New Breed (2016). Sydney Dance Company

…razy dancing, especially from the tall and physically expressive Sam Young-Wright who, at one stage, stripped down to his underpants. There was also a lot of walking up, down, and around the performing space by dancers and some audiences members. But in the end, as entertaining as it all was, and that entertaining aspect extended to an electronic score played live by composer Marco Cher-Gibard, the idea was more interesting than the performance. C…

Paquita & La Sylphide. The Australian Ballet. 2020 Digital Season

…ov and Gaudiello. Bouquets to them both. Colin Peasley as Madge and Andrew Wright as Gurn also gave strong performances and I enjoyed as well being backstage at the Sydney Opera House while the overture to La Sylphide was playing. I can’t wait to look again. My reviews of previous performances are at these links: Melbourne; Sydney. I was also lucky enough to see the full-length Paquita as restaged by Pierre Lacotte for the Paris Opera Ballet but i…

Frame of Mind. Sydney Dance Company

…s to Canberra in April–May and Melbourne in May. Chloe Leong and Sam Young-Wright in William Forsythe’s Quintett, Sydney Dance Company. Photo: © Peter Greig The Forsythe piece, danced to Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, reminded me of an event that occurred several years ago now, at a time when people used to go into shops to buy their music. My husband went into a then very well-known music store in Canberra (since closed down) to…

Giselle. The Australian Ballet (2015 third viewing)

…thought unmistakably clear. As Wilfred, Albrecht’s right hand man, Andrew Wright also gave a strong performance. He was forever anxious as he tried again and again to persuade Albrecht not to pursue his deception of Giselle, and then was in the right place at the right time to usher him out of the village following Giselle’s death. The peasant pas de deux, a highlight of Act I, was danced by Miwako Kubota and Christopher Rodgers-Wilson. They made…

Platinum. Royal New Zealand Ballet

…lly lively song by Split Enz, were both stylishly performed. (left) Joshua Douglas (a student at New Zealand School of Dance) in Aria; (right) Shaun James Kelly in Nobody Takes Me Seriously. Platinum, Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2023. Photos: © Stephen A’Court There is real challenge for a pas de deux to capture the style and context of its full-length parent work, though the Don Quixote and Black Swan items did achieve this admirably. We saw Mayu T…

Dance diary. May 2014

…alia and New Zealand 1947–1949. Pamela Vincent was courted in Australia by Douglas Whittaker, principal flute player in the orchestra that accompanied the Rambert company. They married in England. Ballet Rambert in Australia. Horseriding excursion, 1948. Collection of Pamela Vincent British Library and Serge Diaghilev I was interested to find this link to a comment on Serge Diaghilev’s interest, which grew in intensity towards the end of his life,…

Harry Haythorne. A tribute from Jennifer Shennan

…haka within the ballet given extraordinarily powerful expression by Warren Douglas. No more telling moment has occurred in the company’s entire repertoire history, and it is a great loss that the work has not been retained. Warren was also spectacular as the hilarious Cook in the Veredon/Fredrikson Servant of Two Masters, with Jon Trimmer as Pantalone and Harry as Dr Lombardi, tottering about wearing a twelve foot long striped scarf that threatene…

Kristian Fredrikson. Designer. Book review

…m her brother—performed by the much admired (and then much missed ) Warren Douglas. This was the most convincing representation of haka on a ballet stage I have seen in six decades of watching a range of attempts.  What a sorry business that Tale was never restaged by RNZB, and it’s a safe if sad bet it is never likely to be—even though the original cast are around and could still be involved, and indeed the choreographer, one of New Zealand’s fin…

Dance diary. November 2016

…s. Another exceptional performance from Queensland Ballet. Ella. A film by Douglas Watkins Ella, which premiered earlier in 2016 at the Melbourne International Film Festival, traces the journey of Ella Havelka from a childhood spent dancing in Dubbo, New South Wales, to her current position as a corps be ballet member of the Australian Ballet. My strongest recollection of Havelka with the Australian Ballet is her dancing with Rohan Furnell as the…