of others, ever standing by to help should that be needed. Jon may have passed (26 October 2023, aged 84) but the memories of his mighty performance career will never be forgotten, never. Nor will we see his like again, ever. Jon carried the mantle from Poul Gnatt and Russell Kerr to safeguard the Company for decades. That now passes to those performers and directors who lead RNZBallet. One can only wish them courage. [The Company’s public tribute to Jon will be held in Wellington on Friday 2 February, 2024. See Company’s website for details and reservations. The next Russell Kerr lecture in Ballet & Related Arts, on Sunday 25 February 2024, will be devoted to Jon. Presenters include Turid Revfeim, Anne Rowse, Kerry-Anne Gilberd, Michelle Potter. For details and reservations, email jennifershennan@xtra.co.nz). Links to my obituaries for Jon are at this link and at www.stuff.co.nz

Jon Trimmer as Dr Coppélius in *Coppélia*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 1996. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

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The Auckland Arts Festival began the year with two striking productions—Revisor, stunning dance-theatre choreographed by Crystal Pite, with dancers playing actors playing dancers. Scored in Silence was a deeply moving film-dance testament to the experiences of the profoundly deaf community of Hiroshima 1945.

Royal New Zealand Ballet’s mid-year season Lightscapes, had four works with for me the standout Requiem for a Rose by Annabella Lopez-Orcha—a beautiful mysterious meditation, and the powerfully atmospheric Logos by Alice Topp (an RNZB alumna). Their single performance Platinum, was a tribute to 70 years achievement. My enduring memory is of Sara Garbowski dancing exquisitely in the excerpt from Giselle Act II. Sara has since retired from her 15 year performance career, and I for one am sorry we did not see her in the complete ballet. (Perhaps if she finds retirement over-rated she could come back as a guest artist to perform it in a year’s time?). The Company’s year ended with a romping return season of Loughlan Prior’s Hansel & Gretel which the rejuvenated company performed with great gusto.

Sara Garbowski in *Giselle*, Act II. *Platinum* season, Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Mary-Jane O’Reilly’s Ballet Noir, a contemporary treatment of Giselle Act II, was a phenomenal achievement—independent dancers who nevertheless performed as a seasoned company, with flawless technique, integrated design and powerful dramatic effect. We don’t do Dance Oscars, thank goodness, but if we did, this work would probably score. Another memorable season was the dance opera, (m)Orpheus, with direction and choreography by Neil Ieremia of Black Grace dance company. The dancers combined seamlessly with the singers who found nobility in a contemporary urban setting.

It was terrific to hear of Raewyn Hill’s staging Douglas Wright’s exquisite Gloria on her Co3 in Perth. Rumours of other works by Douglas in their planning for re-staging, mean I’d better be saving for an airfare. In Wellington an exhibition, Geist, of Tessa Ayling-Guhl’s photo portraits of Douglas Wright from 2015, was a moving experience. Björn Aslund choreographed a solo, geist dance, accompanied by Robert Oliver on bass viol, in the gallery. It’s always special when a dance enhances an art gallery space, uniting both art forms. A gathering was held at The Long Hall on October 14 to mark Douglas’ birthdate — and an archival screening of The Kiss Inside made compelling viewing. We plan to host a similar event every year on that date, and are grateful to Megan Adams who maintains the Douglas Wright archive with fastidious care.

A capacity audience attended the Russell Kerr lecture, this time focussing on Patricia Rianne’s celebrated career, and viewing her 1986 ballet, Bliss, based on the Katherine Mansfield short story. 2023 marks the centenary of Mansfield’s death and I was honoured to present a paper KM and Dance, at the VUW conference held to mark that.

2023 also marked the centenary of the tragic incident in which a young dancer, Phyllis Porter, was performing in the Opera House in Wellington, when her tarlatan skirt caught on the gaslight in the wings and she was horribly burnt, and died four days later. Shades of Emma Livry in Paris, though no-one here makes a pilgrimage to Phyllis’ resting place.

2023 offered several memorable dance videos—the Arts channel had a repeat screening of the splendid Cloudgate in Lin Hwai Min’s Rice. Firestarter about Bangarra Dance Theatre again made compelling viewing. A doco, The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dancing told of Tom Oakley, a young Liverpool boy with serious cystic fibrosis yet who had danced his way to win a scholarship to Rambert Dance school. The outstanding force in German dance, Susanne Linke, sent me an intriguing video of her dance project, Inner Suspension, in which she shares her pedagogy and technique. (Anyone interested to receive the link could email Inge Zysk at info@susannelinke.com).

