Dance diary. February 2025

New initiative from Sydney Dance Company

Ever on the move in the development of dance, Sydney Dance Company just recently announced a new initiative—a teacher training program ‘dedicated to the art and practice of dance education’. Led by Linda Gamblin, Head of Training at Sydney Dance Company, the course will begin in July 2025.

This is an exciting initiative from Sydney Dance Company. Teaching is an art in my opinion and dance teachers need specialised teacher training in addition to having danced themselves. Follow this link for a detailed look at what the course will encompass.

Miracle in the Gorbals

In February I was drawn yet again to the Lifeline Book Fair, which has now become a huge Canberra event, and which these days is held more than once a year. My most interesting purchase was a somewhat battered copy of a book by Arnold Haskell that gave a detailed analysis of Robert Helpmann’s early work Miracle in the Gorbals. I saw this work in London in 2014 when it was produced for Birmingham Royal Ballet by Gillian Lynne, who performed in the original 1944 cast as one of the inhabitants of the Gorbals. My review of the Birmingham production is at this link.

The book was published in Edinburgh in 1946, just two years after the premiere of the ballet. It was a more than interesting read, especially the section entitled ‘5. Interpretation’, which I wish I had read prior to seeing the work when I did. But it is hard to know what actually was Haskell’s opinion of the work. Haskell spoke of Helpmann as being ‘a man of the theatre’, which he believed (I think?) was the reason Miracle in the Gorbals was successful. But in ‘Epilogue: A Warning’ Haskell wrote:

Ballet must return to the way of Fokine, who rescued it from decay. His works are not merely beautiful in themselves, they are object lessons in choreography and no one so far has proved himself to have so thorough an understanding of the medium.

Ballet does not need ideas to survive, it needs beauty of line and movement. If ideas can be incorporated at no loss, then well and good. Ballet is not a treatise on current affairs. BALLET MUST APPEAL TO THE EYE. [Haskell’s capitalisation]

All in all a very interesting purchase.

Li Cunxin honoured

Former artistic director of Queensland Ballet, Li Cunxin AO, has been presented with the Prix de Lausanne 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognises his exceptional career from overcoming adversity early in life, to his rise as a celebrated dancer before leading Queensland Ballet to global success.

The Prix de Lausanne has, since 2017, presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to a dancer or choreographer who has made an outstanding contribution to the ballet world. The recent award to Li is such a well deserved recognition of his contribution to dance! Other notable recipients include Wayne McGregor and Alessandra Ferri.

Portrait of Li Cunxin, 2023. Photo: © David Kelly

Alice Topp and Houston Ballet

Houston Ballet, directed by Stanton Welch since 2003, has recently announced its 2025-2026 season. Among the works to be presented will be a world premiere from Australian choreographer Alice Topp as part of a triple bill called An Evening with the Stars. The triple bill opens in late May 2026. Neither Topp’s work nor its accompanying music has been named as yet but Topp’s choreographic career clearly continues to grow internationally. Read more about her work and career to date at this link.

An oral history I recorded with Topp for the National Library of Australia in November 2024 is now available online at this link.

News from Mirramu Creative Arts Centre

Vivienne Rogis, co-founder with Elizabeth Cameron Dalman of Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, has recently returned to Canberra from Melbourne, to rejoin Dalman at Mirramu as assistant director. The Mirramu website records:

Viv Rogis is a pilates and movement practitioner with 30 years experience. She believes in the power of movement as medicine for the body and mind. She is interested in movement as art, as fun, as medicine, as community.

Her practice incudes performance, choreography, teaching, curating, researching, & writing about dance. Most recently she has been focused on pilates to help people reach their movement goals including pain reduction, prehab and rehab, as well as strength and capacity building for athletes and dancers.

Vivienne Rogis in *All my trials*, Mirramu Dance Company, 2015. Photo: © Barbie Robinson

Rogis performed in Canberra on many occasions before moving to Melbourne. Read about some of those performances at this link.

