Yugen and accidental discoveries

In a recent post I recorded some notes about the Australian Ballet’s 1965 production of Robert Helpmann’s ballet Yugen. I was interested in the design for the production and that the costumes were designed, and some made, at a distance.

yugen-parasols — Artists of the Australian Ballet in *Yugen*, 1965 or later. Photo: Walter Stringer. Courtesy National Library of Australia

On the other hand, local people made other elements of the design, especially the headdresses and, I have since discovered, probably the cane props that were used in the ballet. These latter items were made, it seems, by a Melbourne-based, probably Chinese artisan. I recently came across a design for a golden tree by Kristian Fredrikson for a production that I have not yet been able to identify. On it there is a note scribbled in pencil, which may or may not refer to the tree and which says ‘Chinese shops in Lit[tle] Bourke [Street] near Swanston [Street] (Yugen) Australian Ballet – sea capes (man who did cane work)’.

But even more interesting material relating to Yugen surfaced accidentally while I was searching through some other archival material. I came across a collection of correspondence from late 1964 between William (Bill) Cronshaw, Geoffrey Ingram and Noël Pelly, then business manager, administrator and publicity manager respectively of the Australian Ballet. The letters and memos I came across concerned the design commission for Yugen. It seems that the original commission went to South Australian artist Lawrence Daws, not Desmond Heeley whose work we eventually saw on stage. Although there is no commissioning letter, and so far no designs by Daws have come to light, a letter written in early December from Cronshaw to Ingram states, ‘I received today a plot plan from Lawrence Daws on the design he has submitted to Helpmann, though this, of course, is dependent on his approving the designs.. There follows a discussion about costing the designs and a note that Bill Akers had some doubts about their viability from a practical point of view.

Two weeks later a note from Pelly to Ingram states that Pelly was enclosing a second print of the promotional brochure, which Pelly says ‘contains no reference to the designer of “Yugen”.’ The brochure is not included with the letter in this case but it seems obvious that in the end Helpmann did not approve the designs by Daws. In a postscript to the letter Pelly notes that he and Peggy van Praagh had had a drink with Daws and his wife in Adelaide a day or so before Pelly sent the letter. Pelly went on to say that Daws ‘seems to have taken the matter extremely well but is acutely curious as to his replacement!’ Three days later, on Christmas Eve 1964, a memo from Stefan Haag of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust to Cronshaw, van Praagh, Akers and Ron Sinclair, notes that the designs for Yugen would be despatched from London ‘next weekend’. A somewhat rapid piece of design work from Desmond Heeley it seems, unless, of course, Helpmann never intended to accept the Daws designs.

Lawrence Daws had spent a large part of 1964 travelling in Asia, including in India, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaya. He returned to Adelaide later in 1964. How the commission for Yugen came about is unclear at this stage and the artist has not been willing to comment.

Not all the reviews of the eventual production of Yugen were positive. Andrew Porter, writing in The Financial Times after the work was shown in the United Kingdom in 1965 wrote, for example, ‘It is a piece of japonaiserie with screens and fans and parasols, and a Noh plot.’ In Australia it was compared by one critic (a little unfairly I think) to ‘a highly refined Japanese Ziegfeld Follies’ and I can’t help thinking that Daws, whose work is introspective rather than decorative, simply did not fit the overt theatricality Helpmann demanded in his works. As Cheryl Stock has written in an article in Brolga in 1996, for Helpmann ‘style and image, the spectacle and the dramatic took precedence over form and structure’; and perhaps it might also be added over any kind of deeply thought through approach.

© Michelle Potter, 9 February 2012.
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Cinderella by two: some thoughts

West Australian Ballet’s Cinderella, newly created this year, had a season in Canberra in November and its popularity was such that an extra show needed to be scheduled. I had certain expectations, having spoken previously to the artistic director of WAB, the choreographer and the designer before writing a preview piece for The Canberra Times. All spoke eloquently about the process of creation and their aspirations for the piece.

But when it came to the performance itself I have to say I was heartily disappointed. While I enjoyed the design by Allan Lees, which set the work in the 1930s, I thought the choreography, by Jayne Smeulders, was scant and quite simplistic. There were many moments when the stage (and I’m talking here about the much-maligned stage of the Canberra Theatre, which is reputed to be too small for the larger kind of ballet production) seemed positively empty of dancing. Not only that, or perhaps because of that, the dancers rarely looked as though they were full-scale professional dancers.

