Ausdance has announced the return of two fellowships, the Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship and the Keith Bain Choreographic Travel Fellowship. Ausdance initiated the fellowships some years ago but closure was necessary during the COVID outbreak. They have just now been reinstated and, as before, are worth $10,000 each.
Peggy van Praagh (1910-1990) and Keith Bain (1926-2012) were major figures in many aspects of dance in Australia and their input spanned several decades. It was especially strong in the mid-20th century but continued until their respective deaths.
Van Praagh’s major contribution to dance in Australia was as founding artistic director of the Australian Ballet, a position she held from 1962 to 1974 and again in 1978. She shared the position of artistic director with Robert Helpmann from 1965 until 1974. But she was prominent in many other ways including as, briefly, artistic director of the Borovansky Ballet and as a teacher with various organisations.
Keith Bain had a distinguished career in a variety of dance areas including performance, choreography and teaching. He danced with the Bodenwieser Ballet for example, and choreographed for Ballet Australia and taught and lectured at NIDA. In his book, The Principles of Movement (2013), his approach to movement is explained in detail
The Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship A Choreographic Fellowship of $10,000 awarded to a mid-career choreographer.
After van Praagh’s death in 1990, the Trustees of her Estate made a donation to Ausdance National for the establishment of the Peggy van Praagh Fellowship, an initiative to support choreographers.
The Keith Bain Choreographic Travel Fellowship The Keith Bain Choreographic Travel Fellowship supports travel and experiences by emerging choreographers across any dance genre.
3 July 2026. Hannah Playhouse, Wellington reviewed by Jennifer Shennan
Fever/Dream is a program of five works performed by the current members of Ballet Collective Aotearoa. Turid Revfeim has for some years now established and directed this independent collective, offering regular classes and creating opportunities for free-lance dancers to perform and choreograph. Their work is of consistently high standard and brings much of interest to our stages.
(See my earlier reviews on On Dancing of their Subtle Dances with NZTrio musicians playing live on stage, touring nationally to many arts festivals on the circuit here; Bartok’sThe Miraculous Mandarin with Orchestra Wellington; and most memorably Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night with NZ String Quartet in a Chamber Music NZ project). They do small-scale and local shows as well.
Effectively BCA is a private ballet company. It’s been a long time since Ida Rubinstein used her considerable fortune to set up one of those in Paris, and to commission choreographies in which she herself performed the central (if not too demanding) roles. Money talks but it doesn’t usually say much. But Revfeim is no Rubinstein. Quite how she keeps BCA going, with no Board and no budget is something of a mystery, probably as much to her as to the rest of us, but there it is, and we should salute them.
The opening work, Fever, choreographed by Lyndon Foley, is a small masterpiece, beautifully crafted. Remember his name and hope he can continue choreographing. A tight group of six dancers deliver a faultless phenomenon of a million movements many of them mechanical, a few of them poignant, without ever losing the central thrust. The piece echoes the themes in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, and Gertrud Bodenwieser’s The Demon Machine — so of course also resonates with the AI scenario that hovers over our heads today. One dancer is a conscientious objector for about 30 seconds but we do not miss it. Later there’s a short-lived motif of someone down on the floor swimming — for dear life, I guess. Aren’t we all?
Then follows Fever to Dream, a video by Hanna Harris and Olivia Duncan. Four dancers are caught cavorting among the roses at the local Botanical Gardens, then In Lambton Quay, then at Oriental Bay so there was no doubt what city we were in. A skilled poem, one word to a line, ran down the side of the screen — Fever, Lever, Lover, Loves, Loses, Loser, Laser … and so on till the final line, reached by a single letter change from Dread to Dream. The poem was reproduced in the printed program (hooray that there was one) and gave a spine to all the other works on the program.
Paths Cross, directed by Turid Revfeim, grew from a beginning in improvisation. Contrasting dance styles from each performer gave the work an interesting and impressive texture. Grit-S a solo performed by Zoe White, accompanied by Jefferson Chen on stage singing and playing keyboard. Unfortunately in the performance I attended the volume was very loud, which made it difficult to hear and to follow the subtleties that were obviously present.
