Ballet Confidential and Soar. Books by David McAllister
…resources for dance between the two countries. The Australian Ballet has become a flagship company for its country with a number of high-profile and successful international tours to its credit. Our own company has not toured internationally for a number of years (not a Covid-related phenomenon) but anyone who pays attention to the fortunes and woes of ballet companies worldwide will nonetheless know ours as a stalwart and determined 7 decades-lon…
Chocolate. Java Dance Company
…nary investigation into culture’, each work has been themed for one of the undeniable essentials of a good life—bread (Rise), wine (The Wine Project), cheese (The Creamery) and now chocolate (Chocolate). (I’ll have a little of everything thanks. We won’t complain about the omission of coffee as that might sound greedy. I just need the one cup each day but it has to be good. Today’s cafes echo the coffee houses of earlier times and there are rich t…
Ruth Galene (1929–2016)
…ite silk dress that floated as she moved, Ruth began modern dance training under two of Bodenwieser’s leading dancers, Evelyn Ippen and Bettina Vernon. Shortly afterwards, Ruth began taking ballet classes in Sydney with Estelle Anderson and a little later with Lorraine Norton and then Leon Kellaway. Ruth performed briefly with the Borovansky Ballet, where she counted star dancer Kathleen Gorham as one of her closest friends. She then joined the En…
Bonachela/Obarzanek. Sydney Dance Company
…Janessa Dufty (left) in Us 50. Performers from the audience in the background. Sydney Dance Company 2019. Photo: © Pedro Greig SDC alumni Kip Gamblin (centre) Wakako Asano (left) and Bradley Chatfield (right) with current SDC dancers in Us 50. Sydney Dance Company, 2019. Photo: © Pedro Greig By the end the three groups had become as one and, while the closing movements and groupings were of necessity quite simple, perhaps over-simplified, the poi…
Dance diary. October 2018
…t of the anniversary, he will use 50 dancers drawn from former and current company dancers, along with members of the community. Former and current dancers from Sydney Dance Company: (left to right) Kip Gamblin, Linda Ridgeway, Rafael Bonachela, Sheree Zellner (da Costa), Lea Francis and Bradley Chatfield. Photo: © Pedro Greig Oral history: Ariette Taylor My most recent oral history interview for the National Library was with Ariette Taylor, whose…
Whispers down the lane. Chloe Moir
…y when restaging a work, and especially if the work is from the past? Whispers down the lane is a beautiful and inspiring film (production Lewis Grant Kennedy) with so many layers to it. An excellent outcome from Dance.Focus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ZBxpjTwks All photos: Screenshots from the film Whispers Down The Lane by Chloe Moir, a DANCE.FOCUS 2021 commission. Courtesy of Ausdance ACT Michelle Potter, 5 October 2021 Featured image: C…
Canberra dance 2013
…onships, interactions and the sheer beauty of the human form. Sydney Dance Company is one of the few companies that has toured to Canberra consistently since its beginnings in the 1970s. What a pleasure it will be to see them again as part of ‘Collected Works’. Dance in Canberra’s centenary year looks promising. Other events and more dance performances are listed on the Canberra 100 website. [UPDATE August 2020. The website with listings is no lon…
Vismaya—Amazement. Mudra Dance Company with visiting musicians
…e thanks us all for coming. That’s the only thing he got wrong all evening. It’s we who are to thank him. Jennifer Shennan, 4 July 2024 Featured image: Members of Mudra Dance Company (from left) Esther McCreadie, Banu Siva, Shrinidhi Bharadwaj, Varshini Suresh, Deepika Sundar. Photo: © Gerry Keating…
Dance diary. June 2024
…ance-related activities, which include the creation of some 30 ballets for companies around the world, he established Maison Remi, an organisation that produces some incredible fashion accessories, including handbags, rings and more. An item from Maison Remi. For mentions of Wörtmeyer on this website see this tag. News from Queensland Ballet Queensland Ballet goes from strength to strength as an organisation. The company recently announced it had…
The Four Temperaments. Some reflections
…he things [Balanchine] had made. That was number one. Very irritating. You come to dress rehearsal, and if you swing your arm close to your head, suddenly there’s a horn. The other thing was that [Kurt] Seligmann had made wings, red wings, fingers enclosed, and there was no place to get out. If you got into your costume and then got something in your eye or wanted to unzip yourself to get out, you couldn’t. Once you tied your toeshoe ribbons, that…