Wherever I have worked in my journalistic dance writing life to date there has always been a policy in place that the person who writes the preview does not write the review of the same piece. My experience with WAB’s Cinderella hammered home the sense behind that policy. But seeing this Cinderella made me wonder about another newly created Cinderella, that by Meryl Tankard for Leipzig Ballet. It opened in Leipzig on 5 November.

Unfortunately I have neither spoken to Tankard about the work nor seen it but the web at least allowed me to catch a glimpse of some images, a bit of footage and snatches of an interview with Tankard about the work. I was interested in Tankard’s answer to a question posed to her by Maeshelle West-Davies from the Leipzig Zeitgeist about why she chose Cinderella and what she thought she could bring to the work. Part of her reply said:

‘Since I am quite used to spending a lot of my time on long trips to and from Australia, I decided to use this experience in Cinderella. The story begins in an airport with Cinderella, and the very ‘glamorous!’ sisters, travelling to an exotic location for a huge party hosted by a wealthy prince. A lot of the scenes will be in ‘hotel rooms’ and the garden scene has been influenced by Sydney’s beautiful botanical gardens. I would like the audience to feel as if they have also been on big trip!’

As thought-provoking too was her reply to a question concerning her process, which seems somewhat different from her process with many of her works made in Australia:

‘I had to be very well organised for Cinderella. I didn’t get much time with the dancers, as they were rehearsing a lot for other productions. I also had to make a lot of decisions about editing the music very early on, so I had to have a clear structure before I began working with the dancers. Since Cinderella is a very well-known story, I had to come up with a new and original way to tell the tale. I approached it as if I were planning a film and storyboarded all the scenes before I arrived in Leipzig.’

A trailer available on YouTube gives a glimpse of the choreography and the design, including the kinds of projections we have come to recognise as signature Tankard/Lansac. Some of the lighting and projections reminded me of sections of Wild Swans, which is not a bad thing in my opinion. I often ponder how Wild Swans the ballet has pretty much slipped from view whereas Elena Kats-Chernin’s delicious score, or parts of it, are heard often. Such is dance I guess.

It seems unlikely that we will see Tankard’s Cinderella in Australia, at least not in the near future. It sounds and looks (at least from a brief glimpse) as though it might be an engrossing take on the fairy-tale. But am I falling into the same trap as I did with WAB’s Cinderella? Such are expectations.

Michelle Potter, 4 December 2011

Kristian Fredrikson. ‘What’s in a name?’

The work of Kristian Fredrikson is currently the subject of an exhibition called Bedazzled, which opened at the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, on 26 November 2011 and which runs there until 4 March 2012. After reading publicity for this exhibition, it is clear to me that there is a compelling need for a number of misconceptions about Fredrikson’s early life to be corrected.

The main issue concerns Fredrikson’s name. At the time of writing this post a number of online sources, including the website Australia Dancing to which a number of other sites have posted links, and from which others have harvested material or used information on it in some other way, maintain that Fredrikson was born Kristian Adrian Sams and that he later changed his name to Kristian Adrian Fredrikson. Some obituaries published in Australian newspapers and now available online for all to read do the same. It is simply not so. My recent research into the career of Fredrikson reveals otherwise.

Fredrikson was born Frederick John Sams and was at least the third generation in the Sams family to carry the first name of Frederick. His early reviews written for New Zealand newspapers were signed ‘F. J. S.’ and it was not until 1962 that he took on the name Kristian Adrian Fredrikson. One signed early drawing I have seen indicates that he was playing around with the spelling of Frederick, his given first name, while probably a teenager. But the name change to Kristian Fredrikson happened around the time he was designing his first theatrical work, A Night in Venice. That work premiered in 1962. There are also indications that at least one review he wrote shortly after the premiere of A Night in Venice was signed ‘K. F.’