Coming up …

I am looking forward to seeing Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet as staged by Queensland Ballet, which opens towards the end of March. Watch this brief clip in which ballet master Matthew Lawrence talks about staging the production. It is especially interesting to hear him discuss making the production ‘three dimensional’.

Michelle Potter, 28 February 2025

Featured image: Linda Gamblin, Head of Training, Sydney Dance Company, 2025. Photo: © Wendell Teodoro.

Dance diary. January 2025

Queensland Ballet. The news is out

Queensland Ballet has announced that its new director, following the retirement of Li Cunxin and the sudden departure of Leanne Benjamin, will be Spanish-born Ivan Gil-Ortega who will take on the role in February this year. Gil-Ortega is a celebrated ballet professional with over 25 years in the field. He has held roles with companies and creatives around the world, and has worked as a principal dancer, assistant director, artistic consultant, freelance rehearsal director, stager, and coach. The media release noted Queensland Ballet’s enthusiasm for the appointment. In part the media release says:

We are thrilled to welcome Ivan to the Queensland Ballet family following a stellar career on stage, in studio and working alongside some of ballet’s leading lights. Throughout the recruitment process, Ivan articulated his vision very clearly with a particular focus on our dancers of today and our dancers of tomorrow, through the work of our Academy.

He is also brimming with ideas around nurturing home-grown talent here in Australia as well as exploring world-stage collaborations and exchanges which will see him leaning into his international peers and networks. Ivan and his family are very much looking forward to calling Queensland home and we cannot wait to see them here very soon, Brett Clark AM, Board Chair said.

Gil-Ortega has worked with Queensland Ballet previously when he assisted Derek Deane on the production of Deane’s much admired Strictly Gershwin. Follow this link to a fuller biography of Gil-Ortega provided by Queensland Ballet.

Portraits of Ivan Gil-Ortega. Photos: © Karine Grace

News from Paul Knobloch

For the past several years Paul Knobloch has been the Australian Ballet’s Ballet Repetiteur. Things appear to be changing, however. A recent media release announced that in February Knobloch will be returning to Canberra, where he was born and educated and where he had his initial dance training. He will be working with Jackie Hallahan’s Dance Development Centre (DDC) on a series of events to celebrate the school’s 40th anniversary. The media release states, ‘As DDC gears up to celebrate its monumental 40th anniversary, Knobloch’s involvement promises to elevate the festivities and inspire the next generation of dancers.’

Paul Knobloch. Photographer not identified

I can’t help wondering, however, whether or not Knobloch will return to the Australian Ballet? Here is a link to the media release.

Dancing and Fatboy Slim

During January I was sent a Youtube link to some dancing being performed (back in the 1990s) to Fatboy Slim’s song Praise you. I have to admit that I had never heard of Fatboy Slim—not really part of my general interests I’m afraid especially not during the 1990s when I was rather busy with various other matters (mainly watching children growing into adults, writing a PhD thesis, and working in a range of casual jobs).

Here is the footage, which I found to be an interesting variety of community dance. It reminded me a little of an unexpected performance at a wedding of one of my sons (back around the same date as the footage). Quite out of the blue (I thought anyway) the guests assembled and danced in a similar fashion. It was somewhat different from the traditional celebratory wedding waltz!

Oral histories

I had the immense pleasure in January of recording an oral history for the National Library of Australia with Megan Connelly, currently director of the Australian Ballet School. As part of the NLA’s COVID responses project, Connelly talked about managing the pandemic at the Australia Ballet and the Australian Ballet School before talking at length about her extraordinary dance career to date.

This interview was the 169th oral history I have recorded for various organisations (mostly the National Library). Here is a link to the updated list of those interviews (arranged alphabetically).

