When I interviewed Shaun Parker in 2017 for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program, his concluding remark was that it had been such a pleasure to be able to talk about ‘the epic journey of past, present and future.’ It was a wonderful way to finish the interview and it gave me the opportunity to write a story, largely about the past and in particular about the origins of Parker’s iconic work Blue Love, for The Canberra Times. Follow this link to read that story.
But Parker has not stood still since that interview. He is currently in Taipei with dancer Libby Montilla. Montilla will be performing Parker’s 20 minute solo work, ReMOTE, at the Kuandu Arts Festival as part of a triple bill program called Vis a Vis. In addition to ReMOTE, the program will feature works by choreographers from Canada and Taiwan.
‘It is wonderful to be performing our work alongside such incredible international artists’, Parker says. ‘And it really helps develop our connections with audiences and festivals across Asia. While we are in Taipei, Libby and I will also be researching new ideas with a Taiwanese bubble artist for a new show. It is going to be a jam-packed time, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.’
Parker has spent a lot of his time outside of Australia touring the works he has made over the 9 years since he founded Shaun Parker & Company in 2010. The company has toured to 19 countries across four continents and shown its work to a quarter of a million people globally. And to help with the development of this global reach, Parker has just recently secured a generous three-year sponsorship from the New York-based Denise and Michael Kellen Foundation. The Foundation, Parker says, has become the company’s ‘Global Partner’ and the sponsorship will help facilitate many programs that Parker believes are anchored in education, social change, and community engagement through the arts. In particular the sponsorship will help Shaun Parker & Company enter the US market.
But in the meantime Parker is working towards a program to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Shaun Parker & Company in 2020. He is planning to return to the stage himself in a revival of Blue Love. After a break from performing he is relishing getting back into training.
‘As a dancer you will always have a desire to dance for an audience again,’ he says. ‘As a choreographer, it is also really important to keep in touch with your body, but also with the energetic relationship between performer and audience.’
In the revival of Blue Love Parker will be performing with his original co-creator and performer, Jo Stone. ‘Jo is an actress who can dance,’ Parker says. ‘And I am a dancer who can act. Sparks fly when we’re on stage together.’
It is a pleasure too to be able to report that Shaun Parker & Company has been nominated as a finalist in the Premier’s NSW Export Awards. The awards ceremony is in Sydney on 16 October.
Michelle Potter, 2 October 2019
Featured image: Portrait of Shaun Parker (supplied)
Read my review of Blue Love from its Canberra performance in 2017 at this link.
The Australian Ballet’s 2020 season, announced earlier this month, looks to be the most interesting the company has offered for years. I was thrilled to see that Yuri Possokhov’s Anna Karenina was on the list. Although I haven’t seen this particular work I was lucky enough to see San Francisco Ballet perform Possokhov’s Rite of Spring back in 2013. It was totally mesmerising and I can’t wait to see Anna Karenina.
Another work I have seen elsewhere, which I am also anticipating with pleasure, is Frederick Ashton’s A Month in the Country, which dates back to 1976. Seeing it just a few years ago I wrote, ‘I found myself swept along by a strong performance from Zenaida Yanowsky as Natalia Petrovna and by Ashton’s ability to define characters through movement. The young, the old, different levels of society, everything was there in the choreography’.
The Australian Ballet’s 2020 season includes A Month in the Country as part of a triple bill, Molto, which also comprises Tim Harbour’s Squander and Glory, one of his best works I think, and a revival of Stephen Baynes’ crowd pleasing Molto Vivace. A Month in the Country needs strong acting (as no doubt Anna Karenina does too), so fingers crossed that the company’s coaching is good.
For other good things on the 2020 program, including Graeme Murphy’s delayed Happy Prince and a new work, Logos, from Alice Topp.
In the wings
Two stories that were meant to be posted in September were held up for various reasons. One is a profile of Shaun Parker who is currently in Taiwan performing at the Kuandu Arts festival in Taipei. The other is Jennifer Shennan’s account of a tribute held recently in Wellington to celebrate 40 years of teaching by Christine Gunn at the New Zealand School of Dance. Jennifer’s story is reflective and personal without ignoring the stellar input from Gunn over 40 years.
The issues that delayed these two posts have been sorted and the stories will appear shortly.
Portrait of Shaun Parker
Press for September 2019
None! I am reminded of Martin Portus’ comment to me in a recent email ‘Ah! The death of the [print] outlet!’
A performance highlight for August was undoubtedly Natalia Osipova’s Pure Dance, a program of six short works curated by Osipova and featuring Osipova and David Hallberg, along with two guest artists Jonathan Goddard and Jason Kittelberger. A link to my review of the show, written for Limelight Magazine, appears below.
