Twyla Tharp

A new interview with Twyla Tharp, by New York-based dance writer Gia Kourlas, is now available online on the website of Dance Magazine. It’s well worth a read. Here is the link.

Reading the article so soon after seeing In the Upper Room in Melbourne, I was inspired to search through my bookshelf for Tharp’s autobiography, Push comes to shove, published in 1992. There I read a little about the genesis of and inspiration for In the Upper Room. In particular, I was fascinated by Tharp’s account of the role of the two women who open and close the work. Tharp writes:

In picturing the great ferocious and brave porcelain dragon dogs that guard Zen temples, I was also seeing a family of small black-and-white china bulldogs that were kept in the front parlor of my Gram Bertha’s farmhouse. These had been passed down from Sarah Margaret Cherry Confer, my small Quaker great-grandmother who held the world together through all adversity. As I cast Shelley [Washington] and Chris [Uchida] in this role, to guard and organize the stage, I realized we had been building the strength for them to take on this work for more than a decade. These two women had become the ultimate in what I think of as my power women.*

She then goes on to talk, in a wonderfully analytical manner, about the structure of the work and where and how these two women (whom she called the Bomb Squad) fit into the whole. Now I look forward even more to seeing In the Upper Room again when the Australian Ballet’s 20:21 program goes to Sydney.

Michelle Potter, 2 September 2015

* Twyla Tharp, Push comes to shove: an autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), pp. 305–306.

Dance diary. August 2015

New Breed: Sydney Dance Company

Early in August Sydney Dance Company announced the four recipients of commissions to create works for the company’s New Breed initiative. Kristina Chan, Fiona Jopp, Bernhard Knauer and Daniel Riley will present their dances at Carriageworks in a season running from 8 to 13 December. Commissions have also gone to independent designers Matt Marshall and Aleisa Jelbart, and musician/composers Nick Thayer, James Brown, Jürgen Knauer, Toby Merz and Alicia Merz, who will contribute to the creation of the works, which will be performed by artists from Sydney Dance Company.

The four New Breed 2015 choreographers . Photo: Peter Greig — The four ‘New Breed’ choreographers for 2015 (l-r: Fiona Jopp, Kristina Chan, Daniel Riley and Bernhard Knauer). Photo: Peter Greig

Don Quixote: the film

During my recent foray into the career of Lucette Aldous, as a result of Sue Healey’s short film on Aldous, I came across the photograph below.

Lucette Aldous and Robert Helpmann in rehearsal for the film, 'Don Quixote', the Australian Ballet 1972. Photo: Don Edwards — Lucette Aldous and Robert Helpmann in rehearsal for the film, *Don Quixote*. The Australian Ballet 1972. Photo: Don Edwards. Courtesy National Library of Australia

I had always understood that it was very hot in those Essendon hangars where the Don Quixote production was filmed. From this image it appears that perhaps it was quite cold at times!

Harry Haythorne choreographic awards

The Royal New Zealand Ballet and the Ballet Foundation of New Zealand have announced two new choreographic awards to honour Harry Haythorne, artistic director of Royal New Zealand Ballet from 1981 to 1992. There will be two studio showings of new works choreographed by company dancers who will be in the running for two awards, one to be decided by a panel headed by present artistic director Francesco Ventriglia, and the other a People’s Choice award funded by money raised at the memorial event for Haythorne held in January. Dates for the showings are 12 and 13 September in the Royal New Zealand ballet studios, Wellington.

Press for August

‘Moving tribute to those who served.’ Review of Reckless Valour, QL2 Dance, The Canberra Times, 1 August 2015, p. 16. Online version.

‘Dalman and Jones going into dance Hall of Fame.’ Feature on the 2015 Australian Dance awards, The Canberra Times, 27 August 2015, ‘Times 2’, p. 6. Online version.

Michelle Potter, 31 August 2015

20:21. The Australian Ballet

29 August 2015 (matinee), State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne

What does twenty-first-century ballet encompass? What does it look like? And does it differ from ballet of the twentieth century? In many respects the Australian Ballet’s latest mixed bill program, 20:21, suggests an answer in Tim Harbour’s latest work, Filigree and Shadow, the centre work in the 20:21 program. The work is strongly danced. Its powerful, dramatic choreography is coupled with Benjamin Cisterne’s equally dramatic lighting, and with an exceptional, minimalist stage setting by Kelvin Ho that combines curved and flat walls. Its commissioned score from the German duo, 48nord, binds the work together.