Reading in December

My December reading included Barbara Newman’s Striking a Balance. Dancers Talk about Dancing. My edition was published way back in 1992, although the talks were recorded mostly in 1979 and published in the original edition in 1982. I was especially interested in the format since over the past several decades I have recorded oral history interviews with dancers, choreographers and artistic directors. Two of Newman’s essays stood out for me—those with Moira Shearer and Bruce Marks. What made them especially interesting to me was the extensive comments they made about how they approached particular roles. Shearer spoke at length about how she perceived the character of Giselle and where she fitted into the overall storyline of Giselle. Bruce Marks spoke in a similar fashion about Siegfried in Swan Lake. Others also reminisced about particular roles they had taken on but Shearer and Marks seemed, to me at least, to be especially analytical in their thoughts.

Vale Carolyn Brown (1927 –2025)

I was deeply saddened to hear that American dancer Carolyn Brown had died in January at the age of 97. Brown had a truly remarkable career with Merce Cunningham Dance Company over many years. But I remember her in particular because she helped me with my doctoral thesis, which concerned the designs made for the Cunningham company by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns during the 1960s and 1970s. We met for the discussion in New York in a cafe close to Lincoln Center Plaza. Brown was incredibly generous and honest in her recollections of the years of Rauschenberg and Johns.

Never forgotten for many reasons. Try this link for an obituary from The New York Times.

Carolyn Brown: Born 26 September 1927; died 7 January 2025

Press for January 2025

– ‘Critics Survey. Michelle Potter’. Dance Australia, January/February/March 2025, pp. 32-33.

Michelle Potter, 31 January 2025

Featured image: Portrait of Ivan Gil-Ortega. Photo: © Karine Grace

Dance diary. December 2024

Karen van Ulzen and Dance Australia

After 35 years as editor of Dance Australia, Karen van Ulzen is moving on. She has been a strong and successful editor and her retirement is a particular loss to the dance community. In a Facebook post, Karen wrote:

Dance is my lifelong love but it is time to hang up the keyboard. I am looking forward,k to indulging my other loves: visual art (specifically painting) and writing. However, dance is still my love and I hope to continue to contribute to the artform in some other way.

Portrait of Karen van Ulzen. From Yaffa/*Dance Australia* online. Photographer not identified

Taking over from Karen is Olivia Weeks whose dance background includes teaching and an extensive background with the Royal Academy of Dance. Of her plans she told Dance Australia:

As Editor, I’m excited to contribute to our ever-evolving dance landscape. My goal is to continue to champion the incredible talent Australia has to offer, celebrate the stories that make our industry so unique, and ensure Dance Australia remains a vital platform for our community in 2025 and beyond.

Read more about Olivia Weeks at this link.

I wish Olivia every success and give my sincere thanks to Karen for all she has achieved for dance in Australia, and for her support of my writing over many years.

More on books and reading

After the death of Eileen Kramer I thought it was time to read her autobiography, Walkabout Dancer, a copy of which she kindly gave to me but which I had never taken the time to read. It was published in 2008 in North America and I honestly can’t believe that there was a professional editor at work on the text prior to publication. The text is rife with spelling errors and inconsistencies and inaccuracies in names and places throughout. Perhaps the inaccuracies extend even to aspects of the story itself? To tell the truth, I wish I had never taken on the reading of it. It does nothing to advance the image of Eileen Kramer.

I did, however, enjoy Derek Parker’s 1988 publication, Nijinsky. God of the dance, a copy of which I found in the Harry Hartog Bookshop at the ANU. (That HH bookshop again!). Apart from the fact that it revealed some interesting personal information about ‘the God of the Dance’, it contained some photographs of Nijinsky and his colleagues that I had never seen before. It’s a shame though that some of the photographs on certain pages were positioned very close to the binding and were not always easy to see in full. Well worth a read however.