The second ‘fact’ that is constantly and erroneously perpetuated is that Kristian Fredrikson was the son of a Danish merchant seaman. He wasn’t. His father, Frederick Spencer Sams (1910-1996), was not a Dane but a New Zealander. His grandmother, Ann Sams (nee Munro), was also a New Zealander and his grandfather, also named Frederick Sams, was Australian. As for the occupation of merchant seaman, in 1938 when he was 28 Frederick Spencer Sams’ occupation was mentioned in a New Zealand newspaper as ‘seaman’, although when he took up this occupation and how long it lasted is unclear at this stage of my investigations. It was probably not for an extended period of time and certainly wasn’t a long-term career. He married early in 1940 and in May of that year, before his first son was born, there is clear evidence that he was unemployed.

There is still much to learn about the early life of the man we have come to know as Kristian Fredrikson but he was not born Kristian Adrian Sams and he was not the son of a Danish merchant seaman. All sources, even the web and newspapers, and even Fredrikson’s own oral history interview, are not necessarily accurate. Kristian Fredrikson was intent on creating a persona for himself that did not entirely reflect the circumstances of his early family life.

© Michelle Potter, 30 November 2011

Stanton Welch. ‘An Aussie in Houston’

A recent visit to the United States saw me in Houston, Texas, where I was able to have a look at Houston Ballet’s new premises and enjoyed being shown around by Stanton Welch. And there is more than one Aussie at Houston Ballet these days. Below is the text of a story published on 26 November 2011 in The Canberra Times under the heading ‘An Aussie in Houston’.

Stanton Welch in rehearsal. Photo: © Bruce Bennetts. Courtesy of Houston Ballet

— Stanton Welch is in a buoyant mood as he shows me around Houston Ballet’s stunning new home in downtown Houston, Texas. Melbourne-born Welch has been artistic director of Houston Ballet, the fourth largest ballet company in the United States, for eight years. The company moved into its six-storey headquarters in February of this year and the new studios—nine of them—are huge with high ceilings and lots of windows letting in the beautiful Texan light. In some, children are taking a ballet class. In others, company members are rehearsing for the forthcoming production of the Christmas classic The Nutcracker and for the annual gala, Jubilee of Dance. The building hums with activity.

Welch, a young-looking 42 year old, is the elder son of Marilyn Jones and Garth Welch, former principal dancers with both the Borovansky and the Australian Ballets. Both also worked with Sydney Dance Company and both are teachers of renown. Their second son, Damien, retired quite recently from his position as a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet. Together the four of them are familiarly called the “Royal Family of Australian Ballet” such is their collective status in the Australian dance world. Damien is also currently in Houston to stage his brother’s production of Cinderella for Houston Ballet next year. And indeed the month of November is something of a family time. Jones is also visiting. “Mum comes over a couple of times a year. I usually try to get her to do a bit of teaching while she’s here,” Welch says with a grin.

Welch was a late starter in the ballet world: he took his first lessons only when 16. But there was no looking back after that. He choreographed his first piece, Hades, during the first year of his dance training in 1986 and it won several eisteddfod prizes. By 1989 he had joined the Australian Ballet and in 1990 received his first choreographic commission, which resulted in A Time to Dance for the Dancers Company of the Australian Ballet. He went on to make his first major piece, Of Blessed Memory, for the main company in 1991. By 1995 he was a resident choreographer with the Australian Ballet and remains so, from a distance, to this day. The extent of his choreographic output by now is remarkable and includes works for major companies around the world. He was appointed artistic director of Houston Ballet in 2003 and for the moment he seems firmly entrenched in Houston, largest city in the state of Texas.

“What I love about working here”, he says “is that the dancers are so energised. There is absolutely no complacency. We are so lucky with audiences too. They are very adventurous and brave when it comes to new work, which is great for a choreographer. Our subscriptions continued to grow even during the recession.”

But as I look into the studios from the viewing windows I am struck by the fact that there are Australians in a number of the studios. Ballet master Steven Woodgate is busy rehearsing a large number of dancers for a group scene in Nutcracker. A Churchill Fellowship awardee for 2000, Woodgate retired from the Australian Ballet, where he was senior artist for several years, and took up the position of ballet master at Houston in 2004, the year after Welch’s arrival.

In another studio Luke Ingham, who grew up on a farm in Mount Gambier, South Australia, is rehearsing for his first princely role, that of the Prince in Nutcracker. Ingham has been with the company since July 2011 and has just toured to New York with Houston Ballet where he also took the opportunity to catch up with four of his former Australian Ballet colleagues. They were in New York to dance and promote the Australian Ballet’s New York visit in 2012.