Unfortunately for Harbour, however, his work in the triple bill program is preceded and followed by works from two of the twentieth-century’s most admired choreographers—George Balanchine and Twyla Tharp. Master choreographers. And not only does it have to contend with that kind of program placement, Filigree and Shadow doesn’t seem to take us anywhere. It is, we are told in Australian Ballet marketing and in program notes, about Harbour’s feelings of aggression. I found it hard to identify with those personal feelings (of anger?) that Harbour seemed to want to show.

Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements, which opened the program, might be thought of (wrongly I suggest) as lightweight by comparison. It’s pretty to look at and high-spirited emotionally. But it asks us to look at complexity of structure (in the choreographic patterns that it puts before us) and musicality (in its reflections of and relationships to Stravinsky’s symphonic score). Balanchine was never one to make his ballets overly personal. We can bring our own ideas to the work and that is, I believe, how to engage an audience. Harbour’s very personal approach doesn’t do this and, as a result, the Balanchine work has so much more to offer.

The six principals in Symphony in Three Movements in the performance I saw, Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo, Lana Jones and Ty King-Wall, and Amber Scott and Rudy Hawkes, all brought their individual qualities to the performance. Kondo and Guo were thrilling technically but also brought pleasure and excitement to their dancing, and Jones was playful and nicely partnered by King-Wall. The central pas de deux from Scott and Hawkes gave clarity to the unusual choreography with its turned up feet and hands bent at the wrists.

The closing work, Tharp’s In the Upper Room, was an acquisition for the Australian Ballet during Ross Stretton’s artistic directorship. Those who were lucky enough to be at the opening night in 1997 are unlikely to forget the occasion. Since then I have seen Upper Room performed by other companies in the United States but have always been a little disappointed. Beyond the Australian Ballet, no one else seems to have the energy, the staying power, and, behind the marathon of dancing, the reckless insouciance to carry it off.

The performance I saw this season wasn’t an opening night, and nor did it have quite the same thrill as that very first viewing—it wasn’t as well danced for a start. But this time I admired hugely the four ladies on pointe, in particular Robyn Hendricks and Amanda McGuigan, whose beautifully proportioned bodies and stellar techniques made the most of Tharp’s uniquely beautiful take on classical moves. I love this work, even when it doesn’t reach the heights of that first, great performance of 1997. It is a thrill to have it back in Australia, and also a thrill to see Ross Stretton acknowledged on the cast sheet.

Michelle Potter, 30 August 2015

Featured image: Artists of the Australian Ballet in Filigree and Shadow, 2015. Photo: © Jeff Busby

Note: My review of the first Australian Ballet performance of In the Upper Room was published in Dance Australia in June/July 1997 (can it really be almost 20 years ago?). My posts about Upper Room in the U.S. are at various links including Pacific Northwest Ballet and American Ballet Theatre.

Elizabeth Dalman in Taiwan, 2014. Photo: Chen, Yi-shu

Hall of Fame. Australian Dance Awards 2015

The 2015 Australian Dance Awards ceremony will take place on 12 September in Adelaide. Following usual practice, the recipients of the Hall of Fame award have been announced in advance. The 2015 inductees into this prestigious group of Australian dancers and dance makers are Elizabeth Dalman and Marilyn Jones.

Dalman has been in the news recently as founding director (initially with Royal Ballet dancer Leslie White) of Australian Dance Theatre, which this year celebrates its 50th birthday. Audiences in Canberra and Queanbeyan have been treated to several performances that have looked back to Dalman’s early Adelaide Dance Theatre works in two programs, Fortuity and L, with L also being shown in Adelaide.

Elizabeth Dalman (centre front) in 'Moon Lake Walking'. Weereewa Festival Lake George. 2010. Photo: Barbie Robinson — Elizabeth Dalman (centre front) in *Moon Lake Walking*, Weereewa Festival Lake George. Photo: © Barbie Robinson

During her Adelaide years Dalman was described in the press as the ‘rebel of the dance’ but her more recent work has also been ground-breaking. In particular she has worked in diverse inter-cultural situations, including with Taiwanese and Indigenous dancers, and has frequently celebrated in dance the unique landscape of Lake George, near Bungendore, New South Wales, where she now lives and works.

