Dance diary. April 2013

ArtSound FM, Canberra: new dance segment

Beginning in May I will be hosting a ten minute monthly dance segment on ArtSound FM, Canberra’s community radio station focusing on the arts. The segment will be part of Dress Circle a program hosted by local arts identity Bill Stephens. Dress Circle is broadcast on Sundays at 5 pm and repeated on Tuesdays at 11 pm and my segment will focus on dance in Canberra and surrounding regions. Michelle Potter … on dancing, as the segment will be called, will be a feature of Dress Circle on the first Sunday of each month.

In the first program, which will go to air on 5 May, I will be talking about the Australian Ballet’s visit to Canberra with their triple bill program Symmetries, which opens on 23 May. Leading up to the program I have been talking Garry Stewart about his new work, Monument, and have been discovering some unusual and amusing stories about George Balanchine’s ballet The Four Temperaments. Monument and The Four Temperaments will be accompanied by the pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain in this Canberra-only program.

I will also be sharing some information about Liz Lea’s new work, InFlight, which will premiere at the National Library of Australia on 31 May. InFlight is danced by four female performers who are inspired to become aviatrixes when they see their heros, Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, taking to the air in 1928 and breaking the trans-pacific flight record.

Alison Plevery and Liz Lea, 'InFlight'. Photos: Lorna Sim — Alison Plevey and Liz Lea in costume for *InFlight*. Photos: © Lorna Sim, 2012

There will be other snippets of news as well, and I hope to have time to look back on some of the dance events I have enjoyed in the previous month.

Elizabeth Dalman and Australian Dance Theatre

There was some lovely news earlier this month from Australian Dance Theatre—Elizabeth Dalman has been named patron of ADT for the company’s 50th anniversary year, 2015. Dalman, along with Leslie White (1936‒2009), founded ADT in 1965. White moved on to other things in 1967 and Dalman continued to direct the company until 1975. After a varied career overseas, both before and after the ten years she spent at ADT, Dalman returned to Australia in 1986 and in 1990 founded the Mirramu Creative Arts Centre at Lake George, near Canberra. She continues to direct the Centre and its associated Mirramu Dance Company. Fifty years of ADT will also mark fifteen of Mirramu.*

Elizabeth Dalman in 'From Sapling to Silver', 2011 — Elizabeth Dalman in *Sapling to Silver*, Mirramu Dance Company. Photo: © Barbie Robinson, 2011

I didn’t post my Canberra Times review of Sapling to Silver when it was performed in Canberra in 2011, so here is a link to the review. [UPDATE August 2020: Online link no longer available]. Here is a link to posts about Elizabeth Dalman.

The Fabric of Dance

In April I had the pleasure of presenting an illustrated talk, The fabric of dance, at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in conjunction with the Gallery’s exhibition Ballet and Fashion. In this talk I looked at how the tutu had developed over three centuries or so, and in particular at how its development had been influenced by changes in fashion and by new materials and fabrics that had become available. But, in putting the talk together, I found I was quite unexpectedly wanting to suggest a link between one of the costumes on show in the exhibition and Louis XIV in his famous role as Apollo in Les Ballets de la nuit of 1653, which I did. I am hoping to post the text of the talk, and the accompanying PowerPoint slides, on this site in due course.

One of the images I showed during the talk was of Paris Opera Ballet dancer Carlotta Zambelli, which I was only able to show as a black and white scan from an article first published in the Australian dance journal Brolga in 2005. My postcard of Zambelli was in colour but it disappeared as a result of being lent when that issue of Brolga was being prepared for publication. I despaired of ever seeing it again but it was returned to me a week or so after the Melbourne talk. So for anyone who was at the talk, below on the right is the image in colour, alongside another (also returned to me at the same time in the same circumstances) of Zambelli with an unknown partner in La ronde des saisons in 1906.

The Rite of Spring: Stephen Malinowski’s animated graphical score

I found what I think is an excellent review of Stephen Malinowski’s animated graphical score of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. I mentioned this score in a previous post without making much comment myself although what the animated score did instantaneously for me was bring me to a realisation of why I disliked Raimund Hoghe’s Sacre so much. Hoghe completely ignored the fact that the music has so much colour, drive and rhythm. The colour, drive and rhythm of the music is perfectly obvious when listening to the music of course, but seeing the animated score absolutely drives it home and opens up a new view of the intensity of the music. Here is the link to the review.

Michelle Potter, 30 April 2013

* Dalman has always been a strong voice in the dance world and she argued against a name change to Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre when Meryl Tankard became director of ADT in 1993. A brief account of that interlude appears in my recent publication Meryl Tankard: an original voice (2012). In a letter to Dance Australia Dalman argued that the company should not carry Tankard’s name as it was important to ‘maintain continuity and … respect for the historical background of the company’.

