Rotunda. The New Zealand Dance Company and New Zealand Army Band
…mpressive, highly unusual, spectacular, powerful and poignant by turns. Rotunda. The New Zealand Dance Company, 2015. Photo: © Caroline Bindon For the cast of four male and four female dancers, the choreographic focus is on the young … boys playing shoot-outs with twigs from the apple tree, bang bang you’re dead, but not too much later they are on a battlefield, shooting and being shot with real guns now. One of them stays down, bang bang you’re d…
The Art of Touch, RainForest, A Linha Curva. Rambert Dance Company
…ogram and seemed mostly playful with movement that scurried along to the sounds of five keyboard sonatas by Scarlatti and a commissioned work for harpsichord from Matteo Fargion. A luscious set (by David Buckland) consisting of golden walls, which changed hue and occasionally darkened under Ian Beswick’s lighting, added a certain mystery to the work. Angela Towler and Miguel Altunaga were the stand out dancers especially in a slow, complex duet. T…
Paul De Masson (1953‒2012)
…then, after you’ve given them everything you could possibly give, them, seeing it suddenly click, seeing something happen. Sometimes it doesn’t happen and it’s disappointing. Then you have to find another way of explaining it. But the high points were watching achievements, getting people to act in a certain way. On working with John Neumeier It was fantastic working with John. It was exhausting because he is very demanding. And I had to learn a…
Infinity. The Australian Ballet
…ks back to some of Murphy’s strongest abstract works made for Sydney Dance Company—Piano sonata comes straight to mind. Obarzanek’s piece also had a strange, or at least not very catchy title, There’s definitely a prince involved. It referred to his process of generating ideas and vocabulary for the work by asking a range of people about what they thought constitutes a ballet, and his subsequent deconstruction of the ballet Swan Lake. The work ca…
Lucette Aldous, AC (1938-2021)
…s containing many fascinating anecdotes about those she worked with during her extensive career. Listen at this link. Aldous has also featured in a 2001 film by Michelle Mahrer, The Three Ballerinas. She appears along with Marilyn Rowe and Marilyn Jones in the trailer below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TkSBJweWwM She also appears in Sue Healey’s On View Series. Read a little about it at this link. Lucette Aldous in stills from Sue Healey’s sh…
Online articles
DanceTabs (2013–2016) Contributor: Michelle Potter Other online material On the careers of Merce Cunningham and Rudolf Nureyev: ‘Merce Cunningham’, ‘Rudolf Nureyev’, America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures (Washington, DC: Dance Heritage Coalition, 2012) On the extensive tour by the Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet: ‘The Dandré-Levitoff Russian Ballet, 1934–1935: Australia and beyond’, Dance Research, 29:1, Summer 2011, pp. 61–96 A tribute to Valr…
Gloria. Co3
…ancer was held and swung back and forth by two other dancers as others ran underneath and around the activity. But I guess I go back to my original review for Dance Australia and confirm more than anything that Wright’s Gloria is life-affirming whatever one might think of specific sections. Wright uses dance to convey a message about humanity. Simple but astounding. I was lucky to be able to keep going back to watch sections of Gloria but I am sur…
The Russell Kerr Lecture, February 2020
…ly New Zealand’s leading performer and dance-maker, a legend in his lifetime whose astonishingly prolific output will be remembered for decades to come. Haunting Douglas is available on Vimeo, or for purchase from Spasifik Films, and is highly recommended viewing. Planning is already under way for the next lecture in the series which will be held on Sunday 10 February 2021, with details of topic and presenter to be confirmed. Jennifer Shennan, 19…
Dance diary. August 2015
…pany Early in August Sydney Dance Company announced the four recipients of commissions to create works for the company’s New Breed initiative. Kristina Chan, Fiona Jopp, Bernhard Knauer and Daniel Riley will present their dances at Carriageworks in a season running from 8 to 13 December. Commissions have also gone to independent designers Matt Marshall and Aleisa Jelbart, and musician/composers Nick Thayer, James Brown, Jürgen Knauer, Toby Merz an…
Triptych. Sydney Dance Company
…y Sydney Dance Company’s latest offering, Triptych, pays homage to English composer Benjamin Britten, whose compositions, Simple Symphony, Les Illuminations and Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, are at the musical heart of the program. All three works have choreography by artistic director Rafael Bonachela, and the dancers are joined onstage by singer Katie Noonan in Les Illuminations, and throughout the program by musicians of ACO2, the Aust…