Vale Arlene Croce (1934-2024)

Renowned American dance critic, Arlene Croce, died in New York in December. She was 90 years old. I never met her, despite having spent some time in New York on various occasions over the past thirty years or so. But I had always enjoyed her writing for various outlets including The New Yorker, Ballet Review, which in fact she co-founded, and other publications. Her background knowledge was wide and very apparent in her dance writing, and I especially admired her exceptional and always appropriate use of descriptive words and her highly analytical approach to her writing.

As part of an obituary, the following words appeared in The New Yorker, issue of 19 December 2024:

Croce took dancing seriously, pulled dances apart and analyzed them rigorously, and her clarity and imagination, her stunning insights, and even her glaring flaws—all this was there on the page. This passion and discipline made her a kind of alter ego of—or perhaps a ministry to—the art. She had an unrelenting determination to say what she had seen.

It is interesting to reread what is one of her best known articles, ‘Discussing the Undiscussable’, which appears in her collection of reviews and articles, Writing in the Dark, Dancing in The New Yorker. In this article she talks about her reasons for refusing to go to, let alone review, a performance of Still/Here by choreographer Bill T. Jones, a work he created involving terminally ill people who speak about the issue of dying. The article caused something of a stir when it was published in The New Yorker in 1994. It still raises many issues about dance and how it is, or has been, perceived.

The original article appears to be available online without a New Yorker subscription. Try this link

Some statistics for 2024

Over the course of 2024 this website received slightly more than 75,000 views. The top five countries making use of the website were (in order) Australia, United States of America, New Zealand, Canada and United Kingdom. Top five cities from which people logged in were Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Brisbane and New York. During 2024, the top post on a northern hemisphere production was Joy Womack: The White Swan; the top Australian-related post was Etudes/Circle Electric. The Australian Balle t; and the top New Zealand post was Swan Lake. Royal New Zealand Ballet.

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A very happy 2025 to all. May the year be filled with dancing.

Michelle Potter, 31 December 2024

Featured image: A young Canberra dance student performing as Triton in a ballet school production of The Little Mermaid, 2023. Photographer not identified

Dance diary. November 2024

Vale Roz Hervey

It was sad news to discover that Roz Hervey had died early in November. She made a huge contribution to dance in Australia, especially in South Australia. But she also made a huge impact in Canberra where she danced with the Meryl Tankard Company. The National Library has a selection of images taken by Régis Lansac of the works in which she performed in Canberra. Two are below. Nuti on the left was one of Tankard’s most visually beautiful productions and was presented in 1990 at the National Gallery of Australia in conjunction with an exhibition of works on loan from the British Museum. Pile Up on the right was a work by Graeme Watson, which shared a double bill with Tankard’s Kikimora also in 1990.

Read an acknowledgment of Roz Hervey’s contribution to dance in Australia at this link.

Coralie Hinkley: a manuscript collection

The National Library of Australia has completed the cataloguing of the Papers of Coralie Hinkley, which were sorted beautifully and donated to the NLA by Coralie’s daughter after her mother’s death. Here is a link to the catalogue details, including the finding aid. Coralie had an astonishingly varied dance career as the finding aid indicates.

Coralie Hinkley in a study for the Bodenwieser Ballet production, *Indian Boy*, ca. 1952. Photo: © Margaret Michaelis. National Library of Australia

Some reading news

Harry Hartog Bookshop at the Australian National University always has an interesting collection of secondhand dance books. ‘Oh they come from all over the place,’ a sales person once told me. The most recent addition to my book collection from that bookshop was The Helpman Family Story by Mary Helpman, which covers the period 1796 to 1964. While it probably isn’t the most analytical discussion of that story I have come across, it was full of surprises especially about the extent of the theatricality that characterised the lives of many of the family. It was not just Bob (as Robert Helpmann is referred to throughout the book) but other family members as well.

Press for November 2024

– ‘Tale of a turtle engages children—and adults (Bangarra Dance Theatre)’. CBR CityNews, 7 November 2024 . Online at this link. (And in a slightly enlarged form here.)

– ‘Community dancing with an Olympic theme’. CBR CityNews, 23 November 2024. Online at this link. (And in a slightly enlarged form here.)