(D)rea(m)lity, choreographed by Zoe White, makęs a striking and dramatic final work, playing off awake and asleep states, a somewhat terrifying dream sequence, then an inspired lighting trick to assure us all is well. Then follows an ambiguous ending that could be seen as a challenge to that assurance. This is what theatre is for.
Postscript: Several of the pieces used a haze machine, which, next to strobe lighting, is my least favourite trick from the tech crew. If a hazy effect is required then choreograph it I say, don’t turn on a mindless machine as you risk at least some of the audience closing their eyes, which means they might miss really important and intelligent choreography.
Lucy Guerin, director and founder of the Melbourne-based contemporary dance company Lucy Guerin Inc, will step down from her position at the end of 2026. Guerin established her company 25 years ago and, while 25 years is a more than commendable time to have been at the helm of a dance company, the news came as something of a shock. Guerin said of her decision:
After 25 years, I have decided to step down as Artistic Director of LGI to explore new directions in dance. I founded the company in 2002 to support the making and touring of my productions, but over the years it has become so much more than that. It is now a centre for choreography, discussion, learning, connection and ideas and there are so many who have worked incredibly hard to support this organization. I am deeply grateful to all of them
Guerin will continue to lead the company until the end of 2026 and will perform a solo work in October before relinquishing her role as director. The LGI Board will begin a search for a new director in the coming weeks. It will be interesting to see who will be selected to take on the position vacated by Guerin, and what new role Guerin will take on in the future.
For posts about Lucy Guerin on this website follow this link.
Adelaide College of the Arts
I had the pleasure of being in Adelaide recently where I saw a performance by dance and design students from Years 2 and 3 at the Adelaide College of the Arts. The evening consisted of two original dance works, Made to_ by Singaporean guest choreographer Ru Ma, along with there & gone by Peter Sheedy, lecturer and course co-ordinator for the dance program at the College.
The students performed exceptionally well in both works although I especially admired the Sheedy work. It was a thoroughly abstract work making great use of onstage objects that were moved around the stage at various times. It also had the dancers constantly regrouping in various ways and was in fact an exceptional way of introducing students to the various possibilities of choreography. A great training piece although the dancers performed like professionals rather than students in training.
News from Loughlan Prior
Loughlan Prior’s production of Hansel Gretel, made originally for Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2019, has just recently been performed in Las Vegas by Nevada Ballet Theatre. It was really well received there and was described in one review as a ‘spectacular, surreal imagining’ of the well-known story with ‘stunning visual design’ and ‘high energy choreography’.
Read Jennifer Shennan’s review of the work as seen in Wellington in 2019 at this link, and also her review of the 2023 return season at this link.
Prior is currently working in London on a new show, The McRae/Vassiliev Project, in collaboration with director Natalie Abrahami, dancer and choreographer Steven McRae, musician Vasko Vassilev, and dancer Sarah Lamb. Inspired by the work of violinist Niccolo Paganinit, it will premiere in September in the Linbury Theatre at London’s Royal Opera House.
See more about The McRae/Vassiiev Project at this link.
I quite accidentally came across a small manuscript collection of material about Beth Dean held in the National Library in Canberra (MS 10011, received 2004). I was always under the impression that her collection was held in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales, and indeed there is a substantial collection there. But somehow a small number of items found their way to Canberra. It was a thrill to find some early photographs of Dean, which I had never seen before.
But especially interesting, given that several years ago now (and without being aware of the NLA material), I had given a paper on dance in Australia in the 1950s. My talk focused on Australian themes and my mention of Dean included a brief discussion of her choreography for an Australia focused work called G’day Digger danced to a score by John Antill. So, I was especially interested in Dean’s writings in the NLA collection regarding her extensive research for her production of Corroboree, also danced to an Antill score and created especially for presentation during a visit to Australia in 1954 by Queen Elizabeth II. Of her approach to the story of her Corroboree Dean wrote:
The story of my “Corroboree” was about a young boy and his initiation, and his facing of himself and of the chimeras of our fears and our imagination. The Dreamtime stories of his ancestors are shown to him, as they were when we sat in the red dust with those people during all their ceremonies.