13 Rooms. Kaldor Public Art Project

13 Rooms, 11–21 April 2013, Pier 2/3 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

The city of Sydney has just finished playing host to an ambitious project of installation art, or more correctly perhaps of performance art in which human bodies behaved as sculpture, sometimes moving sculpture, sometimes talking sculpture, existing for a moment in time before going home, or in some cases being replaced by another shift of bodies. The event took place in the mysteriously cavernous space of Pier 2/3 with individual installations/performances showing in purpose-built, small white rooms designed by Harry Seidler & Associates.

'13 Rooms', the space — *13 Rooms*, the space

There was a dance element to one installation, Revolving Door by American artists Allora & Calzadilla. This piece of performance art was choreographed by Rafael Bonachela and performed by dancers of Sydney Dance Company augmented by students from Brent Street, a Sydney performing arts academy. The human ‘door’ of what was a circular space inside one room was a line of bodies representing the internal structure of a revolving door. This human chain of bodies came to a standstill occasionally, as indeed revolving doors do when no-one is using them, then took up the movement again sometimes with linked arms, sometimes with raised arms. Occasionally they would clap hands, lift arms, sit down or engage in some other simple activity.

There was of course no music for the dancers to keep time with so to keep the rhythm and to maintain a straight line they had to rely on body time, a concept with which Bonachela is, I’m sure, familiar given his interest in the work of Merce Cunningham. The need to maintain a completely blank look appeared to be another requirement and there were one or two unsettling moments for me, and perhaps for other viewers, when it became apparent that one dancer was focusing on me in order to maintain his blank expression. Does one look away or stare back, I wondered?

Revolving Door also had its amusing moments. Some viewers ventured into the circular space, which had an exit door on two sides, and got caught up in the movement, escaping just in time as the human door pursued its relentless pathway.

And just as body time, where dancers have to sense how and when the bodies of their colleagues move, is a characteristic of Cunningham’s work, so was performance art a component of the early aesthetic of Merce Cunningham and John Cage and their designers, in particular Robert Rauschenberg. Together Cunningham, Cage and Rauschenberg and a collection of dancers and other artists and musicians presented at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1952 what is generally regarded as the first ‘happening’ in the United States, Theatre Piece No. 1. Rauschenberg went on to create many acts of performance art, usually with dancers involved, while Cunningham’s Events reflect an ongoing interest in one-off activities.

The whole event was interesting from the point of view of what is generally regarded as the impermanence of performance art. These installations were largely works that had been installed elsewhere around the world including in Manchester in 2011 and Essen in 2012. As John McDonald remarked in his review of the show for The Sydney Morning Herald on 13‒14 April: ‘It is a relatively novel idea that performances may be reconstructed by different performers years after their first appearance…Many of the most famous pieces were staged in obscure locations to small audiences. We know them only in the form of grainy, decayed videos or poor-quality stills’.

Another installation I especially enjoyed was Damien Hirst’s work, first made in 1992, in which a set of twins sits in front of two of Hirst’s spot paintings, which although they look alike are quite different from each other. The situation gained an added interest when a set of twins from amongst the onlookers asked to be photographed in the installation.

And on the day I visited, the performer in John Baldessari’s Thirteen Colourful Inside Jobs was engaged in repainting her room from aqua to flamingo pink.

13 Rooms was an undertaking of Kaldor Public Art Projects.

Michelle Potter, 22 April 2013

Featured image: Moment from John Baldessari’s Thirteen Colourful Inside Jobs, 13 Rooms, Kaldor Public Art project.

All photos: © Michelle Potter

Don Quixote. The Australian Ballet

13 April 2013 (matinee), Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House

My single viewing of the Australian Ballet’s current production of Don Quixote was entertaining, if not theatrically thrilling.

I enjoyed seeing Reiko Hombo and Yosvani Ramos in the leading roles of Kitri and Basilio. The male jota-style variation in Act I suited Ramos beautifully and showed off his neat footwork and the lightness of his jump. His portrayal of Basilio worked really well in Act III when his ‘death’ scene captured a certain craziness and was quite hilarious. But I missed a sense of passion in his encounters with Kitri.

Hombo performed nicely and her technical execution was precise and clear. But again I missed the fiery quality I associate with Kitri and I felt the consequent lack of a strong emotional connection or a sense of physical repartee with Basilio.

What I really liked about the production was the characterisation of the Don, played by Steven Heathcote; Sancho Panza, the Don’s squire played by Frank Leo; and the wealthy Gamache, played by Matthew Donnelly. At last here was an approach that didn’t seem to think that over-the-top behaviour was necessary in these kinds of roles. All were still strong individuals demanding of our attention and thoughts but without the ridiculous pantomime elements that for me went out of fashion years ago.