Of course Pure Dance reminded me a little of a similar show Sylvie Guillem put together four or so years ago called Life in Progress. Osipova and Guillem, fabulous classical technicians, both have an abiding interest in contemporary choreography and it is an exceptional experience to see how their skills translate into dance works beyond classical ballet.
Youth Dance Festival, Canberra
Canberra has long been a centre for youth and community dance and September sees the 35th season of the city’s Youth Dance Festival, or Youth Fest as it is more commonly known. An inclusive, non-competitive dance festival, it brings together dancers from schools across Canberra and surrounding districts for performances staged by Ausdance ACT at the Canberra Theatre Centre. The 2019 program, called Generation Next, is made up of 61 different dance works created by 40 high schools and colleges from the region!
Jamie Winbank, creative director of the show, tells me that 45,000 young dancers have participated since the festival began in 1985, an astonishing number really. Winbank sees Dance Fest as ‘a platform for young people to express their ideas and opinions, and have their voices heard through dance.’ Generation Next runs from 7-13 September and bookings can be made through the Canberra Theatre Centre website.
New Breed from Sydney Dance Company
Sydney Dance Company recently announced the four emerging choreographers who have been commissioned to make a work for the 2019 New Breed season. They are Josh Mu and Lauren Langlois, both from Melbourne, and Ariella Casu and Davide Di Giovanni both from Sydney. This will be the sixth New Breed season and takes place at Carriageworks in Sydney from 28 November to 7 December. Book via sydneydancecompany.com
The most distressing dance news for August was the announcement that Ausdance National, the national advocacy body for dance in Australia over the past 42 years, has been forced to close. Ausdance National was responsible for organising the Australian Dance Awards, but its work extended to industry development, conferences, publications, and a host of other initiatives. Decreasing government funding has had a weakening effect over several years and, while state-based offices of Ausdance will continue to operate (at least for the moment), the national body no longer exists to bring broad, national issues to the fore. A huge loss.
Oral history: Lloyd Newson
I had the privilege of recording an oral history interview in August with Lloyd Newson, Australian-born choreographer and founder of the London-based company DV8. It will join the National Library’s ever expanding collection of dance-related interviews. As you read this, Newson will be in Europe working towards the opening of Enter Achilles, reworked for Rambert Dance Company. We will see Enter Achilles in Australia next year. Stay tuned for details of when and where.
Press for August 2019
Review of Pure Dance. Limelight Magazine(online), 28 August 2019.
At the beginning of July, I set up a funding project via the Australian Cultural Fund in an effort to raise enough money to pay for digitisation of designs for inclusion in my forthcoming book on the life and career of designer Kristian Fredrikson. Following Fredrikson’s death in 2005, the executors of his estate placed a large collection of his personal papers and designs in the National Library in Canberra. Unfortunately very little of this material has been digitised so the costs of acquiring material at a resolution suitable for publication are high. The same applies to material held in the National Gallery also in Canberra.
Well the project has now ended and I am thrilled to report that we achieved our funding goal. I thank from the depths of my being those incredibly generous people who supported the project and allowed us to reach our goal. Below, in low resolution, are three images that may well appear in the book. They are all, as is the featured image, from Fredrikson’s film commissions from the 1980s. Just a tiny sample of the kinds of designs to which I now have access.
Clockwise from top left: Two Bods from The Magic Telescope; Village Men from Vietnam; Boxing poster from The Shiralee.
Fredrikson’s designs are filled with surprises. All images are from MS 10122, National Library of Australia.
Deon Hastie appointed to head NAISDA College
The latest news from NAISDA College is that Deon Hastie has been appointed Head of Dance at the College. Hastie is a former student of NAISDA and graduated from there in 1998. Many will remember him as an exceptional artist with Leigh Warren and Dancers between 1999 and 2010. He both danced and choreographed during those years and, on leaving the company worked as an independent choreographer and teacher and has been artistic director of Kurruru Youth Performing Arts in Adelaide since 2010. He is seen below in an image by Adelaide-based photographer Alex Makeyev.
‘Bangarra celebrates 30 years with pride.’ Review of Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Bangarra: 30 years of sixty five thousand. The Canberra Times, 23 July 2019, p. 13.
Michelle Potter, 31 July 2019
Featured image: Bright Young Things and Eastern Corset Dancers from Undercover. Palm Beach Pictures, 1982. Design by Kristian Fredrikson, National Library of Australia
Alan Alder, who has died in Perth at the age of 82, was born in Canberra of Scottish/Australian parentage. In Canberra he initially studied tap and Scottish highland dancing with June Hammond. Later, while at Canberra High School, he took ballet lessons with Barbara Todd, a former Sadler’s Wells Ballet soloist who had come to Canberra when her husband took up an appointment at the Australian National University.