Ingham will be dancing in Houston’s Nutcracker with his partner in life Danielle Rowe, a former Australian Ballet principal who joined Houston Ballet early in 2011. He is looking forward to the occasion. “It’s great to work with someone you love,” he says. “I love being out there on stage with Dani.”

In her relatively short time in Houston to date Rowe has already made a name for herself. A dazzling dancer and winner of a 2010 Helpmann Award as best female dancer in a dance or physical theatre production, Rowe has so far danced leading roles in Houston productions of two major classics, Sleeping Beauty and Giselle. In Giselle, a production staged by yet another Australian artist, dancer and coach Ai-Gul Gaisina, critics spoke glowingly of Rowe’s performance as “gossamer-spirited.” and noted that she moved like “a tissue in a breeze.”

There have been Australians in the Houston company for a while. Mary McKendry, who was brought up and learnt to dance in Rockhampton, Queensland, was a principal dancer with Houston Ballet in the 1980s when a young man from Mao’s China defected while on an exchange visit to Houston Ballet. His name was Li Cunxin and McKendry eventually married him. They moved to Australia where Li would go on to have a stellar career with the Australian Ballet, write his best selling autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer and eventually become a stockbroker in Melbourne. Li often returns to Houston and did so earlier this month to be honoured for his achievements by the Houston-based organisation Dance of Asian America.

Danielle Rowe and Simon Ball in Ben Stevenson’s *Sleeping Beauty*, 2011. Photo: © Ron McKinney. Courtesy of Houston Ballet

What is it that draws Australian dancers to Houston Ballet? Welch believes that it is the varied repertoire that the company offers. His dancers get the opportunity to perform in works that he creates himself, works by acclaimed American and European choreographers and both old and new takes on the classics. Danielle Rowe suggests the same. Along with a positive work ethic, it was what she was looking forward to most of all when she left the Australian Ballet for a new career in Houston. Ingham couldn’t resist the thought though that, with his farming background, there might be the added attraction of the Texan cowboy culture! But whatever it is, the vibes are good at Houston Ballet. Welch strides through his new domain laughing and joking and generously accommodating my every request.—

And in addition to those Australians mentioned above, former Australian Ballet dancer Andrew Murphy is an instructor at Houston Ballet’s academy. Murphy is married to Sabrina Lenzi, ballet mistress of Houston Ballet II, a company similar in outlook and mission to the Australian Ballet’s Dancers Company.

Michelle Potter, 26 November 2011

Featured image: Stanton Welch in rehearsal (detail). Photo: © Bruce Bennetts. Courtesy of Houston Ballet

Vicki Attard. A new role

It was a real pleasure catching up, if only by email, with Vicki Attard, former and much admired principal of the Australian Ballet during the 1990s. Vicki was in Canberra over the past weekend to give master classes at the Canberra Dance Development Centre.

Below is the text of a Canberra Times article I wrote, which was published on 9 November. It was accompanied by a great image, shot by Canberra-based photographer Ross Gould, of Vicki in what became a signature role, that of Cio Cio San in Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly, which can be accessed on the National Library’s website.

Vicki Attard was one of Australia’s favourite ballerinas during the 1990s. As a principal artist with the Australia Ballet throughout that decade she danced leading roles in all the best known classics as well as creating roles in contemporary works. She travelled widely with the company and counts amongst the highlights of her performing career dancing the leading role of Kitri in Don Quixote on the opening night of an Australian Ballet season in Washington DC and the title role in Manon in Tokyo, also on opening night.

Fans of the film maker Paul Cox may remember her in Cox’s film The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky. Attard was the girl returning from a ball who dances with the spirit of a rose in the short work entitled Le Spectre de la rose. Spectre was first performed in 1911 with Vaslav Nijinsky dancing the Rose. Attard, who was partnered by David McAllister in the film, cannot speak highly enough of Cox.’Paul Cox was so easy to work with’, she says. ‘He has an incredible respect for artists and he is a remarkable one himself.’

Attard also spent a year performing with Sydney Dance Company in 1989. Memorably she danced the role of Chloe in Graeme Muphy’s Daphnis and Chloe. She seemed especially suited to Murphy’s choreography and later, on rejoining the Australian Ballet, danced the leading role of Clara the Ballerina in Nutcracker, again partnered by McAllister, with whom she enjoyed an exceptional artistic partnership throughout her career.

