The year 2014 has flown by for me, mostly with writing, writing, writing … But now with Dame Maggie Scott out in the bookshops there is time for reflection over the coming holiday break. I started this site almost six years ago now, after returning from New York and finding that my outlets in Australia for writing about dance had been restricted
I had the pleasure recently of seeing a work in progress by James Batchelor. Called FACES, Batchelor describes it as: …a study of humans in transforming spaces and temporary constructions. From the trenches of the First World War to modern urban utopias, the work analyses sites of rapid evolution, a fluid interface of body and space. It is a portrait
6 December 2014 (matinee), Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House There is a lot to like in Peter Wright’s version of The Nutcracker, the Australian Ballet’s final show for 2015. But once again the stage of the Joan Sutherland Theatre showed its inadequacies as an opera/ballet venue. What a squash it was at times! I admired in particular the logic
Dimity Azoury, currently a coryphée with the Australian Ballet, remembers her grandmother with great fondness. She was a ballet student in Wellington, New Zealand, and even went on as an extra when the Ballets Russes companies visited New Zealand in the late 1930s. But, Azoury tells me, her grandmother’s parents thought that ballet was not an appropriate career for a
From Jennifer Shennan In September 2013 Anne Rowse and I flew to Melbourne for the Arts Festival…mainly in pursuit of Fabulous Beast, with Keegan-Dolan’s astonishing double-bill of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. We relished equally the chance to catch up with dear Harry, knowing he would say yes to the suggestion of a performance, an exhibition, a forum, with
Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards: Dance 2014 It was a slow year for local, professional dance in the ACT, especially after the very full dance calendar the city had during its centenary year, 2013. The dance panel of the Canberra Critics’ Circle offered only one dance award for 2014. It went to James Batchelor for his performance installation Island. During the Circle’s
In mid-October 2014, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London opened an exhibition, Russian avant-garde theatre: war, revolution & design, in its Theatre and Performance Galleries. It consisted of around 150 works, most of which came from a twenty year period between 1913 and 1933, that is just before the Revolution of 1917 until the beginnings of Social Realism in
Harry Haythorne, child performer extraordinaire, well-travelled dancer, ballet master, artistic director, teacher and mentor, has died in Melbourne aged 88. Haythorne was the child of an English father and an Australian mother of Irish descent who met at a dance hall in Adelaide: both parents loved ballroom dancing. But they were barred from many dance halls in Adelaide because they
Last Saturday, 22 November 2014, I had the pleasure of seeing Gillian Murphy, whose dancing I have admired for some time now, guesting with the Australian Ballet in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère. My comments for DanceTabs are at this link. For other posts on Gillian Murphy follow this link. Michelle Potter 25 November 2014 Featured image: Gillian Murphy and Rudy Hawkes
The annual Australian Dance Awards were announced in Sydney last night in a ceremony at the Sydney Opera House hosted by Frances Rings and Kip Gamblin. My report for The Canberra Times necessarily (and happily) focused on links to dance in the ACT. But congratulations to all. Here is a link to my story in The Canberra Times. Michelle Potter, 10 November 2014