Winning a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in 1957, he studied there for a short time, largely with Harold Turner, before joining the Covent Garden Opera Ballet, where he worked for the next twelve months. His experiences with that company included dancing in productions featuring artist such as Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas. ‘It was an incredible education I had in that one year,’ he recalled in an oral history interview conducted in 1999.
In 1958 Alder joined the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet. He was promoted to soloist and toured extensively with the company throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Africa over the next four years. His touring schedule included the 1958-59 tour to Australia and New Zealand. Of his experiences on tour in Australia he recalled, in addition to the variety of roles he performed, a total blackout in Sydney’s Empire Theatre. ‘There was John Field onstage with hurricane lamps rehearsing the swans in the second act of Swan Lake,’ he said. He also remembers ‘Midnight Matinees’ towards the end of the Australian tour, which were fundraisers for victims of bush fires that devastated areas of Australia in 1958.
Alan Alder in Coppelia. Royal Ballet Australasian tour, 1958. Photo: Walter Stringer
At the invitation of Peggy van Praagh, Alder returned to Australia in 1963 to join the Australian Ballet as a senior soloist. He was promoted to principal artist in 1969, and later was a guest artist with the company from 1978 to 1980. With the Australian Ballet Alder danced many principal roles in a wide selection of ballets. He scored particular success as Alain in La Fille mal gardée, a role he danced initially with the Royal Ballet in 1961, and again with the Australian Ballet on many occasions from 1968 onwards. But other works, new and old, in which he took leading roles included Melbourne Cup, Threshold, Sebastian, Giselle, Pineapple Poll, Lady and the Fool, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Yugen, and Carmen.
Alan Alder as Jasper the Pot Boy with Maria Lang in Pineapple Poll. The Australian Ballet, 1976. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia
Alder married fellow dancer Lucette Aldous in 1972. In the mid 1970s both Alder and Aldous were invited by the Russian ministry of culture to study teaching methods in the USSR. In St Petersburg they studied Boris Kniaseff’s floor barre and the Vaganova system of training. The opportunity to visit Russia came at a time when the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had just signed a cultural agreement with the USSR and Alder and Aldous were the first Australians to go to Russia under that agreement. Alder recalled:
‘We gained tremendous insight into the ideology of Agrippina Vaganova and also, in the short amount of time we had, we crammed as much as we could into learning on our bodies how to pass on that system, not necessarily just the choreography of the actual exercises, the enchainments, but the reason behind doing them.’
Following his departure from the Australian Ballet in 1980, Alder took up part-time teaching with Dame Margaret Scott and Anne Woolliams. In 1983 he was appointed to head up the dance department at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, a position he held until 1991. He then took up a teaching position at the Perth Graduate College of Dance. His involvement with Ausdance (WA) began in 1987 and his contribution to that organisation was recognised with a life membership.
In 2004, Alder and Aldous were jointly recognised as State Living Treasures by the Government of Western Australia. The citation included the words ‘outstanding contribution to dance’ and ‘dedication as advocates for the development of dance in Western Australia.’
Alan Richard Alder. Born Canberra, 14 September 1937; died Perth, 15 July 2019
Featured image: Alan Alder as Hakuryo the Fisherman in Yugen. The Australian Ballet, 1965. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia.
An armchair conversation with Sir Jon Trimmer was the brainchild of Garry Trinder, Director of New Zealand School of Dance. It was held in the theatre at Te Whaea, mid-week of the school’s winter intensive national seminar, so that many young students, parents and teachers could attend. It was also open to the public and a large contingent of Friends and friends, colleagues, admirers, teachers and audience-goers took the chance to express publicly their appreciation of, and thanks for, this dancer’s phenomenal career. It was twilight hour, so a poignant echo that, on innumerable performance nights across the past six decades, warm-up, make-up, dress-up, curtain-up would have been taking place at around the same time. In reviving the memories and pleasures of those performances, the conversation summoned many ghosts, all of them good. No bad ghosts arrived. Love was in the air.
The names of the main players in his early story include: Jonty’s parents and siblings who danced and sang their way around the family home; Pamela Lowe, his older sister whose dance school in Petone he attended; Poul Gnatt who arrived in 1953 like a lightning bolt from afar and established a ballet company on zero resources yet with the highest of aspirations; Russell Kerr, a quiet genius of ballet, music and theatre arts who succeeded him as Artistic Director of the company in 1962, contributing to its growing international recognition; Alexander Grant, our legendary character dancer expatriate; Peggy van Praagh who offered support during the early years of her directorate of The Australian Ballet—including an enterprising initiative whereby several dancers had three-month exchange residencies between the two companies. Jacqui and Jon Trimmer were later invited to dance with The Australian Ballet on an international tour with guest artists Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, and entertaining tales were told of those times.