Michelle Potter, 30 November 2024

Featured image: Roz Hervey (centre) and dancers from the Meryl Tankard Company in a scene from Kikimora, Canberra 1990. Photo: © Régis Lansac

Dance diary. October 2024

West Australian Ballet in 2025

I was interested to hear the latest from West Australian Ballet (WAB), perhaps in particular that David McAllister will continue to direct WAB for another year. The media information says that he will work with the Board on the search for a new artistic director, and that he will also help develop a new strategic plan for WAB for the next five years as well as programming the season for 2026. McAllister was brought up in Perth, home city of WAB, before moving to Melbourne to join the Australian Ballet School and then the Australian Ballet in 1983. It is hard not to wonder whether McAllister’s current role at WAB will become permanent?

But in addition, it was good to see that Alice Topp will present Butterfly Effect, a new commission from WAB and a new take on the opera Madame Butterfly. Topp’s Butterfly Effect will premiere in Perth in September and will recontextualise the well-known narrative as a ‘story for modern audiences, weaving together threads from the old and the new, through themes of love, loss, and shattering betrayal, and Puccini’s classical score.’ I will be especially interested to see where the work is set (if indeed it is set in a specific country?).

News from James Batchelor

James Batchelor, who works between Australia and Europe, has been in Australia recently teaching at the Victorian College of the Arts and Sydney Dance Company. In addition, he has been developing new works, in particular a piece he is calling Resonance, which grew out of an invitation by the Tanja Liedtke Foundation, and which examines how Liedtke’s work has impacted the course of contemporary dance in Australia. (Dancer and choreographer Tanja Liedtke died in Sydney in 2007 following a road accident. She was the incoming director of Sydney Dance Company but never had the chance to take on the role).

James Batchelor at Mulligan’s Flat, 2024. Photo: © Akali (Yao Yao) Guan. Mulligan’s Flat is a wildlife park in the north-east of Canberra.

Batchelor will be back in Europe for the last several weeks of 2024 where Shortcuts to Familiar Places will have a season in Italy, and where, in Berlin, he will continue to work on the development of Resonance. He will then head back to Australia for projects in January.

A Stellar Lineup—Olympic Edition

Liz Lea continues her development of community dance in Canberra with a presentation of A Stellar Lineup—Olympic Edition. She writes:

We are thrilled to bring you another stunning lineup of Canberra’s most engaging community dance companies, celebrating the power of inclusion and imperative for excellence. This year we return to Belco Arts to mark the Olympic Games and the sporting achievements of our many performers including Olympians and Paralympians. Our program features Project Dust, Dance4Me, Taylor Mingle, ZEST Dance for Wellbeing, the GOLD Company, Deaf Butterflies, Rachael Hilton, Fresh Funk and the Chamaeleon Collective.

Dancers from *A Stellar Lineup*, 2024. Photo: © O&J Wikner Photography

Performances of A Stellar Lineup—Olympic Edition will be presented at the Belconnen Arts Centre, 22-23 November 2024. Further information is at this link.

Forgotten Impresario. Discovering Daphne Deane

Back in 2022 I posted a note about a beautifully researched e-book, Forgotten Impresario. Discovering Daphne Deane, by John Anderson. The book followed the diverse theatrical career of Queensland-born Daphne Deane, a career that Anderson rightly believed had been largely ignored. Recently, Anderson updated aspects of his book to include more information about Deane’s experiences during World War II; her trial in France for a ‘contractual breach of trust’, which brought aspects of her career to an end; and her connections with Marie Rambert.

The revised edition is available to read, at no cost, at this link.