And of her background research she wrote:
For my version of the ballet I had spent those months [on which she elaborates at length elsewhere in the papers] living with the Aboriginal people studying their mythology, but even more finding the beauty and the depth of their discipline.
It is totally fascinating material, provided we look at it as coming from the 1950s.
Press for June 2026
– ‘Opera Gala (Snow Concert Hall ).’ Review of Opera Gala. LimelightMagazine, 1 June 2026. Online at this link.
– ‘Physicality fuels Sydney Dance Company’s engine.’ Review of Engine, Sydney Dance Company. CBR CityNews, 25 June 2026. Online at this link
My review of Engine was published online by Canberra City News on 25 June 2026, following its opening performance in Sydney on 24 June. The review below is a slightly enlarged version of the City News post. Followthis link to the City News review.
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24 June 2026. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Sydney Dance Company’s latest production, Engine, is a triple bill with works from Canberra-trained Melanie Lane, with a return of her acclaimed work Love Lock; Berlin-based, Spanish choreographer Fran Diaz, with the Australian premiere of The Mass Ornament; and Rafael Bonachela, artistic director of Sydney Dance Company, with a new work, The Journey Itself is Home.
The evening opened with Love Lock, which I first saw back in 2024 when it was part of Sydney Dance Company’s Twofold program. Then I was transfixed by the notion and nature of the love lock (a padlock that represents everlasting love), and its role in people’s connections with those who share their life. This time I was able to focus more on the choreography, which was like nothing I have seen from any other choreographer. Lane’s approach to movement was quite eccentric with its angularity from individual dancers set beside unity of groupings of bodies.
Costumes were by Akira Isogawa. He started out with plain black pants and tops in various lengths and shapes, but his exceptional additions made across the course of Love Lock eventually contributed to the individuality that characterised the work. A pounding score from [Chris] Clark, which he describes as ‘a dense collage of percussion/cello/synthesisers/voices/flutes’, and atmospheric lighting from Damien Cooper, also made exceptional contributions to the production.
After a brief pause while the stage was being reset, Fran Diaz’s The Mass Ornament, with very plain costumes in dark green satin-like material, also designed by Diaz, took us into a world that focused on a new look at, or changed approach to, popular music hall entertainment. With its relatively simplistic use of movement and groupings, it reflected a certain unison characteristic of early popular entertainment. But it nevertheless embodied an individuality from the dancers and suggested we look beyond superficiality at inherent emotional connections. The Mass Ornament was not my favourite work on the program, but was interesting as perhaps an example of an early German Expressionist approach to art? Then, after some thought, I accepted the title of the work, especially the Ornament aspect of that title, as being a subtle comment on the nature of popular entertainment.
The evening concluded with Bonachela’s brand new The Journey Itself is Home danced to a score by Bryce Dessner and lit by Damien Cooper. Compared with the other two works, Bonachela’s choreography looked quite unusual, or at least more like Western contemporary dance as we tend to know it. The work certainly showed Bonachela’s choreographic fluidity and approach to connections between dancers. A section that was basically a series of duets, one duet replacing the previous one, was admirable.
But what stood out for me in this work was the manner in which Bonachela had used unison dancing and had made it quite fast-paced. It carried the work forward in an unexpected manner.
Before the show began, I wondered why the program had the somewhat unusual title of Engine. It was quite clear, however, from Lane’s opening piece that the title referred to an intensity of movement seen in the full-on, engine-like physicality that characterised all three works. The triple bill format is always an intriguing arrangement and opens up a wealth of possibilities. This program opened up one very clear aspect of the evening’s presentation: the powerful manner in which dance can deliver its inherent physicality and connectivity.
But an engine-like visual effect was just one aspect of what we saw onstage. For a start, the dancers were breathtakingly brilliant in every work. Then the costumes and lighting were outstanding in the way in which they contributed to the different approaches of each of the three choreographers—from the idiosyncratic nature of Lane’s work, through the hard-core expression from Diaz, and on to the more gentle and predictable nature of Bonachela’s contribution.
Engine was a stunning show and well deserving of the standing ovation and loud cheers and exclamations that concluded the evening.