Harry Haythorne, a subsequent director of New Zealand Ballet, was another Australasian success story. He and Jonty were obviously great mates (‘We both knew all the hit songs and numbers from vaudeville and music-hall era—had a ball outdoing each other’). There’s no better illustration of that rapport than their twin roles in A Servant of Two Masters, Gray Veredon’s classic commission with inspired design by Kristian Fredrikson. The Film Archive’s copy of that commedia dell’ arte ballet is still worth viewing for the dazzling line-up of its stellar cast—Trimmer and Haythorne, Kerry-Anne Gilberd, Cathy Goss, Karin Wakefield, Lee Patrice, Eric Languet, Warren Douglas, Kilian O’Callaghan. The earlier romp, TheRagtime Dance Company to Scott Joplin, was another of Veredon’s and Fredrikson’s hits. Bernard Hourseau’s Carmina Burana and Ashley Killar’s choreographies No Exit and Dark Waves also gave Jon some of his strongest roles. Many of the heritage works of the Company’s repertoire exist only in memory, but are no less real for that, and a number of them could do with re-visiting.
Sir Jon Trimmer (left) as Pantalone and Harry Haythorne as Dr Lombardi in Gray Veredon’s A Servant of Two Masters. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 1989. Photographer not known
Christopher Hampson’s Romeo & Juliet, and Cinderella, Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly, Liam Scarlett’s Midsummer Night’s Dream are further impeccable works that secured RNZB’s reputation for full-length choreographies, combining all the power that dancing, music and design can offer. If asked to name one indelible image of Jon Trimmer on stage, I’d probably first lodge a conscientious objection—What, only one?’ but then describe his power as the Duke of Verona in R&J. He strode in, on a high, elevated back platform, glared down first at the Montagues, then at the Capulets—at everyone stunned by the horror of what had played out, then again at both houses —turned and strode off. His demand that warring end and a truce be declared, delivered in so few gestures, carried all the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy. The timing and the minimalism of those few moments on stage, said it all.
We should tell our
grandchildren what we saw. Find the music, tell them the story, show them
photos, keep the dress-ups box at hand, take them to a matinee, suggest they
draw and write afterwards what they saw, maybe send a postcard to their
favourite dancer. Who knows where it might lead, but it can only be a good
place.
The clearly
important international parts of Jon’s career, with Sadler’s Wells Ballet, and
Royal Danish Ballet, were referenced, (‘It certainly helped in Denmark to have
Poul Gnatt’s mantle on my shoulders. He was still vividly remembered by
everyone there—and clearly had been one of their top dancers’) but it is
overwhelmingly apparent that the Trimmers’ commitment and loyalty to the Royal
New Zealand Ballet has shaped their lives, and that of so many younger dancers and
colleagues here whose artistry they have helped to develop. For that we say
Thank You.
Garry asked: ‘When did it first occur to you that the recreation and pleasure you took in dancing as a boy could become your life work, your career?’ Jon replied: ‘Well, you know I’m not sure I can say. I just kept on doing what I loved.’
Garry Trinder (right) asks a question of Sir Jon Trimmer. New Zealand School of Dance, Wellington, 2019.
‘What he loved’ included Poul’s pedigree productions of Bournonville ballets—La Sylphide and Napoli; the talisman Prismatic Variations, Russell’s Prince Igor, Petrouchka, Swan Lake, Giselle, Coppélia, Christmas Carol, Peter Pan; interesting new work with Russell Kerr in an interlude at Auckland Dance Centre; plus 100 more… Servant, Ragtime Dance Company, La Fille mal Gardée, Cinderella, Romeo & Juliet … who’s counting and where do we stop? Clearly this is significant repertoire that earned the Company an international recognition and reputation, as well as its royal charter.
The sagas of
company politics, funding and management highs and lows over the years were
referred to in the briefest of terms, as also the devastating challenge of the
fire that destroyed almost all the company’s resources in 1967. The abiding
impression one gains is of the resilience and determination to somehow hold on
to the reins—with Poul Gnatt, Beatrice Ashton, Richard Campion, Russell Kerr
and the Trimmers as the heroes in those early battles.
Young dancers listening will have taken on board Jon’s words about the importance of breathing while moving—to shape and sustain an arabesque, to support a jump, to control a pirouette … ‘oh and the music of course, that helps enormously.’
Another tip, this one he had from Russell Kerr—’Go and sit outside a café, watch people as they walk by. Study their gait, their timing, how they hold their body. That will tell you much about their character which you can then put into your performance, make it lifelike.’
Jon: ‘I stopped dancing princes at a certain age but went on to old men, old women and witches. Look, it’s been just wonderful to work with all those talented people.’ Jon, one could guess it’s been just as wonderful for them, as it has been for us too.
