Dance diary. March 2024

Johan Inger’s Carmen

Coming in April from the Australian Ballet is a production of Carmen by Swedish choreographer Johan Inger. Recent discussions about the background to the work, which was first created in Madrid in 2015, always mention the appearance of a child as a character in the work. One British reviewer has written that the child ‘represents the wider fall out of abuse’. This Carmen, apparently, is dramatically sexual and has a focus on violence towards women. It is described by the same reviewer as ‘uncomfortable to watch’, although she admits that those words are not a reason to stay away from the show!

The work is set to Rodion Shchedrin’s 1967 Carmen Suite, an adaptation of Georges Bizet’s score for the opera Carmen. The Shchedrin score is also frequently mentioned in reviews, especially for its use of percussion instruments. But what especially struck home to me was that Shchedrin’s wife was the acclaimed ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. The score was written for her when she was preparing to dance a version of Carmen choreographed for her (at her request) by Alberto Alonso. The story of the creation of the score appears as a whole chapter in I, Maya Plisetskaya, Plisetskaya’s autobiography published in 2001 by Yale University Press.

It is worth noting too that the same score was used by Natalie Weir for her exceptional work Carmen Sweet, made in 2015 for her Brisbane-based Expressions Dance Company (now no longer in existence).

In the brief clip below, Inger talks about his Carmen, while behind him a rehearsal for a section of the production takes place in London. In addition to Inger’s words, the clip is interesting from the point of view of the choreography, which is classically based to a certain extent, but which has a powerful contemporary feel/look to it. Some dancers from the Australian Ballet also appear in the rehearsal, which was basically for English National Ballet’s performances, which began in February 2024 at Sadler’s Wells.

The Australian Ballet’s production of Inger’s Carmen plays in Sydney 10–24 April.

On dramaturgy

I recently received a private comment on my review for Canberra City News of Catapult’s show Awkward. The comment included the suggestion that the show might have been stronger had a dramaturg been employed to develop a more focused approach. Well, I couldn’t agree more. Even if a dramaturg might not always do a stellar job (as was also suggested in the comment), it’s worth making the effort. One of the most remarkable shows I have seen over the past several years has been Liz Lea’s production, RED. Lea employed Brian Lucas as dramaturg for the show and, while the content of RED was highly complex, it ended up being a brilliantly focused production.

A slightly expanded version of my City News review of Awkward is at this link.

Press for March 2024

‘Awkward performance dances on too long.’ Canberra City News, 28 March 2024. Online at this link.

Michelle Potter, 31 March 2024

Featured image: Jill Ogai of the Australian Ballet in a study for Johan Inger’s Carmen. Photo: © Simon Eeles

El Abrazo. The Embrace—Argentine Tango Moments. Neville Waisbrod

Book review by Jennifer Shennan

This impressive book contains close to 200 photographs, culled from some 3000, taken by Neville Waisbrod, tango dancer-turned-photographer of Wellington.

Evident throughout is Waisbrod’s deep feeling and respect for the dance form in milonguero style. This is not tango for display or spectacle, for competition or ambition, for innovation or experiment, for the money or the bag, but rather for the intimate unspoken communication that builds between partners, between steps, between movement and music. It’s both in time and across time, and as you close the book you feel you have been dancing too.

Several pithy quotes, catching what a writer, poet, philosopher, teacher or dancer has penned about tango, or wider dance ideas, are scattered throughout the book. These are few in number but that restraint only makes them more evocative since we all know that less is more. Sources of quotes range from renowned tanguero and teacher, Carlos Gavitos,

The tango is not in the steps.
The tango is between one step and another.
There, when you do nothing,
you can see whether you dance tango.

Alicia Pons, a revered teacher regularly visiting New Zealand from Argentina, Tango is a journey not a destination.

JL Borges, The tango was having its way with us.

and from Waisbrod himself, The memory of an embrace will last a lifetime, while the steps will be forgotten by the end of the night.

There are further quotes from Jacques d’Amboise, Martha Graham, Wendy Whelan, Omar Khyyám, William Shakespeare, TS Eliot, Albert Einstein. These, as well as the Introduction and the Endnotes, are given in both English and Spanish.