But Attard may well be best known for her performances as Cio Cio San in Stanton Welch’s production of Madame Butterfly, a role she created with the Australian Ballet in 1995. The delicacy of her performance left a lasting impression on those who saw her in this role. Attard has since staged Butterfly around the world for Welch, including in Canada for the National Ballet of Canada, in Atlanta for Atlanta Ballet, in Boston for Boston Ballet and in even in Houston for Houston Ballet where Welch is currently artistic director. Most recently she assisted Welch in reviving the work for the Australian Ballet in 2010.

After she retired from performing Attard gained a graduate diploma in dance instruction and has been teaching in a freelance capacity since then. She now heads up a special program at Academy Ballet in Sydney for students aiming for a professional career.

‘It is s small group of just eight students’, she says. ‘It’s very personal and I love working in this way. The young dancers respond beautifully to this way of working.’

Attard will be in Canberra on November 13 to conduct master classes for the Canberra Dance Development Centre. It is the final session in the school’s master class series, a program master-minded by the school’s principal, Jackie Hallahan. Attard knows that it is not so easy for east coast students in centres outside Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to have access to the kinds of experiences available in larger centres.

‘I love the idea of sharing the knowledge that took me so many years to accumulate—the hard way’, she says. ‘I very much enjoy teaching in centres where students don’t have access to all that students in bigger cities might have. I grew up in a small town called Mackay in North Queensland, so I remember what it was like.’

Attard will bring her exceptional professional experience to Canberra for this workshop series. Not only does she have sound dance knowledge and her own incomparable artistry to share, she has recently launched a program called My Pointe. She realised that it was not always possible for dance teachers to spend as much time as was needed on the specialised teaching of pointe work for girls and so began to develop a series of tutorial exercises for this very purpose. After 10 years of fine tuning My Pointe was released on DVD with an introductory section by Attard and demonstrations of the exercises by two students.

Attard has two young sons, George aged eight and Nick almost six, who keep her busy.

‘I used to think that a dance life was hard,’ she says, ‘but motherhood, plus working almost full time, rivals it.’ But despite the claims of motherhood, Attard has carved a new niche for herself in the Australian dance world and she is more than delighted to be sharing her knowledge with the Canberra community.

Michelle Potter, 14 November 2011

Rose Adagio. West Australian Ballet 1971

As part of my current research project into the career of Kristian Fredrikson, I came across four designs in the National Library’s Fredrikson collection labelled Sleeping Beauty Act I. They were for four Princes: English, Indian, Russian and Saracen and so were clearly for the ‘Rose Adagio’. But I was a little puzzled by them as they were not for the Stanton Welch version of Beauty, which Welch choreographed for the Australian Ballet in 2005 and which was designed by Fredrikson. I was not aware of another Sleeping Beauty with Fredrikson designs.

The English Prince had the name DeMasson written on the back and Paul De Masson kindly identified the costume as one he wore while a dancer with West Australian Ballet. He recalled that in the 1970s he had partnered Elaine Fifield in the ‘Rose Adagio’ during a season that contained a number of divertissements.

After a bit more investigation I uncovered a flyer and some programs in the National Library’s Rex Reid collection. Reid directed West Australian Ballet from late 1969 to 1973 and in November 1971 presented a season of two programs, which included a number of divertissements, at the Octagon Theatre, Perth. It was the first program, staged from 8-13 November, that included the ‘Rose Adagio’. The printed program contained the following details:

Rose Adagio,

Producer: Bryan Ashbridge
Music: Tchaikovsky
Costumes: Kristian Fredrikson
Choreography: Frederick Ashton
‘A new production by Bryan Ashbridge’

Princess Aurora: Elaine Fifield, Patricia Sadka
Indian Prince: Robert O’Kell
Saracen Prince: Laurence Bishop
Russian Prince: Ron Deschamps
English Prince: Paul DeMasson

I was also curious about the choreographic credit to Ashton, but the Ashton scholar David Vaughan has noted that Ashton created a ‘Rose Adagio’ in 1963 especially for a Royal Performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Bryan Ashbridge, who produced the 1971 West Australian Ballet version, retired from the Royal Ballet in 1965 so could well have been part of that Royal Performance or subsequent stagings of this Rose Adagio.