A friend in the audience commented later—’One
thing that struck me was his presence when speaking. When Trinder was
talking Jonty seemed like just a genial old man, but as soon as he started to
speak you couldn’t take your eyes, or attention, away from him.’ That magnetic presence
and practice of paying attention has also worked in the opposite direction and been
a way of life for Jon for years. He has watched countless RNZB rehearsals and
performances with the most attentive eye, and always found a way of gently
encouraging younger dancers, suggesting a tip to a colleague as to how the smallest shift in
physics of limbs or expression of eyes or face might enhance their performance. Such
generosity in the competitive world of ballet arts is rare, but makes the man worth his
weight in gold.
There are more stories to be found in
Jon’s recently published memoir, Why
Dance?and details of the
Company productions are listed in the three published histories of the
RNZBallet—at 25, 50 and at 60 years.
Jon has also
explored pottery and painting as further means of expression. He is a legendary
gardener —and, one senses, a deeply happy man Of course he’s not stupid and
wants a much better world for dancers, but the knowledge that he has used his
own given talents to the maximum has allowed him to remain positive throughout
a career that has seen some tortured ups and downs of politics and make-overs
during the decades (every ballet company knows them). His humour is quick but
never biting, always gentle with wry amusement, a rich sense of irony, patience
in waiting for time to resolve troubles of the political variety, and
truckloads of performance memories.
Also apparent is a
deep and genuine love of his country—’Oh it was wonderful to travel through the
whole countryside as we toured everywhere in the early days—we saw so much, and
made so many wonderful friends as billets. We’re still friends.’
Bill
Sheat, a pillar in many areas of the arts community in New Zealand, says: ‘During
my long term as Chairman of the Board of RNZB I was lucky enough to see Jon T.
perform countless times. Whenever he made his first appearance there would be a
wave of whispered delight as the audience recognised him. It was a mixture of
love, ownership and appreciation.’
Tuesday evening was a sweetheart affair—no notes, no microphones, no bullshit, no self-aggrandisement, no lecturing, no breathless promotions, no shouting and whistling, just an ocean of smiling faces and sustained, warm applause that is echoing yet, and holding history. There is no future without the past.
So what did Jonty
do? He joined in the applause of course.
Jennifer Shennan, 12 July 2019
Featured image: Sir Jon Trimmer (left) makes a point during his conversation with Garry Trinder. New Zealand School of Dance, Wellington, 2019
Please consider supporting the Australian Cultural Fund project to raise money to have hi-res images made for a book on the career of designer Kristian Fredrikson, which is heading towards publication. See the project, which closes on 30 July 2019, at this link.[Update 1 August 2019: Project closed]
The death of Shona Dunlop MacTavish in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 18 June at the age of 99 sent me back to her autobiography, Leap of faith. It was published in 1997 and the early sections give a fascinating account of her schooldays in New Zealand and her time in Europe over four years beginning 1935. Those four years included her introduction to dance and in Leap of faith Dunlop MacTavish gives her thoughts on her early teachers, one of whom was Gertrud Bodenwieser. Of Bodenwieser and how her classes affected people, Dunlop MacTavish writes
Frau Gerty, as she was known by her students, was a small erect figure who, when not demonstrating, examined her class through an intimidating lorgnette … Although nervous at first, I began to relax and enjoy myself as it appeared she was taking little notice of me. Soon I was swept up with the rest of the class—a mass of whirling bodies with ecstatic faces.
The book continues through Dunlop MacTavish’s life in in South America on tour with Bodenwieser’s dancers; follows her experiences in Australia, China and Africa (the latter two with her missionary husband Donald MacTavish); and then moves on to the Philippines. The story then comes back to New Zealand and her home city of Dunedin where she set up a number of dance-related initiatives.
Dunlop MacTavish’s choreographic output was extensive and a list of her choreographies in Australia and New Zealand forms an appendix to Leap of faith. It is remarkable list. As one example, the first solo she created for herself was Two souls alas reside within my breast. Along with others of her early works, she danced it when her husband-to-be came to the Bodenwieser studio in Sydney to be introduced to her dancing. In her oral history interview for the National Library of Australia she explains the origin of the work:
I’d seen a young man in a nightclub with a very scarred face, beautiful on one side, all scarred on the other. It suddenly gave me the image of how many of us actually have two personalities. The title of the work was taken from some writing by Goethe. [Faust, First Part]
Shona Dunlop in a study for Two souls alas reside within my breast, c. 1945. Photo: Clifton Firth. From a card using material from the National Dance Archive of New Zealand
For more on the remarkable life of Shona Dunlop MacTavish, here is a link to an oral history interview I recorded with her for the National Library on 13 April 1998. It is available online both as audio and as a transcript. Leap of faith is also definitely worth a re-read.
