The fabric of dance. National Gallery of Victoria
…e text: Stanton Welch discusses Divergence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kTvnQLyOIY Excerpt from The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUWRtJiWQbI Michelle Potter, 3 May 2013…
Darpana: Reflections. Mudra Dance Company
…Kalakshetra, the epicentre of Bharata Natyam teaching, near Chennai. The founder of the school, Rukmini Devi, envisaged a centre of arts and related crafts to thrive alongside community education initiatives. As a theosophist Devi visited New Zealand to connect with the Theosophical Society here, and also devoted time to animal rights’ causes. As a young dancer she had met Anna Pavlova who was touring with her company to India in 1922. Pavlova enc…
Globalisation or culturalism. Is ballet at the crossroads?
…acker’ for another thought-to-be lost file. So I am posting it here and welcome comments from a 2018 perspective. As artistic directors of some of the world’s best-known ballet companies meet to discuss the issue of globalisation, I am reminded of a now well-known debate that emerged in Australia in the 1960s and the 1970s. It concerned the nature of the country’s cultural development. Two camps sprang up: one centred on the idea of the tyranny of…
Dance diary. October 2013
…feeling’. Review of Michael Francis Willoughby in Elohgulp, Jigsaw Theatre Company. The Canberra Times, 1 October 2013, ARTS, p. 6. [Online version no longer available]. ‘Bendy, bawdy and brilliant’. Review of EMPIRE, Spiegelworld. The Canberra Times, 12 October 2013, p. ARTS 22. [Online version no longer available] ‘From Russia, with no love’. Review of Swan Lake. Russian National Theatre Ballet, The Canberra Times, 15 October 2013. [Online versi…
Swans and Firebirds
…es material not strictly speaking from the Diaghilev enterprise as we have come to understand it. Jointly curated by Drs Claudia Jeschke and Nicole Haitzinger from the University of Salzburg, it draws for its material on the collections of a number of institutions, largely in Russia, Germany and Austria, and one major private collector, John Neumeier. The exhibition suffers at the outset from being displayed very awkwardly in two rooms at the far…
Never stand still. Jacob’s Pillow
…online at the usual places for quite a small amount of money, even with our dollar falling against the greenback. Watch the trailer below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74DT7FAjmjs Michelle Potter, 26 August 2013…
Djakapurra Munyarryun. Bangarra Dance Theatre
…i Branly—Jacques Chirac, a museum devoted to ethnographic material from around the world. The company has a one week residency at the museum and the residency will include, in addition to Ochres, workshops, public talks and screenings of Stephen Page’s film Spear. The role that Djakapurra Munyarryun will play in Ochres on this tour is not quite the same as his role in the original production, when in the opening moments he was seen smearing his bo…
The Beginning of Nature. Australian Dance Theatre
…pre-programmed by Woithe so that no human intervention is required. The sound produced in this way is combined with the vocals and a small amount of pre-recorded backing at times to produce what we hear during the performance. As I suggested in my review, the remarkable sound that emerged from this process varied in what it suggested and, as such, made an inestimable, collaborative contribution to the overall work. The Beginning of Nature. Austra…
Dance diary. August 2022
…e, as she was familiarly known, was a student of and dancer with Gertrud Bodenwieser and, after Bodenwieser’s death, directed (with Keith Bain) the Bodenwieser Dance Centre in Sydney. Batchelor has also worked with, and considered the heritage of others with connections to Bodenwieser including Eileen Kramer and Carol Brown. James Batchelor in a study for Short Cuts to Familiar Places. Photo: © Morgan Hickinbotham With luck Short Cuts to Familiar…
Scotch Symphony, Within the Golden Hour, From Foreign Lands. San Francisco Ballet
…es performing at first as shadows; and a second pas deux that does move around the stage a little more. Wheeldon’s choreography in Within the Golden Hour mixes ballet technique with all kinds of other styles from ballroom to his own take on contemporary dance. This work was by far the most popular with the audience, who gave it a standing ovation at the matinee I attended. I enjoyed its changing momentum and its quirkiness, but it isn’t a great wo…