Farewell to Ruth Osborne

Ruth Osborne at Gorman Arts Centre, 2024. Photo: © Olivia Wikner, O&J Wikner Photography

In October a large gathering of Canberra’s dance community said farewell to Ruth Osborne as director of QL2 Dance. The farewell event was held at Gorman Arts Centre, home of QL2 Dance (and a variety of other arts focused organisations), and featured speeches from some of those who had been associated with Osborne over the years. Speakers included Richard Refschauge, current Chair of the Board of Ql2 Dance, who gave an outline of Osborne’s career and input into the development and growth of QL2 Dance, and Daniel Riley, former student at QL2 Dance and current artistic director of the Adelaide-based Australian Dance Theatre, who spoke about his experiences as a young, emerging dancer at QL2 Dance and his resulting dance career.

The afternoon also included two performances from QL2 dancers, which were performed in one of the beautiful courtyards of Gorman Arts Centre. One was choreographed by Alice Lee Holland, and consisted of extracts from her work Earth, which we saw recently as part of the Elemental program. The other was one of Osborne’s works from the past repertoire of QL2 Dance.

QL2 dancers performing extracts from *Earth* in the courtyard, Gorman Arts Centre, 2024. Photos: © Michelle Potter

Press for October 2024

– ‘Coco Chanel: the Life of a Fashion Icon (Queensland Ballet)’. Limelight, 6 October 2024 . Online at this link. (And in a slightly enlarged form here.)
– ‘Chaos, a dance project of highs and lows.’ Review of Elemental. QL2 Dance, Chaos Project. CBR City News, 19 October 2024. Online at this link. (And in a slightly enlarged form here.)

And it’s Halloween again …

Michelle Potter, 31 October 2024

Featured image: Publicity image from WAB for Alice Topp’s Butterfly Effect. Photographer not identified.

Dance diary. September 2024

The Australian Ballet and Canberra

In September the Australian Ballet announced its 2025 season and, amazingly, the season includes a visit to Canberra. The company has largely avoided the national capital for years now with various reasons given, none of which ever mentions a major, contentious situation that developed relating to orchestral involvement. That aside, it is also amazing that the company is bringing to Canberra Johan Inger’s magnificent Carmen rather than an ‘old favourite’ like The Merry Widow. See this link for my review of Inger’s production of Carmen from the Australian Ballet’s 2024 Sydney season.

The Canberra Symphony Orchestra will accompany the performances, which pushes the contentious issue alluded to above into the background, thankfully. Here’s hoping we are back on track and that the national company will continue to include, frequently, the national capital in its annual seasons. See the company’s website for details of the complete 2025 season.

Akira Isogawa

It was a thrill to see designer Akira Isogawa collaborating again with Melanie Lane on Love Lock, Lane’s recent work for Sydney Dance Company. Isogawa’s previous collaborations with Lane have included Slow Haunt for West Australian Ballet in 2021, and MOUNTAIN, an independent work from 2023.

Portrait of Akira Isogawa, 2024. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Isogawa has also worked often with Graeme Murphy, both for works Murphy made for Sydney Dance Company while that company’s artistic director, and for Murphy’s production of Romeo and Juliet for the Australian Ballet. Some of Isogawa’s distinctive and intricate costumes, including items for Romeo and Juliet, were seen close-up in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria back in 2013. See this link.

Dance diary. August 2024

Rowena Jackson (1926-2024)

Dancer Rowena Jackson has died at the age of 98 in her home on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Jackson had an exceptional career with London’s Royal Ballet before returning to New Zealand, where she was born and where she and her husband, Philip Chatfield (1927-2021), became involved with a variety of dance activities. In 1993 Jackson and Chatfield moved to Queensland, to be closer to their family.

Jackson first came to Australia as a professional performer in 1957 to dance in Sydney and Melbourne as a guest artist with the Borovansky Ballet in a season that featured Margot Fonteyn. Her performances in Australia in 1957 were widely praised by critics with one writer remarking of Jackson and Bryan Ashbridge in the pas de deux from Don Quixote:

New Zealand can take a bow for Rowena Jackson and Bryan Ashbridge. Their pas de deux was an interlude of perfection. Two rubies in a velvet case … Precise and thrilling, their artistry was incontestable.*

Jackson returned to the southern hemisphere when the Royal Ballet toured to Australia and New Zealand in 1958-1959. Jackson and Chatfield led the company on that occasion and, during that tour, Jackson’s dancing was regarded as technically faultless. She had particular success as Swanilda in Coppélia often dancing alongside Robert Helpmann as Dr Coppélius.