Queen’s Birthday Honours list
Congratulations to Li Cunxin, Meryl Tankard and Régis Lansac, who were all recognised in the 2019 Queen’s birthday honours list. Li and Tankard received an AO, Lansac an OAM.
In a recent conversation with Patrick Harding-Irmer and Anca Frankenhaeuser I also heard that Robert Cohan, founding artistic director of London Contemporary Dance School and London Contemporary Dance Theatre, had also been honoured in England. Cohan influenced the careers of many Australian dancers and choreographers. He was knighted!
With regard to the Australian awards, Lansac’s work is not often acknowledged as much and as appropriately as it should be, so it is especially pleasing to see that he has been recognised. Below are a few of many photographs taken by Lansac that are part of a collection held in the National Library of Australia. His career has crossed boundaries as these images show. Here, too, is a link to an article that appeared in the now-defunct National Library of Australia News, which gives a little insight into Lansac’s early Australian collaborations and commissions. See also the tag Régis Lansac on this website.
A new book by Valerie Lawson has just been published. I have not yet had time to read the copy I have but, flicking through the pages, there are some great photographs in it that, as far as I am aware, have never been published before. Lawson also sets the scene for what is (or rather what is not) contained in the book when she writes: ‘Dancing under the southern skies is not a detailed description of professional ballet performances in Australia—the dates, the theatres, the casts, the designers—although the detail is important and, one day, might become a dictionary of ballet.’ The next paragraph in the introduction explains what is included. But I will leave that for your further reading!
‘Vale Jonathan Taylor’, Dance Australia, June/July 2019, p. 13. PDF at this link
Michelle Potter, 30 June 2019
Please consider supporting my Australian Cultural Fund project to raise money to have hi-res images made for my book on the career of designer Kristian Fredrikson, which is heading towards publication. See the project, which closes on 30 July 2019, at this link. Donations are tax deductible. [Update 1 August 2019: Project closed]
Featured image: Evelyn Ippen, Bettina Vernon, Emmy Towsey and Shona Dunlop, Bodenwieser Ballet, Sydney c. 1939. Photo: Max Dupain
The news for May is headlined by the announcement that David McAllister, artistic director of the Australian Ballet since 2002, will retire at the end of 2020. McAllister has always been generous in situations that are about dance but fall outside performances. He launched, for example, two of my books, A Collector’s Book of Australian Dance and Dame Maggie Scott. A Life in Dance. In this month’s featured image (above) he is seen in the Chunky Move studios in Melbourne launching A Collector’s Book. The banner on the left shows an image that appears in the book, which was taken by Greg Barrett.
I have also enjoyed seeing McAllister at various conferences, including the first BOLD Festival held in Canberra in 2017.
Who will be the next director? The names that have been mentioned in the press so far (I have arranged them alphabetically by family name) include Leanne Benjamin, David Hallberg, Li Cunxin, Graeme Murphy, and Stanton Welch. One or two of them have declared they are not interested (not sure if I necessarily believe that). I have one or two others in my mind but I won’t mention them here! I do hope, however, that whoever survives the selection process and becomes McAllister’s successor will be someone who will be audacious in repertoire choices.
Shaun Parker and Company
In September 2010, dancer (and singer in the counter tenor mode) Shaun Parker registered a name: Shaun Parker and Company. Next year the company that bears that name will celebrate its 10th anniversary with, I believe, a special program.
The company has just recently returned from the Middle East and Austria where Parker’s most recent production, KING, was performed. In the meantime, Parker is now working on a new show for young people, IN THE ZONE, which will premiere in Sydney this coming September. It will feature street dancer Libby Montilla and the technology of AirSticks.
Among the finalists for the 2019 Archibald Prize, Australia’s well-known portrait prize hosted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was a portrait entitled Mao’s Last Dancer by Chinese-born artist Jun Chen. Chen, who is currently based in Brisbane, was commissioned last year by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra to paint a portrait of Li Cunxin, artistic director of Queensland Ballet. It was one of twenty portraits commissioned to celebrate the Gallery’s twentieth anniversary. Chen followed up with a second portrait of Li and entered it for the Archibald Prize. While it didn’t take first place it was good to see a portrait of a dancer among the 2019 finalists. See all the finalists here.
Mao’s Last Dancer: Jun Chen’s portrait of Li Cunxin
Following new posts
I have had a number of requests recently asking how to join up to receive notification of new posts. Here’s how to do it:
1.Make a comment by going to the ‘Leave a reply’ form, which you will find at the end of every post. 2. Before hitting the ‘Post comment’ field, check the box that says ‘Notify me of new posts by email’. (Make sure you have also filled out your name and email address. A website address is not necessary). 3. After you have submitted the comment you will receive a follow-up email asking you to confirm. It will say ‘Confirm follow’. Once you have clicked on this field you should begin to receive notifications of new posts.
