22 July 2015, Performance Space, Carriageworks, Eveleigh (Sydney) The printed program for Sue Healey’s latest work, On View. Live Portraits, contains a short essay by Christopher Chapman, senior curator at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Writing of screen-based digital portraits, or video portraits, he says: like any portrait, the genre should succeed when it communicates a compelling sense of person-hood,
15 July 2015, Q Theatre, Queanbeyan Elizabeth Dalman’s L begins with a solo dance, ‘The firebird’, performed by Miranda Wheen. Wheen wears a red tutu that Dalman herself wore as a young ballet student in Adelaide and, as Wheen finishes her solo and makes her exit, a red feather drops from her costume. It is picked up by Dalman who
9 July 2015, Canberra Theatre It would be hard to find two such disparate works as the two that make up lore, Bangarra Dance Theatre’s latest program curated by the company’s artistic director, Stephen Page. I.B.I.S, the opener, is the debut choreographic work from two artists from the Torres Strait Islands, Deborah Brown and Waangenga Blanco, and it is filled with fun, laughter
10 July 2015, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Ruth Osborne, artistic director of QL2 Dance, has made a wonderfully moving vignette of dance for the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Called Walking and Falling, it features three beautifully costumed dancers, Dean Cross, Gemma Dawkins and Caitlin MacKenzie. All three are former Quantum Leapers who have gone from their student days with Canberra’s
The dancers of Elizabeth Dalman’s Mirramu Dance Company are currently in residence at Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, on the shores of Lake George, Bungendore, rehearsing for L. The current Mirramu company consists of Dalman herself, Vivienne Rogis, who co-founded the company with Dalman, Miranda Wheen, Janine Proost, Amanda Tutalo, Mark Lavery and the newest recruit, Hans David Ahwang, a recent
21 June 2015, Joyce Theater, New York The Polish National Ballet holds a certain fascination for many Australian dance-goers, given the Polish company’s previous connections with Léon Woizikowsky and Raisse Kuznetsova, both of whom toured to Australia at various times. Kuznetsova, of course, also established the Polish-Australian Ballet, which was operational from 1939 into the 1950s. The company’s present director,
20 June 2015, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Merce Cunningham made Crises in 1960 and it premiered on 19 August of that year at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College. Made for four women and one man, it was, in Cunningham’s own words, ‘an adventure in togetherness’. He said: ‘I decided to allow for the dancers …
I recently had the pleasure of recording an oral history interview for the National Library with Marilyn Jones. I first interviewed Jones in 1990 as part of the Esso Performing Arts and Oral History Archive Project, so this 2015 interview was a follow-up after 25 years. The image below captures, I think, the essence of Les Sylphides and Jones’ ability to
22–24 May 2015, St. James Theatre, Wellington (and following national tour)Reviewed by Jennifer Shennan Dear Horizon—choreography, Andrew Simmons; music Gareth Farr Soldiers’ Mass—choreography Jiri Kylian; music B. Martinu Salute—choreography Johan Kobborg; music H.C. Lumbye Passchendaele—choreography Neil Ieremia; music Dwayne Bloomfield with New Zealand Army Band Rolf Gjeltsen, cello Graham Hickman, conductor This program is strong, the season short, dance and music
21 May 2015, Canberra Theatre Centre This is an expanded version of a review published by Fairfax Media online on 22 May and which will appear shortly in print in The Canberra Times [published 25 May]. Giselle is one of the great works of the balletic repertoire. Its story of love, betrayal and forgiveness needs powerful acting as well as exceptional