Rex Reid’s second 1971 Octagon program, presented from 15-20 November, included ‘The Dying Swan’ as one of the divertissements. A design for ‘The Dying Swan’, which was danced by Fifield, is also part of the National Library’s Fredrikson collection.

More items to add to the growing ‘List of works designed by Kristian Fredrikson’.

Michelle Potter, 26 October 2011

Update, 31 January 2017. The Fredrikson material also contains a design, from the same production, for Aurora, a detail of which is the featured image on this post.

Yugen and headdresses

Gail Ferguson as a woman of the village in *Yugen*, 1965 or later. Photo by Walter Stringer. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Australia

While pursuing research into the career of designer Kristian Fredrikson I was surprised to find Fredrikson’s name mentioned in production credits for Yugen, Robert Helpmann’s 1965 one-act work for the Australian Ballet. Fredrikson, whose home base was Melbourne at the time Yugen was being created, is listed, along with William Miles, as having made the headdresses.

Yugen was designed by Desmond Heeley who tells me that he worked on the designs in London and sent the drawings to Australia by mail with copious instructions to the wardrobe department at the Australian Ballet. Helpmann requested, however, that the costume for the leading role of the Goddess, danced in the original production by Kathleen Gorham, be made by costume makers who had worked with him on previous occasions at Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden, including Hugh Skillen who made the very delicate headdress worn by Gorham and those who followed in the role.

Fredrikson’s interest in headdresses and wigs—millinery in general—can be traced back to his very first works made in New Zealand. For what is reputed to be his first theatrical commission, the Strauss operetta A Night in Venice, one reviewer wrote:

An intriguing effect has been created for the doxies in the opera by giving them flowing wigs in vivid purple, green, blue and orange. Making these wigs occupied two days—they had to be dyed, teased, shaped, curled, brushed and, where necessary, lacquered.

His interest in framing the face in some way can also be followed throughout his career and many of his designs on paper contain detailed instructions to the millinery department of the companies for which he worked.

In 1965 Fredrikson had just a few design commissions behind him, perhaps the most prestigious being designs for Aurora’s Wedding for the Australian Ballet in 1964. Making the Yugen headdresses to Heeley’s designs was no doubt an important and prestigious step for him and he often mentioned Heeley as an influence on his own work.

Scene from the Australian Ballet production of *Yugen*, 1965 or later. Photo by Walter Stringer. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Australia.

For more images of Yugen follow the link.

Michelle Potter, 21 October 2011

Crisp, Cunningham, Choreography

I have commented elsewhere on this site and in The Canberra Times on the legacy tour of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, now drawing to an end. The tour has generated all kinds of reviews over the almost two years of its run to date, not the least of which is a recent one by Clement Crisp published in The Financial Times of 6 October 2011, which relates to a Cunningham season at the Barbican in London. I love reading Crisp’s reviews, which are often outrageously opinionated (in my opinion!!), but which often also contain many words of wisdom born of many years of experience.

Given that choreography has been a point of discussion among readers of and contributors to this website recently, the following extract from Crisp’s Cunningham review is more than interesting.

‘The Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as the choreographer left it when he died two years ago, will cease to exist at the year’s end. Cunningham’s wish that his troupe should cease must be seen as wise. The keepers of the flame who proclaim that “this is what our Dear Master intended” are among the added indignities to mortality.

Choreography mutates, Chinese-whispers fashion and for all the stern guardianship that seeks to protect dance, it alters, as do bodies and training and the social attitudes of an audience. Today’s Ashton, even today’s carefully guarded Balanchine, change as transmission of a text oh-so-insidiously erodes a step, an emotional point. Cunningham decided his company—dancers with whom he worked on a daily basis—must end ‘as near as dammit with him’.

Michelle Potter, 12 October 2011

That ‘triple threat.’ The Australian Ballet in 2012

The Canberra Times recently published ‘Pushing 50 but still dancing’, my preview of the Australian Ballet’s 2012 season.

What didn’t get covered in that article was the Australian Ballet’s use of the term ‘triple threat’ in relation to the triple bill of new Australian works by Graeme Murphy, Stephen Page and Gideon Obarzanek, which is due to open in Melbourne in February. In subscriber brochures and media material these three choreographers are being described as the ‘triple threat of Australian dance’.

