Dance diary. January 2015
…ia for the 1939–1940 Ballets Russes tour. I was curious because I had been under the impression that the dancers had come from London on board the Orcades, with another group arriving from the West Coast of the United States on board the Mariposa. The two groups met in Sydney and gave their opening performance at the Theatre Royal on 30 December 1939. It seems, however, that there were a few Ballets Russes personnel who did indeed travel on the Ro…
Don’ts for dancers
…ern edge. Don’ts for dancers was workshopped during two international residencies in 2011, one in France with Compagnie au cul du loup, and one in Ireland at the Firkin Crane in Ireland. ‘We wanted a good period of development for this show,’ Canham says. ‘Developing a work across art forms is complex and time consuming.’ Matthaei says her challenge was to develop a dance vocabulary for the show that would reinterpret the 1920s style of moving as…
Dance diary. December 2019
…2019. What impresses me about Scarlett’s work in general is his ability to compress complex stories into clear narratives that never lose the major thread of the storyline, but are never so complicated that we get lost. This was especially noticeable in Dangerous Liaisons. It was a work in which quite a lot of subplots were evident, and in which there were many characters involved in many clandestine activities. Scarlett managed, however, to leave…
Rain. Rosas
…etimes two, sometimes all three. In all it was an interesting experience seeing the work on the company it was made for, but I guess the experience of seeing a work live will always outclass a digital stage presentation. All credit, however, to Sadler’s Wells for looking after its committed audiences so well. I look forward to the next presentation at a time when ‘live’ is pretty much impossible. Michelle Potter, 12 April 2020 Both images from the…
Dance diary. December 2017
…will be giving the keynote address and there are many interesting papers being given over the three days of the event. Then, in February I will be giving the inaugural Russell Kerr Foundation lecture in Wellington, New Zealand, and will speak about the career of New Zealand-born designer Kristian Fredrikson. The event will take place on 11 February at 3 pm in the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Music. The lectur…
Storytime Ballet—Coppélia. The Australian Ballet
…n this occasion by Sean McGrath, whose acting and strong, clear voice were commented on by my young companions. The basics of his role in the full-length ballet were there. He loses his key when being jostled by the village folk thus allowing the village girls to enter his house, he reads from his book of spells to attempt to bring Coppélia to life, and so forth. But his character doesn’t really develop fully, which, although understandable, is a…
Dance diary. March 2022
…artists who have given audiences so much pleasure in recent productions. Baden Hitchcock, Rika Hamaguchi and Bradley Smith have left the company to pursue other options. All three are beautiful dancers and I’m sure their future careers will continue to give us pleasure. Rika Hamaguchi in the final scene from SandSong. Bangarra Dance Theatre, 2021. Photo: © Daniel Boud Other news from Bangarra is that the company’s children’s show Waru—journey of t…
Giselle. The Australian Ballet (2015 third viewing)
…pressive faces and their constant eye contact. Then, when Albrecht’s true identity was revealed—he is not the peasant he seems to be but a Count in disguise—Jones brought compelling dramatic force to her mental collapse. Bull played Albrecht as a man genuinely in love and, although he could not deny his aristocratic lineage when confronted with it, we felt his anguish as he faced Giselle’s onstage death. By Act II Giselle, as prefigured in Act I,…
Athol Willoughby (1932–2020)
…of Ballet in 1962. He directed the Essendon Academy until 1997 and the students whose careers he nurtured over more than three decades have gone on to dance across the world. Some have become teachers and examiners. But all had their lives enriched by his continued service to dance, in particular to the Cecchetti approach to ballet. But his humility was such that he was able to say, ‘I was just there to try to teach them classical ballet correctl…
Peggy! The Australian Ballet in 2010
…e or Cecchetti’. This is probably true, but it is sad in many ways to be seeing the van Praagh Giselle pas de deux out of context. Its charm, however, makes it worth seeing, even as a kind of divertissement. The Peggy! program also includes a staging of Antony Tudor’s 1938 ballet Gala Performance, in which Van Praagh created the role of the Russian ballerina. She also staged the work on various companies and her choreographic notes from her stagin…