A conversation between Kirby Selchow and Jennifer Shennan on the International Draft Works program held in April 2026, Linbury Theatre, London
The Royal New Zealand Ballet was one of the nine companies invited to take part in the Royal Ballet UK’s International Draft Works in an April 2026 season at Linbury Theatre, London. The initiative for this project—to assemble draft or new works from emerging choreographers within select companies, for shared performances and following workshops—was first proposed back in 2020 when Amanda Skoog was on the staff at Royal Ballet UK. The project back then had to be cancelled at the very last minute due to Covid lockdowns. Now these six years later, it has been revived by the Royal Ballet and is back on track. Dancers are nothing if not resilient.
The participating companies were Northern Ballet, Ballet d’Jérri (from Jersey Island), Royal Danish Ballet, the National Ballet of Japan, Paris Opera Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, the Royal Ballet, Norwegian National Ballet, and Royal New Zealand Ballet. That’s quite a line-up, bringing together citizens of what I like to think of as the country called Ballet. It may not be geographically defined by national boundaries, but nonetheless shares so many connections between key players, teachers, choreographers, as to earn them passports to an international community. The world could do with more of those.
I spoke with Kirby Selchow, one of the four RNZB dancers involved (the others were Ana Gallardo Lobaina, Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson and Kihiro Kusukami).They performed Ultra Folly, choreographed by Sarah Foster-Sproull, to the music of La Folia, recorded by Jordi Savall with Hesperion XXI. (The same work will also form part of the triple bill to be performed mid-year in a New Zealand national tour).
Kirby was intrigued when I showed her the baroque dance notation of Folies d’Espagne, choreographed in 1704 by Louis Pécour, to music by Jean-Baptise Lully—which in turn had inspired the choreography of Ultra Folly. Kirby hopes some day to learn that original dance, and is game to take on playing the castanets that will also entail. Another item that caught her eye as we were sitting in the dance library at The Long Hall was the seminar booklet given to me by Charles Mudry, formerly guest ballet-master at RNZB back in Matz Skoog’s era. The impeccably prepared notes of his gradated series of classes from first to fifth year of ballet training was an eye-opener to Kirby as she began to devour it. ‘Of course you can borrow the book Kirby—that’s why Charles bothered to write it down in the first place’).
RNZB had performed at the Linbury Theatre back in 2015 when on tour with Francesco Ventriglia as director, with A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as a triple bill, on a tour to Italy, and UK including Scotland… so it was something of déjà vu for Kirby to be performing there again. She was thrilled to be involved and enjoyed stimulating interactions with the dancers of other companies. On a tour of Royal Ballet studios she by happy chance sighted her close colleague New Zealander Loughlan Prior, formerly with RNZB, choreographing on fellow-Australian dancer Steven McRae (see A Resilient Man—a documentary worth watching).
Participating dancers in International Draft Works were also invited to watch Alchemies, a triple bill of works by Wayne McGregor—further resonance there, since Kirby had been cast in a leading role in McGregor’s Infra, which RNZB performed here in 2024. (I had reviewed that program for Dance Europe, so it proved another bonus that the Opera House bookshop had the current issue of Dance Europe on display, this one with my review of RNZB in Alice Topp’s Macbeth from earlier this year. Big world, small world, in that country called Ballet.
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Kirby was born in Perth in 1992. Ballet, jazz and tap classes in young childhood was followed by vocational training in a secondary school of the performing arts, then five years at Australian Ballet School in Melbourne. Upon graduation, Ethan Stiefel offered her a contract with RNZB which she joined in 2014. She has been here ever since and is now a leading soloist in the Company.
Kirby’s latest challenge was to be cast as Banquo in Alice Topp’s Macbeth. A female Banquo? Well, why not. Are there not some females in high places in politics, who have the ear if not the trust of the King, at least until things start to go horribly wrong? I did not see her perform in that role but Ian Lochhead of Christchurch was most impressed by her interpretation, saying he was convinced by a female Banquo from her first appearance, as though Shakespeare had written it so.
Kirby has long been a stand-out member of RNZB, and she remains one to watch for her technical strengths and dramatic mastery of character. The role of her dreams would be Manon, and you can believe that.