At first sight this looks like a typo. I almost fell into the trap of thinking this way, but thanks to a watchful editor I escaped.* It’s probably not a typo (although one can never be sure) since a ‘triple threat’ is, it seems, someone who excels in three areas, be it in baseball (where perhaps the term originated to describe someone who can catch, bat and run with equal skill) or show business, where apparently it can mean having skills in any three areas of activity.

But a ‘triple threat’ can also be something rather than someone. It can be a sports bar of the edible variety (with three ingredients?), or a game show—check your favourite search engine for more. There is also an interesting opinion piece published in The Guardian in 2006.

So where does this leave the Murphy/Page/Obarzanek trio? What are the three areas in which we might expect them to excel in this triple bill? I am a little amused at the idea of being threatened by them or by what they come up with, but quite honestly I’d rather be challenged, excited, enthused, or any number of other more appropriate expressions. The use of ‘triple threat’ is a gimmick in my opinion and takes its place alongside those images of dancers in costumes representing no ballet and taking poses from no ballet, which the Australian Ballet is currently so fond of using. And I know that it’s a bit hard to put dancers in costumes that haven’t been made yet but this fashionista thing has been going on for a while now.

It is a real thrill to see the 50th anniversary program containing so much new Australian choreography and I can’t wait for the season to begin. But it would be equally thrilling to see the Australian Ballet proudly promoting itself as an organisation with an understanding of the qualities that make dance the great art form that it is, rather than as a bunch of people at the forefront of the latest trendy but artistically empty ideas.

Michelle Potter, 18 September 2011

*On the subject of typos, the ‘Pushing 50’ article notes, wrongly, that Canberra audiences have been seeing Graeme Murphy’s choreography since the 1960s. It should read the 1970s!

Ted Shawn in Australia

Back in May of this year I was lucky enough to see the exhibition of works by photographer E. O. Hoppé at the National Portrait Gallery in London. My post relating to that show concerned portraits of Margot Fonteyn and Olga Spessivtseva. The National Portrait Gallery’s show, Hoppé portraits: society, studio & street, closed shortly after I’d written that post but images of American dancer Ted Shawn, which were part of the Portrait Gallery show, have continued to resonate in my mind ever since.

One, taken in 1922, is a head and shoulders portrait of Shawn in Tillers of the Soil, a stylised dance he created in which he and his wife, the dancer Ruth St Denis, represented an ancient Egyptian couple tilling the soil. The portrait of Shawn is a bold one. And Shawn was a strong, athletic man whose contribution to world dance included the founding of a dance centre in the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts where he trained a group of male dancers, young college athletes who worked on the farm during the morning and trained in the barn during the afternoons. This centre is still used for dance and is the home of the famous Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

Ted Shawn in Tillers of the Soil, June 1922

Shawn also brought his distinctive brand of dance to Australia in 1947 at the invitation of an enterprising woman in Perth, Ida Beeby, director of the Patch Theatre Guild and Dance School. Shawn gave a series of lectures and several solo programs of dance in Perth. His repertoire was eclectic and uncompromisingly his own. It included dances of American Indian origin, a Japanese sword dance, some Flamenco dances, and an American cowboy number ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ From Perth he took a side trip to Arnhem Land and entertained indigenous dancers at Delissaville, who in fact had come to entertain him, with his rendition of a whirling dervish dance. After Perth he moved on to perform his solo shows in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Like most artists who visited Australia in the first decades of the twentieth century, Shawn was not averse to making predictions about the future of Australian dance. He wrote regarding Perth:

‘Perth, due to its unique isolation, is ideally the place where a new dance form, growing out of this continent, using the forms of other countries and of the past as a sort of cultural “humus,” can be born, nourished until its integrity is fully established, and then ray out to the rest of Australia and the world’.

Shawn’s visit to Australia has scarcely been examined in this country. A small collection of programs from his Perth seasons is part of the ephemera collection of the National Library of Australia. But Edward Pask in Ballet in Australia. The second act, 1940–1980, the only survey we currently have of Australian dance covering the period of Shawn’s Australian interlude, makes no mention of the visit. I believe, however, there may be archival film footage of his Australian visit in the Jacob’s Pillow Archive at Becket, Massachusetts.

Michelle Potter, 17 August 2011

Image below from The Australasian Post, 7 August 1947, p. 43, kindly supplied by Anne—see comments below.