Shared Frequencies. Sydney Dance Company
…rk has. Nothing like being there in the end. Raw models was performed to a commissioned electronic score by Ulrich Mueller and Siegfried Roessert of the German experimental group 48nord, which added to the bleakness of the work (and again to my feeling that Bacon was overseeing its unfolding). After all the gloom and blackness, Bonachela’s LANDforms seemed like it came from another planet. It opened with a solo by Juliette Barton whose dancing and…
An Australian Dance Collection. The oral history component
…the interviewee. Many National Library interviews, however, are available online and online access instructions are also available via the catalogue. The significance of the oral history dance collection across the National Library and the National Film and Sound Archive cannot be overestimated. So often an oral history recording is the sole record of the life and career of certain of our dance artists. I encourage readers of this post to alert m…
Writing Dancing
…ction that was the strongest element in the article. She based her opening comments around a remark addressed to dancers by Martha Graham: There is a vitality, a life force, and energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not you…
New Directions at New Zealand Dance Company
…of dance. “I come from a family of researchers, innovators and doctors. I understand why I have come to be passionate about dance, because dance is deeply healing and always tells a true story. This language is nonviolent and global. Communicating through dance is playful and is never judgmental. The New Zealand Dance Company is a jewel. I have known Shona through her films and it feels we are family. Shona’s wide vision of what is possible withi…
Dance diary. June 2023
…g of it is available in the text attached to the video link below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl-fhCmdVoQ My review of Juers’ book is at this link. Copies are available from the publisher, Giramondo, at this link. Derek Denton (1924–2022) Somewhat belatedly I discovered that Emeritus Professor Derek ‘Dick’ Denton AC had died, aged 98, in Melbourne late last year. Quite rightly the obituaries I have since read focus on Denton’s extraordinary c…
Dance diary. July 2013
…eatre Ballet, a company that gave its first performance as a fully-fledged company under the directorship of Joyce Graeme in 1949. Former dancers of the National Theatre Ballet. Cecchetti Society Conference, Melbourne 2013. Photo: Wendy Cliff In the photo above I am standing behind the eight participants on the panel, all former dancers from the National Theatre Ballet: (seated left to right, Lorraine Blackbourne, Jennifer Stielow, Dame Margaret S…
Royal New Zealand Ballet Choreographic Series
…th Bess Manson published in The Dominion Post, 2 March 2019, and available online at www.stuff.co.nz—Dancer Abigail Boyle, Breaking through the fourth wall).She has been given a spirited and fitting farewell. A recent Company newsletter advised that they are also currently considering how to honour the significant contribution to ballet and theatre in New Zealand of Sir Jon Trimmer who gave his retirement performance late last year. If that turns…
Edna Busse celebrates 100 years
…s crew captured several and took them back to Java. A libretto, written around this incident by M. Millet, told the story of the Captain entranced by a black swan as a symbol of a new (to him) land. The work was first performed in 1949. Busse took the role of the Black Swan in productions of 1950 and 1951. Scene from The Black Swan. Borovansky Ballet, 1951 Busse went to London in 1952 where she danced at the Palladium in a variety of shows, includ…
Choreographing a way through lockdown. Some thoughts
…ion to live through dance burns holes in your television screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAFi0LHqEYg The other program more recently screened, again through Sadler’s Wells, is of Maria Pagés from Seville. Her company’s mid-year season in London was cancelled, so a documentary was made instead. The choreographic vision ranged from portrayals of the seasons through traditional flamenco movement, in floreo and braceo arm movements, both tim…
geist dance. Björn Aslund, Robert Oliver, Tessa Ayling-Guhl
…e of a male athlete at the entrance gates to the Auckland Domain. It has become a talisman image for Auckland, Douglas’ town, so it was a resonant moment when Björn standing on the chair moved into the same precarious arabesque the athlete holds, reaching out, almost losing his balance, as do we all sometime in life, but catching it again to the immense relief of every held breath in the room, his own included. This was heroic dance-making and Dou…