Several dance books of interest featured in my year. David McAllister was appointed Interim Artistic Director at RNZBallet. His two books, Ballet Confidential and the earlier Solo, provide access to the backstage life of the ballet and proved popular among local readers. The book Royal New Zealand Ballet at Sixty which Anne Rowse and I co-edited back in 2013, was released in a digital edition by Victoria University Press.

If I had to signal the hour and a half of the year that offered the purest dance pleasure, it would be the RNZB Company class I observed taught by David McAllister. Clarity of physics, and the miracle of anatomy, combined with music and poetry from each dancer, reveals the art, unmarked by choreography, casting, costumes and champagne—all the things we go to the ballet for. Here by contrast is the forge and the chapel where the art of the dancer is daily honed and made good. It’s my favourite thing.

Season’s greetings to all—in happy anticipation of 2024 which will see Akram Khan’s The Jungle Book Reimagined—and mid- year an intriguing project, Bismaya, in which Chamber Music New Zealand are bringing musicians from India to combine with Vivek Kinra’s Mudra dance company in a national tour and workshops. Russell Kerr’s pedigree production of Swan Lake from RNZB comes up in May, and later their mixed bill, Solace which includes a new work by Alice Topp. A return season of Liam Scarlett’s magical Midsummer Nights’ Dream is the work that keeps his talent alive.

Jennifer Shennan, 30 December 2023

Featured image: Jon Trimmer as a Stepmother in Cinderella. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 1987. Photo courtesy Royal New Zealand Ballet

Season’s greetings and the ‘best of’ 2023

To all those who have accessed this website over 2023, especially those who have made comments on various posts, thank you for your interest. I look forward to your continued involvement in 2024. May the coming year be filled with great dance and may peace descend upon the world.

Below are my ‘top five’ productions for the year arranged chronologically according to the date (month only) of the performance I saw. I have this year chosen to select brand new works rather than restagings. This means I have left out a few amazing productions including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Strictly Gershwin, both from Queensland Ballet, and both of which were just stunning. It is always difficult to choose just five works but I feel it is sometimes a good thing to have to adhere to some kind of restriction, so it’s new works only this year.

What remains (Melbourne. Bodytorque digital—a series from the Australian Ballet, February)

Tim Harbour’s What remains was an exceptional tribute to dancer Kevin Jackson on his retirement as a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet. In just a few minutes of film it showed Jackson’s exceptional technique and Harbour’s inventive choreography, while taking every advantage of an ‘off stage’ setting and a score from George Bokaris.

Shortcuts to familiar places. (Canberra. James Batchelor and Collaborators, April)

James Batchelor’s Shortcuts was an examination of how dance is transmitted from generation to generation—a beautifully conceived and outstandingly presented look at the theoretical idea of ‘embodied transmission’.

Paragon. (Sydney. The Australian Ballet, May)

Alice Topp’s Paragon was a tribute to the dancers of the Australian Ballet, past and present, with great input from design and sound collaborators, and with exceptional, visually stunning choreography from Topp. It was an experience, too, to see some of the Australian Ballet’s dancers from past decades return to the stage and to be reminded of their contribution to the art form.

My brilliant career. (Brisbane. Queensland Ballet, June)

Cathy Marston’s examination of Miles Franklin’s novel, My brilliant career, was a masterly production in which every character was clearly drawn choreographically. Marston created a range of movements that gave an exceptional understanding of the nature of each person in the story. My brilliant career was part of a triple bill from Queensland Ballet.

Bespoke. (Brisbane. Queensland Ballet, July)

Bespoke was a remarkable triple bill, the sixth in a series named Bespoke, showing the way artistic director, Li Cunxin, curates an evening of dance. With works from Remi Wortmeyer, Paul Boyd and Natalie Weir, the audience saw an amazing array of ideas and dance styles and approaches from humour to a serious examination of the process of life.

Michelle Potter, 26 December 2023

Leanne Benjamin. New artistic director of Queensland Ballet

The news has finally been released! Leanne Benjamin, AM OBE, is to take over from Li Cunxin as artistic director of Queensland Ballet. Rockhampton-born and trained, and former principal dancer with London’s Royal Ballet and other major ballet companies, Benjamin will take up the directorship early in 2024. Her autobiography, Built for Ballet (written in conjunction with Sarah Crompton), was published by Melbourne Books in 2021.