[UPDATE: A new ‘subscribe’ box is now on the home page just under the box that says ‘View Full Tag Cloud’].
When Elizabeth Dalman’s reign as founding artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre came dramatically to an end in 1975, she went to Italy where she spent the next decade. Not long after her return to Australia she moved to a new home on a property on Lake George, close to Canberra. There she created Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, which has just celebrated its 30th anniversary. See this link for a list of Dalman’s incredible range of activities over recent years, at Mirramu and elsewhere. Those activities stand as a testament to Dalman’s total commitment to dance.
Bodenwieser Dance Centre
Many in the Australian dance world will remember the Bodenwieser Dance Centre on City Road in Chippendale, Sydney. The building is up for sale and will go to auction on 3 May. This link takes you to a petition to save the building for future use by the dance community. Consider signing.
D H Lawrence on dance
It has been a long time since I read anything by D. H. Lawrence—it goes way back to English II at Sydney University. But in looking for something to read while on holidays, I bought Lawrence’s Twilight in Italy (first published in 1916). In the following extract he is describing a dance by locals from the area around Lake Garda in the northern part of Italy.
‘… It is a strange dance, strange and lilting, and changing as the music changed. But it had always a kind of leisurely dignity, a trailing kind of polka-waltz, intimate, passionate, yet never hurried, never violent in its passion, always becoming more intense. The women’s faces changed to a sort of transported wonder, they were in the very wonder of delight. From the soft bricks of the floor the red ochre rose in a thin cloud of dust, making hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, in their black hats and their coats, sat obscurely in the corner, making a music that came quicker and quicker, making a dance that grew swifter and more intense, more subtle, the men seeming to fly and to implicate another strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, the women drifting and palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a breeze …’
I have cut the quote above in mid-sentence, as that particular sentence is VERY long, probably too long. I must admit, however, that I enjoyed reading Lawrence’s thoughts and his mode of expression. But would we write like that about dance these days?
Link to articles and reviews published in The Canberra Times
I was somewhat shocked to discover that I can no longer make links to online versions of my articles and reviews published by The Canberra Times. At this stage pretty much every Canberra Times link on this website now goes to a page with the news of the current day. My predilection for providing online links via The Canberra Times’ (old) website goes back to May 2013 so it will be something of a task now to remove those links. Taking readers to the latest news of the day is useless for my purposes. Luckily I have kept a paper copy (what is paper you may ask?) of everything published. So, while a plug has been pulled, not everything has gone down the sink.
Press for April 2019
‘Farewell to a grand dame.’ Obituary for Dame Margaret Scott. Dance Australia, April/May 2019, pp. 13–14. PDF at this link.
‘Sydney Dance Company turns 50.’ The Canberra Times/Panorama, 20 April 2019, p. 7. Expanded version at this link.
Michelle Potter, 30 April 2019
Featured image: Detail on a vase, Royal Apartments, Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Sicily. Photo: Neville Potter
Below is the text of an article I was commissioned to write about the Canberra season of Sydney Dance Company’s first program for 2019, Bonachela/Nankivell/Lane. It was meant also to include a note on the company’s 50 year history. Sadly and disappointingly, a truncated version, with no images, appeared in The Canberra Times. It was not what I was led to believe would happen.
Several people in the dance community were generous in their support of what I was writing, so I am posting the story as it was meant to be, and I’m including some images: an article on dance without images hardly makes sense.
Sydney Dance Company turns 50 in 2019 and it’s time to commemorate the exceptional endurance of one of the country’s favourite contemporary dance companies. It’s time, too, to celebrate Sydney Dance Company’s bold commitment to the new in the performing arts. The company’s current artistic director, Rafael Bonachela, calls that commitment ‘the continued investment the company has made in new Australian work over its 50-year history’.
Shane Carroll, former dancer with the company during the years it was led by Graeme Murphy, has been engaged in digging deep into the history of the company. She has come up with some astonishing figures. In addition to the creation of 250 new works, over 50 years Sydney Dance Company has commissioned new scores from 38 composers—the very first going to Peter Sculthorpe in 1971. It has also commissioned 124 different designers, employed more than 260 dancers, and has shown the work of about 90 different national and international choreographers.
‘It’s an amazing contribution,’ Carroll says. ‘The company has been a leader in developing a broad view of contemporary dance in Australia and the longevity of the company is incredible. It has also often been a rollicking ride. There have been no safe productions and funding has often been shaky. But the company has just persisted and has continued to push boundaries.’