The photographs are black & white or grained grey, with the focus on the mutual embrace of a dancing couple—upper body, head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands (for all of which, read ‘hearts and minds’). An image typically shows the face or profile of one dancer and thus the back of the head of the partner. We can read the facial expression of the one and, from the angle of head or neck, handhold raised or shoulder embraced, can imagine that of the partner. The concentration is intense. You’re not eavesdropping on these dancers, but looking and listening with your eyes and limbs.

A man and a woman hold each other and we hold our breath—they’ve probably been married for 45 years and we can tell their life story from the enchanted eyes of the one who faces the camera, and from the inclined and trusting head of his partner. It’s a love sonnet. Another couple, possibly three decades apart in calendar age, who may never have met before this milonga, are here not counting the years so much as sharing them. One tanguera is wearing a plaster cast on a broken arm and her partner carries its weight for her. The back of one head reveals hearing aids ‘the better to hear the music with, my dear’. One couple is dreaming, eyes closed, a hint of a smile hovering. A young couple shares an explosive laugh and we can only guess at what caused their mirth. Another couple, both males, are dancing more than just the steps their teacher taught them. A sadness etched into one woman’s face is lifted by the sense that her partner is allowing the dance to be bigger than any individual dancing it. Another image echoes that rapport, though with the gender roles reversed. Perhaps the memory of an earlier now departed life partner is nurtured by the physical proximity of a dance partner. One quote, ‘Dancing is cheaper than therapy’, could be the caption of several of these images, or perhaps of them all.

There are in fact no captions to individual photographs so the dancers remain anonymous. Although they have given their permission for reproduction, they are not posing for the camera and will be unaware they were being captured in that moment. The prime place given to the visuals within this book evokes for me the classic works of director Carlos Saura, who devoted entire feature-length films, with very few if any words, to the subject of just one dance form—Sevillanas, let’s say, or his fabled flamenco trilogy, Blood Wedding: the rehearsal—Carmen: the performance—El Amor Brujo: the dénouement.

JL Borges, Argentinian writer & poet, famously wrote…Tango can be debated, and we have debates over it, but it still encloses, as does all that which is truthful, a secret. This book borrows that notion to tell its own unspoken truth.

Waisbrod did not need to travel across continents in search of these dancers. They are all in New Zealand. His credit to Belinda Ellis for editorial help and design of the book is heartfelt. Search further and you find another modest little credit, ‘proudly supporting the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand’. This is a book of considerable humane and artistic merit, and, at $75.00, is cheaper than therapy.

www.theembracebook.com
ISBN 978-0-473-59266-0

Jennifer Shennan, 10 August 2022

All photos: © Neville Waisbrod

Alan Alder as Hakuryo in Robert Helpmann's 'Yugen'. The Australian Ballet 1965. Photo: Walter Stringer

Alan Alder (1937–2019)

Alan Alder, who has died in Perth at the age of 82, was born in Canberra of Scottish/Australian parentage. In Canberra he initially studied tap and Scottish highland dancing with June Hammond. Later, while at Canberra High School, he took ballet lessons with Barbara Todd, a former Sadler’s Wells Ballet soloist who had come to Canberra when her husband took up an appointment at the Australian National University.

Winning a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in 1957, he studied there for a short time, largely with Harold Turner, before joining the Covent Garden Opera Ballet, where he worked for the next twelve months. His experiences with that company included dancing in productions featuring artist such as Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas. ‘It was an incredible education I had in that one year,’ he recalled in an oral history interview conducted in 1999.

In 1958 Alder joined the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet. He was promoted to soloist and toured extensively with the company throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Africa over the next four years. His touring schedule included the 1958-59 tour to Australia and New Zealand. Of his experiences on tour in Australia he recalled, in addition to the variety of roles he performed, a total blackout in Sydney’s Empire Theatre. ‘There was John Field onstage with hurricane lamps rehearsing the swans in the second act of Swan Lake,’ he said. He also remembers ‘Midnight Matinees’ towards the end of the Australian tour, which were fundraisers for victims of bush fires that devastated areas of Australia in 1958.