My reviews of productions in which I have had the pleasure of seeing Benjamin perform have been filled with superlatives, beginning in 2002 when she visited Australia with the Royal Ballet then under the direction of Ross Stretton. But I recall in particular her performance in London in 2010 in the first movement of Balanchine’s Symphony in C when I wrote, ‘She was beautifully self-assured, a ballerina always aware of her audience with a technique that shone from the moment she stepped onto the stage.’ And of her autobiography I wrote, ‘an engrossing read’ and ‘honest to the core’.

Since her retirement from the Royal Ballet in 2013, Benjamin has coached dancers and companies across the world, and has engaged in a variety of dance-related activities. Everything suggests that she will make a committed director and will constantly interact with a range of dance communities in a variety of ways.

I guess my major interest at present, however, is in the kind of repertoire Benjamin will bring to Queensland Ballet. The 2024 season has already been announced and has been curated by Li Cunxin so we won’t really have an idea of how Benjamin will approach repertoire until the 2025 season is announced. It is very clear from changes to directorship here in Australia and elsewhere that artistic directors have their own specific interests and I am under the impression that they (perhaps rightly) feel the need to step away from previous approaches and be themselves. Sometimes this works, sometimes not to any great extent. I wonder in particular whether she will continue Queensland Ballet’s encouragement of Australian choreographers, both established and emerging (side by side of course with the classics from across the decades/centuries)?

Time will tell but the outlook seems positive! It is a more than interesting appointment and Benjamin is even the first female artistic director of Queensland Ballet.

Below is the photo of Benjamin that accompanied the official announcement of the appointment.

But of course I could not have any other featured image than the amazing shot of Benjamin in the outback, which I have used before on a number of occasions. Both photos are by Jason Bell.

Michelle Potter, 20 December 2023

Featured image: Leanne Benjamin dancing at a location outside of Alice Springs. Photo: © Jason Bell, 2006

New Breed. Sydney Dance Company, 2023

9 December 2023. Carriageworks, Eveleigh (Sydney)

New Breed, an annual program of new works from four emerging choreographers, celebrated its tenth year in 2023. While I haven’t seen all ten seasons, two works from previous seasons stand out in my mind—Melanie Lane’s WOOF from 2017, which has gone on to have main stage performances and has lost none of its brilliant approach to choreography and theme, and Reign in 2015 from Daniel Riley, who is now artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre. For me, however, none of the fours works in the 2023 season, one each from choreographers Riley Fitzgerald, Eliza Cooper, Tra Mi Dinh and Beau Dean Riley Smith, had anywhere near the same impact as the two works I remember so clearly from the past. Unfortunately! But then I guess we can’t expect necessarily that every season will have a work that is so good that it remains in the memory for years.

From a purely visual point of view, Eliza Cooper’s Revenge tales and romance looked spectacular with its remarkable, colour-drenched costumes designed by Aleisa Jelbart. But it was hard to follow what exactly Cooper was getting at. After reading the program notes, it seems there were many thoughts (too many) going through Cooper’s mind as she put the work together. Brazen heroism? The appropriateness of symbolism and archetype? Legacy and canon? And so on. Dance doesn’t lend itself to a multitude of abstract ideas in my opinion and I found Revenge tales and romance entertaining in some respects, but frustrating to follow in many others.

Scene from *Revenge tales and romance*. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Choreographically I particularly enjoyed Tra Mi Dinh’s Somewhere between ten and fourteen, which explored the changing light of the period of dusk. Although it seemed rather long (even though it lasted just 22 minutes), it was well constructed with its group of dancers changing patterns and moving through space quite nicely. With just one major idea at its centre, it was a work that spoke clearly and allowed further, personal thoughts to emerge at times.

Riley Fitzgerald’s EverybOdy’s gOt a bOmb (and yes, the upper case O in three spots is how it was spelled) was based on several distressing events that occurred during the 1999 Woodstock Festival in Rome, New York State. Fitzgerald’s program notes says his work explores ‘raw, primal behaviours that emerge during such chaotic events’. The choreography was sometimes ugly (appropriate given the theme?) in its groupings, and it was certainly chaotic, but, a little like Cooper’s work, it was not an easy topic to follow.