Amongst the corps and soloists I admired Brett Chynoweth as one of the leading townsfolk, Dana Stephensen as one of Kitri’s friends and Eloise Fryer as Amour. Both Stephensen and Fryer looked wonderful onstage. They were technically assured and dancing as if they loved it. No Don could have resisted Fryer’s arrows! Chynoweth was full on into the action at every moment.

It’s a hard act, still, to follow in the footsteps of Rudolf Nureyev and Lucette Aldous and the cast that made up the first Australian Ballet production way back in the 1970s. But some have followed on brilliantly since then, and maybe some casts that I didn’t see in this season did in fact inject some of the fiery and passionate give and take that makes this ballet a bit more than just interesting entertainment. The subscriber I sat next to yesterday was singing the praises of Lana Jones and Daniel Gaudiello.

And for those who weren’t even born in the 1970s that first Don Q is still available on DVD as a digitally remastered version of the original film.

Lana Jones and Daniel Gaudiello in a publicity shot for *Don Quixote*, 2012. Photo: © Georges Antoni. Courtesy the Australian Ballet

Michelle Potter, 14 April 2013

Gailene Stock (and the ballet documentary First Position)

I beamed with pleasure watching Gailene Stock, Australian-born director of the Royal Ballet School, presenting a scholarship to the School to Joan Sebastian Zamora in the recently released ballet documentary First Position. Stock radiated pleasure as she made the presentation and, judging by Zamora’s dancing in the documentary, she chose well. A native of Colombia, Zamora has wonderful stage presence, is a fabulous turner, has great feet and beautifully proportioned limbs and is very good-looking and filled with determination to succeed. Watch him in rehearsal on the link below.

But I was saddened to hear, on my return from this afternoon excursion, that Stock is unwell. Here is the official Royal Ballet School announcement:

From Alan Winter, Chief Operating Officer, The Royal Ballet School:
As some of you may know, Gailene Stock, the School’s Director has been unwell recently and she asked me to let you know that she will be commencing treatment shortly for a tumour that has appeared on her brain. Gailene is in a strong and positive mood but recognises that her treatment will be demanding and last for several weeks. Whilst she will continue to lead the School, her level of involvement and ability to attend work will depend on how well she is feeling at any given time. Her husband, Gary Norman (Senior Ballet Teacher—Upper School), also wishes to continue with as normal a working life as possible but he may need to be with Ms Stock at different stages of her treatment.

Both Ms Stock and Mr Norman understand that everyone will want to send their very best wishes and be supportive but politely ask that people refrain from sending e-mails and texts to her for the time being. If you wish to send anything, please address it to the School for the attention of Rachel Hollings or via email to rachelh@royalballetschool.co.uk. Ms Stock has made it clear that the best tonic we can give her is for everyone to remain focused on the students’ training and welfare and ensure we continue to bring the best out of them. I can reassure everyone that this will be the case.

The Assistant Director Jay Jolley, with the assistance of Mark Annear (Head of Outreach and Teacher Training) and Diane van Schoor (The Lower School’s Ballet Principal), will cover the artistic management of the School during any of Gailene’s absences in the summer term. Academic and pastoral matters will remain the responsibility of Dr Charles Runacres and Pippa Hogg-Andrews. I will maintain an overview of all aspects of the School’s operations.

I will keep you updated on Gailene’s anticipated return to better health.

With very best regards
Alan Winter

As for the film, well it is as much about ballet mothers as it is about young dancers and ballet competitions, and most of the original choreography we see is appalling. But it is nicely shot and edited by Bess Kargman and the seven students who are singled out and followed through rehearsals and performances in the Youth America Grand Prix all have interesting backgrounds. But you have to love competitive ballet to love this film. It has many distasteful moments if competitions are not your scene.

Michelle Potter, 12 April 2013

I interviewed Gailene Stock for the National Library’s oral history program in April 2012. The interview is available online.

Ty King-Wall promoted to principal

Some readers of this site have, over recent months, wondered when the Australian Ballet’s Ty King-Wall would be promoted to principal, citing as justification his outstanding performances in Onegin and Swan Lake in particular. Well it happened in Sydney yesterday, 6 April 2013, following a matinee performance of Don Quixote.

Ty King-Wall and Amy Harris, 2012. Photo: © Georges Antoni. Courtesy the Australian Ballet

Congratulations to King-Wall whose leadership qualities (in addition to his dancing) have impressed me. Posts and comments are on Ty-King Wall on this website are here.

News report.
Australian Ballet media release. (UPDATE August 2020: Media release no longer available).

Michelle Potter, 7 April 2013