Alan Alder in *Coppelia*. Royal Ballet Australasian tour, 1958. Photo: Walter Stringer

At the invitation of Peggy van Praagh, Alder returned to Australia in 1963 to join the Australian Ballet as a senior soloist. He was promoted to principal artist in 1969, and later was a guest artist with the company from 1978 to 1980. With the Australian Ballet Alder danced many principal roles in a wide selection of ballets. He scored particular success as Alain in La Fille mal gardée, a role he danced initially with the Royal Ballet in 1961, and again with the Australian Ballet on many occasions from 1968 onwards. But other works, new and old, in which he took leading roles included Melbourne Cup, Threshold, Sebastian, Giselle, Pineapple Poll, Lady and the Fool, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Yugen, and Carmen.

Alan Alder as Jasper the Pot Boy with Maria Lang in *Pineapple Poll*. The Australian Ballet, 1976. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia

Alder married fellow dancer Lucette Aldous in 1972. In the mid 1970s both Alder and Aldous were invited by the Russian ministry of culture to study teaching methods in the USSR. In St Petersburg they studied Boris Kniaseff’s floor barre and the Vaganova system of training. The opportunity to visit Russia came at a time when the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had just signed a cultural agreement with the USSR and Alder and Aldous were the first Australians to go to Russia under that agreement. Alder recalled:

‘We gained tremendous insight into the ideology of Agrippina Vaganova and also, in the short amount of time we had, we crammed as much as we could into learning on our bodies how to pass on that system, not necessarily just the choreography of the actual exercises, the enchainments, but the reason behind doing them.’

Following his departure from the Australian Ballet in 1980, Alder took up part-time teaching with Dame Margaret Scott and Anne Woolliams. In 1983 he was appointed to head up the dance department at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, a position he held until 1991. He then took up a teaching position at the Perth Graduate College of Dance. His involvement with Ausdance (WA) began in 1987 and his contribution to that organisation was recognised with a life membership.

In 2004, Alder and Aldous were jointly recognised as State Living Treasures by the Government of Western Australia. The citation included the words ‘outstanding contribution to dance’ and ‘dedication as advocates for the development of dance in Western Australia.’

Alan Richard Alder. Born Canberra, 14 September 1937; died Perth, 15 July 2019

Featured image: Alan Alder as Hakuryo the Fisherman in Yugen. The Australian Ballet, 1965. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia.

Michelle Potter, 15 July 2019

Carmen. Royal New Zealand Ballet

Reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

16 & 18 February 2017, Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch (opening of national tour)

The first work on this program, l’Arlésienne, is over 40 years old, and the second, Carmen, is pushing 70 years. Both are dramatic one-act ballets by leading French choreographer, Roland Petit, hitherto only known by reputation here in New Zealand, or through film of his work, which often starred the stunning dancer, Zizi Jeanmaire, his wife.

Francesco Ventriglia, RNZB’s artistic director, was influenced by Petit in his own early career and he has judged well how much these works would suit our company. Unlike ballet’s classics, Swan Lake and the like, which can be staged in new settings (much as we are familiar with Shakespeare in modern dress), these works by Petit are not in the public domain, and need to be re-staged with impeccable care by the trustees of his repertoire.

A number of our dancers find scope for their talents, with personality, stage presence, comoedic gifts and individual character (more than in your average/larger ballet company, where the perfect symmetry of the many is aspired to). We saw talent in spades among the different casts in Christchurch.

In l’Arlésienne, a young man on the eve of marriage to a beguiling young woman is suddenly struck with confusion, and haunted by the vision of ‘the girl from Arles’, whom we never meet, save through the reflection of his eyes. Shaun James Kelly played the lead role with an astonishing portrayal of the onset of his mental disarray. The role of the bride was most poignantly danced by Madeleine Graham. and the corps of villagers dance a compelling semi-ritualised support to the unfolding drama. This then is in no way the frivolous cabaret number I had been expecting to act as curtain-raiser for the main work, Carmen. It is a tight and strong classic work that mesmerises the audience towards the inevitability of its conclusion, and Kelly’s performance will be long remembered.