Having been a longtime admirer of Beau Dean Riley Smith’s work as a dancer and occasionally choreographer with Bangarra Dance Theatre, I had been looking forward to his Gubba, a work in which he set out to examine the demolition of First Nation’s peoples over time by white colonists. It was a great topic and well worth telling through an Indigenous perspective. I admired the choreography, with overtones of Bangarra vocabulary, but it was a shame I thought that Smith chose to think of the colonists as akin to Martians. The word ‘gubba’, which gave its name to the work, is defined in the Macquarie Dictionary as ‘n. Aboriginal English, (oft. derog.) a white man’. That was enough to reflect an opinion, especially given the derogative nuance of the word, and perhaps it was somewhat unnecessary to go ‘off the planet’ as it were.

New Breed, produced with a principal partnership from the Balnaves Foundation, is a terrific initiative and, despite my various misgivings, I look forward to seeing another iteration in 2024. You never know what and who might emerge.

Michelle Potter, 18 December 2023

Possum Magic. The Ballet. The Australian Ballet School

8 December 2023. The Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne

I was more than curious when I heard that Loughlan Prior was preparing a ballet based on the much-loved children’s book by Mem Fox, Possum Magic. I mean how on earth was he going to manage the invisibility of Hush, the possum character on whom Grandma Poss casts a spell making Hush disappear from sight in order to save her from danger in the bush? Despite the invisibility, Hush continues to play an ongoing, major role as her visibility slowly reappears. She rarely leaves the stage.

Well I need not have worried. It all happened with cleverly introduced costume changes and terrific input from the other characters who acted beautifully throughout to stage a pretence that they couldn’t see Hush while she was under the spell of invisibility.

Grandma Poss has forgotten the magic that will return Hush to a state of visibility and, as the story progresses, the invisible Hush and Grandma Poss hop on a bike and travel through the Australian countryside and the country’s major cities, nicely shown through snippets of film, looking for human food that might restore Hush’s visibility. After eating some typical Australian delicacies at various stops, including Pavlova, Lamingtons, Vegemite, Minties, Anzac biscuits and others, Hush returns slowly to a visible state. The critical items are Pavlova, Vegemite and Lamingtons and the return to visibility, and arrival back in the bush where the characters live, is warmly welcomed by everyone.

Milana Gould as Hush danced beautifully. Her finely boned body and her long and flexible limbs brought out the best in Prior’s choreography, which shows not only classical steps and combinations, but some more contemporary movements as well. Kit Thompson as Grandma Poss gave an outstanding performance with excellent stage presence and I especially enjoyed watching two sparring kangaroos (Thomas Boddington and Tadgh Robinson) and an impressive and quite dominant koala (Ethan Mrmacovski).

Possum Magic. The Ballet showed Loughlan Prior at his theatrical best. His insertion of film was exceptional as was his varied choreography to suit the characters, especially for the Pavlova ladies whose dancing was very classical indeed. His collaborators worked beautifully with him with a very danceable score from Claire Cowan, costumes and set from Emma Kingsbury (I especially loved the Pavlova tutus—red skirts trimmed with white Pavlova slices around the edges); and lighting from Jon Buswell. The ballet is a delight to watch and encapsulates beautifully the Mem Fox book on which it is based. It deserves further showings.

Grandma Poss and Hush (foreground) with Palova ladies in Perth. Photo: © Sergey Konstantinov

The second half of the program consisted of three short items, Degas dances from Paul Knobloch and largely danced by Level 4 students of the School with some outstanding solo sections from Ruito Takabatake; Nexus from Stephen Baynes for Level 7 students; and Techno Requiem from Lucas Jervies showing a contemporary dance style and strongly performed by Level 8 students. I was particularly thrilled to see Nexus as Baynes’ choreography is not often on show these days. Nexus, danced to Capriccio for Piano and String Orchestra by Graeme Koehne, shows Baynes’ innate musicality, his beautiful and sometimes surprising use of space, and his unique choreographic style and structure. But in all this second part showed off the range of dance that is taught at the Australian Ballet School.

Michelle Potter, 13 December 2023

Featured image: The characters in Possum Magic. The Ballet with Milana Gould as Hush (centre, held aloft by Koala). Photo: © Sergey Konstantinov