Sydney Dance Company began quite modestly in 1969 as Ballet in a Nutshell. It was the idea of the then artistic director of the Australian Ballet, Peggy van Praagh, and was led by a foundation member of that company, Suzanne Musitz. Her small team consisted of some dancers from the Australian Ballet School and one pianist. It was essentially a dance in education company taking dance into schools, initially secondary schools in Sydney. A little later, to attract more boys to its sessions, the name was changed to Athletes and Dancers.
The group grew into a fully-fledged dance company named the Dance Company (NSW). After being led by Musitz for another few years and then, briefly, by Dutch choreographer Jaap Flier, Graeme Murphy was appointed artistic director at the end of 1976. With his artistic associate (now wife) Janet Vernon, Murphy led the company for 30 years. The name change to Sydney Dance Company came in 1979.
The contribution made by Murphy and Vernon over that period raised the profile of the company to that of an internationally respected one whose repertoire was hugely diverse. In the early years of his directorship, Murphy’s choreography included the first evening length work by an Australian contemporary dance company with Poppy (1978), which looked, inventively, at the life of Jean Cocteau; Glimpses (1976), a work based on the art and writing of Norman Lindsay using a score by Margaret Sutherland; and a very daring Daphnis and Chloe (1980) with designs by Kristian Fredrikson to music by Ravel. Murphy’s commitment to new work, often with an Australian theme, and to collaborating with Australian composers and designers, continued until 2007 when he and Vernon resigned.
Rafael Bonachela joined the company as artistic director in 2009. His first program in Sydney Dance Company’s 50th anniversary year consists of a new work of his own, Cinco; another brand-new work, Neon Aether, from Gabrielle Nankivell; and WOOF from Melanie Lane, which was first seen in 2017 as part of Sydney Dance Company’s experimental choreographic season, New Breed. Canberra audiences will see this program in May.
Cinco, which means five in Spanish, has been created on just five dancers. It is danced to five movements of a string quartet by Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera, which ‘by chance’ says Bonachela, was written in the 1950s. Bonachela admits that there is something about numbers that fascinates him. He loves the idea that, in this case, the emphasis on the number five is unusually significant. Fashion design Bianca Spender has created the costumes for Cinco. Bonachela says he has admired her work for some time, especially the way her clothes are both structured and fluid. Spender’s Cinco costumes move beautifully with the body, and play with colour and shape.
In 2014 Gabrielle Nankivell made a powerful, idiosyncratic statement with Wildebeest for Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed season. Now she is back with Neon Aether, which was inspired by aspects of the solar system and science fiction. Nankivell’s partner in life, Luke Smiles, has created an electronic score, which is punctured by voices announcing instructions relating to a journey in space. Those instructions coincide with dramatic blackouts from lighting designer Damien Cooper.
Melanie Lane had a smash hit with WOOF in the New Breed season of 2017, so much so that Bonachela has included it in this 50th anniversary program. It too has a commissioned score, this time by Clark, who is Lane’s partner in life and who prefers to be known, theatrically at least, by just one name. Bonachela describes WOOF as ‘brilliant, powerful and about community and belonging, with a touch of vulnerability.’ Watching it on opening night in Sydney in March it reminded me a little of an absorbing, modern-day Rite of Spring.
There are several Canberra connections to celebrate in this
current season. Bonachela is now a patron of Canberra’s youth dance
organisation, QL2. He accepted the invitation last year, mentioning that he
wanted to mentor young dancers and adding how impressed he had been with
dancers who had come through the various QL2 programs and then joined Sydney
Dance Company.
Then there is Melanie Lane. Now with an international reputation, Lane grew up in Canberra and trained at the National Capital Ballet School when it was directed by Janet Karin. Lane recalls Karin’s ongoing interest in new choreography and was inspired to make her own dances as a result. Karin says she felt sure that Lane would go on to choreograph and adds that as a dancer Lane was ‘fluid, sensuous, strong and feminine all in one.’ On opening night of this anniversary program, WOOF was greeted with huge applause and even had Bonachela himself standing, shouting and whistling. Composer of WOOF, Luke Smiles, has a strong connection with Canberra too. He performed as a dancer with Sue Healey’s Vis-à-vis Dance Canberra back in the 1990s.
In addition, Sydney Dance Company, under its various
different names, has been touring to Canberra for almost the entire 50 years of
its existence. In fact, the company’s first season under the name Dance Company
(NSW) was in 1971 in Canberra, when Love
201 with that commissioned score from Peter Sculthorpe was presented.
The program Bonachela/Nankivell/Lane is Bonachela’s tribute to Sydney Dance Company’s commitment to the new in dance. But Sydney Dance Company’s commitment to Canberra is definitely something that also deserves to be celebrated by local audiences. Don’t miss it.