Shaun James Kelly and Madeleine Graham in L'Arlésienne. Royal New Zealand Ballet. Photo: ©Stephen A'Court — Shaun James Kelly and Madeleine Graham in l’Arlésienne. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2017. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

The opening cast of Carmen had guest artist Natalya Kusch in the title role, her excellent technique and poetic style proving most attractive, and with Joseph Skelton dancing beautifully as Don José, initially unsuspecting but growing into all the heartbreak of the role. Kirby Selchow as the Bandit Woman lit up the stage, and the cameo comic role of the Toreador was hysterically sent up by Paul Mathews. But it was Mayu Tanigaito, in the following cast, who absolutely nailed the role of Carmen as the minx, the coquette, the sexy wild and headstrong woman who will not be tamed, by any man, at any price. Tanigaito is an astonishing performer in any role, one of the RNZB’s strongest dancers. Daniel Gaudiello was a strong and convincing Don José, and Kohei Iwamoto a striking Chief Bandit.

(l–r) Mayu Tanigaito in *Carmen*; Shaun James Kelly in *l’Arlésienne*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2017. Photos: © Stephen A’Court

Shaun James Kelly in 'l'Arlesienne'. Royal New Zealand Ballet. Photo: Stephen A’Court — (l–r) Mayu Tanigaito in *Carmen*; Shaun James Kelly in *l’Arlésienne*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2017. Photos: © Stephen A’Court

So, a number of highlights among the members of each cast. My advice is to see them both—but do refrain from the patronising and disruptive outbursts of applause that pepper throughout performances, and drive me to distraction. The dancers know when they’ve done a good multiple pirouette or barrel turn, but this is not the circus. Let them get on with developing the drama or poetry within the work, and please save your applause to the end.

Jennifer Shennan, 24 February 2017

Featured image: Mayu Tanigaito and Daniel Gaudiello in Carmen. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2017. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Elise May in Natalie Weir's 'Carmen Sweet.' Expressions Dance Company. Photo: Dylan Evans

Carmen Sweet. Expressions Dance Company (3)

9 October 2015, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, Queanbeyan

This text is a slightly expanded version of my review, which appeared in The Canberra Times on 13 October 2015. A link to the online version of the review is at the end of this post.

Natalie Weir’s Carmen Sweet for Expressions Dance Company is simply sensational. Made for just six dancers with stunning, minimal design and powerful lighting, it demonstrates very clearly that less is more.

Jack Ziesing, Elise May, Riannon McLean, Samantha Mitchell in Natalie Weir's 'Carmen Sweet'. Photo Dylan Evans — Jack Ziesing, Elise May, Riannon McLean, Samantha Mitchell in Natalie Weir’s *Carmen Sweet*. Expressions Dance Company. Photo: © Dylan Evans

Carmen Sweet follows the familiar story of Carmen as we know it from the opera, at least in essence. Two men vie for Carmen’s love. She plays with the power she wields over them before one kills her. But in typical fashion, Weir has directed the story to accommodate her tiny company, and has taken a psychological look at the personality of Carmen. We encounter three Carmens, a young, flirtatious Carmen (Rebecca Hall), a sensual, fiery Carmen (Michelle Barnett) and a mature, knowing Carmen (Elise May). But that they are three shades of the one character is made clear in some exceptional choreography. Especially memorable is the scene where Carmen moves her affections from Don José, the soldier (Jack Ziesing), to that of Escamillo, the matador (Benjamin Chapman). Weir has choreographed this moment as a kind of ballroom dance for five people dancing as one. The three Carmens form the middle of the group with a man at each end. With changes of direction that are quite hypnotic, the leadership of the dance moves back and forth from Don José to Escamillo.

As the Fortune Teller who warns Carmen of her impending death at the hands of Don José, Daryl Brandwood gave a powerful performance. His expressive body curved and curled as he stalked around the older Carmen. He took her head in his hands and turned her gaze towards her younger counterpart, forcing her to watch as the impending murder was played out. And the final moment in this scene was set up on the diagonal for maximum theatrical impact. Our eyes were drawn back and forth from the demands of the Fortune Teller upstage, to prefigured death downstage as Ziesing hovered over the body of Carmen.

Elise May and Daryl Brandwood in Natalie Weir's 'Carmen Sweet'. Expressions Dance Company. Photo: Dylan Evans — Elise May and Daryl Brandwood in Natalie Weir’s *Carmen Sweet*. Expressions Dance Company. Photo: © Dylan Evans

The final scene is also choreographed on the diagonal and gives us another look at the three Carmens as one. Shrouded in moody lighting (Ben Hughes and Amelia Davis), one by one the three women fall smoothly onto the sofa, which has been moved downstage, each one not quite covering the other. Upstage the murderer, Don José, is a tense and lonely figure, his empty hands stretched forward. It is a startling image that again invites us to cast our eyes from one grouping to the other.

