George Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky pas de deux was the absolute highlight of the Australian Ballet’s 50th anniversary gala, at least as far as I saw on the televised version of the event. Tschaikovsky pas de deux, made in 1960 for Violette Verdy and Conrad Ludlow, has all the nuances of movement of which Balanchine was capable in his choreography and requires
Dancing bronzes During October I was utterly transfixed by an exhibition called Bronze on show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. I was sceptical when I read so many reviews all with glowing descriptions that seemed to border on hyperbole. But the exhbition was absolutely mind-blowing in its scope, in the intelligence of its presentation and in the power of the objects
17 October 2012, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden The Royal Ballet’s current production of Swan Lake is that of Anthony Dowell. It first went on show in 1987 after Dowell had engaged in a period of extensive research into the Petipa/Ivanov version of 1895. Australian audiences saw it in 2002 when the Royal Ballet, then under the direction of Ross
11 October 2012, Northern Stage, Newcastle-upon-Tyne Wayne McGregor’s works are always accompanied by intellectually demanding notes and explanations. FAR is no exception. Made originally in 2010, it is according to McGregor inspired by a study of the Enlightenment by English academic Roy Porter entitled Flesh in the Age of Reason (from which comes, as an acronym, the name of McGregor’s
05 October 2012, Theatre Royal, Glasgow Scottish Ballet’s triple bill of works by Martin Lawrance, William Forsythe and Hans van Manen was designed, according to artistic director Christopher Hampson, to show choreography across three generations. To my mind, however, the evening showed more that choreography sometimes looks dated and that for it to have a powerful effect it needs something
In September The Canberra Times published my preview articles on Intensely Soul, a program by Odissi dancers Nirmal Jena and Pratibha Jena Singh, and on Swan Lake, the Australian Ballet’s new production with choreography by Stephen Baynes and design by Hugh Colman. The Intensely Soul preview was also syndicated into The Sydney Morning Herald under the heading ‘Siblings dance father’s
18 September 2012, State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne Stephen Baynes wanted his new Swan Lake for the Australian Ballet to reflect, as he put it in his notes, the ‘deeply Romantic aesthetic’ of Tchaikovsky’s score. A singularly musical choreographer, Baynes has succeeded in creating some absorbing, and often romantic in the wider sense of that word, choreographic moments. They come in
13 September 2012, Canberra Theatre This is an expanded version of my review of Terrain published in The Canberra Times, 15 September 2012, under the title ‘Dancing into luscious terrain’. Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Terrain is a mesmerising work in nine short parts. Billed as a hymn to country, it evokes the changing landscape of Lake Eyre while at the same
On 30 November 2012 the content of this post was deleted. The background to the book is, however, worth retaining: In 2004 I began working on the manuscript of a book, Meryl Tankard: an original voice. In that year a book about Tankard was commissioned by the National Library of Australia as part of a series called Australian Lives. The
Below is a link to the text of a the talk I delivered at the National Gallery of Australia on 6 September 2012 in conjunction with the exhibition Sydney Long: spirit of the land. It has been altered slightly to remove some of the more colloquial elements associated with the spoken word. A link to the PowerPoint slides used to illustrate the