Champions. FORM Dance Projects/Martin del Amo
…e by one, as they warmed up for the dance/match, they were introduced by a commentator (real-life sporting commentator Mel McLaughlin), who appeared on video on a series of upstage screens. Then the main section of the work began with a series of group exercises and, a little later, with comments, again via the video screens, about salaries for men and women in sport, in particular salaries received by the Australian men’s soccer team in compariso…
L. Mirramu Dance Company
…ut L highlights another strand of Dalman’s career. In 2000, Rogis was co-founder with Dalman of Mirramu Dance Company. One of the most moving segments in the work is ‘Tree spirit’, danced by Dalman and, as the spirit of the tree, the newest member of Mirramu Dance Company, Hans David Ahwang. Ahwang seems possessed by that tree spirit as he dances around Dalman, crouching, hovering, leaping. His body quivers at every move and his eyes dart and then…
Dance diary. November 2019
…and will explore such issues as global warming. More about Shaun Parker & Company is on the company’s website at this link. Site news As the end of the year approaches I am always interested in which post has received the most views over the year. Although we are not quite at the end of the year yet, I checked the January–November stats to find that the review of Liam Scarlett’s Dangerous Liaisons, as danced by Queensland Ballet, topped the list…
Li Cunxin to retire
…which was created in conjunction with Royal New Zealand Ballet while that company was under the direction of Ethan Stiefel, and which will tour to Canberra in October. Yanela Piñera as Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Queensland Ballet 2016. Photo: © David Kelly But perhaps more than anything, Li (and his staff of teachers and coaches) has developed the performance standard of the company to a new level of excellence. His dancers perform wit…
Reliving the past
…ever’ work from RNZB repertoire. The tour proved hugely memorable for the Company for a completely different reason—they were in Berlin when the Wall came down. Dancer Turid Revfeim’s memories and descriptions of the events could and should be the subject of another full-length choreography. In the book The Royal New Zealand Ballet at 60, Veredon wrote a perceptive article, Developing New Synergies, about his numerous seasons with RNZB. His tribu…
Dance diary. December 2011
…an Fredrikson’s film and television commissions at the National Film and Sound Archive under a SAR Fellowship and will resume work there after the holiday break. I was especially pleased finally to be able to see a film called Undercover, made in 1983 and produced by David Elfick with Kristian Fredrikson as costume designer and Anna French as his assistant designer. This film is set in the 1920s and charts the growth of the Berlei undergarment ent…
Sacre—The Rite of Spring. Raimund Hoghe
…Brabandere in Sacre. The Rite of Spring, Sydney 2013. Photo: © Rosa-Frank.com Perhaps the clue to this work comes in the final moment when the voice-over returns (and this time we were told the words are those of Stravinsky). Stravinsky recalls that when writing the work he was not constrained by any theory and he further recalls that a neighbour remembered that while he, Stravinsky, was writing a young boy used to stand outside, listening. The b…
Roll the dice. Pump Dance Studios
…g and staging—costume racks on wheels transformed into train carriages, onesie suits becoming hot dogs, $2 shop red bandanas signalling a band of pirates, a black net curtain reducing lives to mere shadows in death—numerous effective transitions that all prioritised ideas and imagination ahead of big budget and wardrobe. It worked so well because the narrative stayed alive at the spine of the show, and every performer believed in it. Jacques d’Amb…
Dona Nobis Pacem. The film
…ngers everywhere—but that’s not the way the world works of course. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6IgDs2AH3M One of several excerpts from Dona Nobis Pacem available on YouTube A few days later the same Arts Channel broadcast the documentary—The Life and Work of John Neumeier. All manner of insights are offered, as to how the boy from Milwaukee ended up as arguably Europe’s finest ballet choreographer who rates the music he selects as highly as t…
Spring Dance 2011 (1). Pina: a celebration
…ade in 1978 and which was seen in Australia in Adelaide in 1982. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IThFPT2PkGM In this new production Bausch used teenagers over the age of fourteen as her entire cast. Bausch watched rehearsals for this show we would occasionally see a smile break out on her now lined but always expressive face. There was again a sense of warmth and tenderness from the woman who was once accused of being a ‘theatre terrorist’ and m…