Weir has skilfully used the Rodion Shchedrin score, which is an arrangement for strings and percussion of extracts from music by Georges Bizet. She has, of course, used well-known melodies to identify the various characters. Escamillo, for example, enters to the familiar music that accompanies the Toreador Song in Bizet’s opera. But Weir’s skill is also noticeable in the way her choreography matches Shchedrin’s percussive sounds, exemplified especially in the last solo by the sensual Carmen where her pizzicato-style movements match beautifully with the notes.

Bill Haycock’s minimal but dramatic use of colour added extra strength to what was an exceptional piece of theatre. A single, red Salvador Dali ‘lip’ sofa was all that we needed to set the scene of passion and revenge, and the dancers used it to accommodate their outbursts of fiery behaviour. Haycock’s costumes for the three Carmens continued the theatricality. The older Carmen flounced seductively in a long-ish black, flamenco-styled dress, while the younger Carmens wore shorter, sexy red numbers.

And a big bouquet to the six local dancers, each carrying a single red rose, who accompanied Escamillo’s entrance. They performed with all the aplomb of the professionals with whom they shared the stage.

Carmen Sweet is a five star show.

Here is the link to the review as it appeared in The Canberra Times.

Michelle Potter, 13 October 2015

Carmen Sweet. Expressions Dance Company

Natalie’s Weir’s Carmen Sweet already has an enviable performance history. It began as a commission from the Queensland Symphony Orchestra to provide a dance work to Rodion Shchedrin’s 1967 score, Carmen Suite, which was to be performed as part of the QSO’s 2012 season. Weir says she was especially interested in taking on the commission because she would have to consider making something to suit an audience that was not specifically a dance one.

‘Our audiences have been growing,’ Weir says, ‘but at Expressions we are still working hard to make our repertoire accessible and to grow an even stronger audience base.’

Carmen Sweet‘s success with QSO audiences was such that Weir decided to develop her work a little further and to present it as a piece for her Expressions Dance Company.

Since then Carmen Sweet has toured to the Noosa Long Weekend Festival and Singapore Dance Theatre’s Ballet Under the Stars event in 2013, and has had seasons in Brisbane and across regional Queensland. Now Weir’s dancers are embarking on a ten week tour to seventeen different venues across New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. And Canberra audiences just have to slip over the border to Queanbeyan to catch it.

‘I made it especially for touring,’ Weir says. ‘We had such success when we toured R & J. It was accessible in that it told a story and yet it was still a contemporary dance work. It provided audiences with a link between classical ballet and some of the more abstract contemporary works being seen in Australia at the moment. Carmen Sweet falls into a similar category.’

The work is made for six dancers. Although Weir essentially remains true to the Carmen story as we know it from the opera, in Carmen Sweet we see Carmen in three different guises, at three different eras in her life: the matriarchal, knowledgeable Carmen, danced by Elise May; the unattainable Carmen danced by Michelle Barnett; and the young, flirtatious Carmen from Rebecca Hall. Jack Ziesing dances the soldier, Don José, who falls in love with Carmen; Benjamin Chapman plays Escamillo, the matador who steals Carmen’s heart; and Daryl Brandwood is the Fortune Teller who warns Carmen of her death.

There is also what Weir refers to as ‘a community section’. Ten young dancers from each region will be selected to join the cast as the entourage of Escamillo. In a tongue-in-cheek reference to a popular television show each of these dancers will carry a single rose.

‘It’s a bit of a romp,’ says Weir, although others have described Carmen Sweet as a tale of love, lust and revenge. But we can be sure of exciting and dramatic choreography—Weir is renowned for it; an unusual and thought-provoking take on a well-known story—again a characteristic feature of Weir’s work; and some fabulous design from Bill Haycock, a long-time collaborator with Weir. It is the last chance, too, to see Daryl Brandwood, who will be retiring from Expressions at the end of this season.

Michelle Potter 29 September 2015