Marilyn Jones is passionate about classical ballet and, while she has made excursions into contemporary dance, including with Sydney Dance Company, her career has been dedicated to the growth and development of ballet in Australia. She was a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet from its inaugural season in 1962 until the 1970s, and with the company danced leading roles in all the great classics. She was the company’s artistic director from 1979 until 1982 and during that period established the Dancers Company, which offered touring experience to senior students of the Australian Ballet School and opportunities to younger members of the Australian Ballet.

Marilyn Jones in 'The Merry Widow', the Australian Ballet, 1975. Photo: Walter Stringer — Marilyn Jones in the Australian Ballet production of *The Merry Widow*, 1975. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia

One of Jones’ most significant achievements has been the establishment of the Australian Institute of Classical Dance, following the award of an Australian Creative Arts Fellowship in 1990. AICD continues its work today, teaching and examining, offering scholarships to dancers, and organising a choreographic competition, Dance Creation, to encourage emerging choreographers.

For a longer article on Dalman and Jones and their induction into the Hall of Fame, and more images, see this link.

Michelle Potter, 27 August 2015

7 Deadly Sins. Expressions Dance Company

21 August 2015, Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane

Natalie Weir can always be relied upon to present works with highly physical choreography and with design that is usually minimal but always effective. Her most recent production for Expressions Dance Company, 7 Deadly Sins, is no exception. The choreography is powerful and sometimes turbulent, the lighting by David Walters is dramatic, and the design by Bill Haycock is in some cases lush and sumptuous, in others totally stripped back. A bold, commissioned score from Darrin Verhagen completes the collaboration.

Weir has set out to examine human nature through an exploration those ‘vices’ that, since early Christian times, have been classified as ‘deadly sins’—sloth, greed, gluttony, lust, envy, pride and wrath. Each sin makes an appearance by emerging from a box—each box is uniquely shaped and accommodates the dancer in a different position. Initially the sins wear a gorgeously designed costume created by Haycock from a range of fabrics, mostly gold and black in colour, with metallic and bejewelled highlights. These costumes look fabulously dramatic as the sins emerge from their boxes. But each sin quickly discards his or her luxurious outer garment in order to represent the sin in a physical manner. An eighth character, the Man, has a role that is a little unclear, although he interacts with the sins throughout and gives the piece, which really has no leading character, a kind of coherence.

(l-r) Elise May, Thomas Gundry and Michelle Barnett in Natalie Weir's '7 Deadly Sins'. Expressions Dance Company, 2015. Photo: Chris Herzfeld — (l-r) Elise May, Thomas Gundry and Michelle Barnett in Natalie Weir’s *7 Deadly Sins*. Expressions Dance Company, 2015. Photo: Chris Herzfeld

The standout sins for me were Pride, danced with exceptional stage presence by Benjamin Chapman, and Wrath, strongly, even wrathfully, performed by Michelle Barnett. There was absolutely no doubt about which sin they represented. The body said it all. I also admired Daryl Brandwood as Greed, not only for his articulate dancing, but also because his vast performing experience made his interpretation a multi-faceted one. In fact, the choreographic highlight for me was a duet between Brandwood and Chapman in which their characters seemed to be competing for dominance. And remarkably this competitive sparring took place inside, on top of, and around one of the boxes. The duet was a powerful display and something of a tour de force with the tall, narrow box tilting alarmingly at times. It was, nevertheless, beautifully manipulated and managed by the dancers.

This is an interesting work from Weir who most often deals with storytelling in which people are at the centre of the work. With 7 Deadly Sins we are, on the other hand, looking at a collection of temperaments or intangible ideas. Perhaps the weakest aspect of the show was that not all the dancers were able to portray these non-human characters so easily. Or at least not able to make an instant impact. As a result, in some cases I found myself wondering for a few minutes which sin was being portrayed. I am often reminded of Agnes de Mille who maintained that a dancer had just 30 seconds after making an entrance to also make an impact in order to keep the audience’s attention.

Michelle Potter, 25 August 2015