Rowena Jackson as Swanilda with Philip Chatfield as Franz in *Coppélia*, Melbourne 1958. Photos: © Walter Stringer/National Library of Australia

Rowena Jackson died on 15 August 2024. Follow this link to read Jennifer Shennan’s obituary published in New Zealand by The Post on 2 September 2024.

Voices of the Italian Baroque

I don’t usually review music performances but circumstances were such that I ended up reviewing a one-performance-only event in Canberra by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. I really enjoyed the program, Voices of the Italian Baroque, and it was in fact the word ‘Baroque’ in the title that made me, hesitantly I have to say, volunteer to do it when no one else was available. The Baroque era, in terms of art and architecture, has long interested me, and I was curious to know whether the characteristics I associate with the art and architecture of the Baroque era were also present in music from the period. Here is a link to the review.

In the review I mention a sculpture by Bernini, which took my breath away when I saw it in real life (after paying to turn on a light so it could be seen properly!). Below is an image of that sculpture, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. It is often thought to have sexual undertones and is in a church in Rome, Santa Maria della Vittoria.

I may never review another music performance, who knows? But I am glad of the experience I had with Voices of the Italian Baroque, including being present in a relatively new theatre space in Canberra, the Snow Concert Hall, with its exceptional use of wood as the stage floor, and as a decorative item on the walls.

*Voices of the Italian Baroque*. Sydney Phiharmonia Choirs and Sydney Philharmonia Baroque Ensemble conducted by Brett Weymark. Photo: © Peter Hislop

Coco Chanel. Life of a fashion icon

I am looking forward to seeing Queensland Ballet’s production of Coco Chanel. Life of a fashion icon, which takes the stage in Brisbane in October. Choreographed by Belgian-Columbian artist Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, it has already been seen, as it is a co-production, in Hong Kong and Atlanta.

As these things happen, however, Chanel’s connections with the dance world have surfaced on and off as I have continued my reading of books that have sat unread on my bookshelves for a number of years. At the moment I am reading Richard Buckle’s In the wake of Diaghilev and have discovered that Chanel subsidised the Massine revival of The Rite of Spring in 1920 when (according to Buckle) no one could remember the Nijinsky choreography. Chanel also visited Diaghilev in his hotel the day before he died in August 1929. She also donated 10,000 French francs to the effort by Boris Kochno and George Balanchine to start up a new company following Diaghilev’s death.** (10,000 French francs was a large amount of money given that with 100 French francs you could, at the time, buy around a year’s worth of milk, or butter plus sugar, or 6 months of bread—according to information found on the web).

Just how much of Chanel’s diverse career and political life will be featured in the ballet is yet to be seen. Such is the interest in the work, however, that some nights in the season are already sold out!

Yanela Piñera in a publicity shot for Queensland Ballet’s *Coco Chanel. Life of a fashion icon*. Photo: © David Kelly

Press for August 2024

– ‘Review: Royal New Zealand Ballet.’ Review of Solace, Royal New Zealand Ballet. Dance Australia, 5 August 2024. Online at this link.
– ‘A five-star show when dance meets music.’ Review of Silence & Rapture, Australian Chamber Orchestra & Sydney Dance Company. CBR CityNews, 18 August 2024. Online at this link.
– ‘Uneasy show that pulled no punches in its message.’ Review of Jurrungu Ngan-Ga [Straight Talk], Marrugeku. CBR CityNews, 24 August 2024. Online at this link.
– ‘Voices bring beauty to music of Italian Baroque.’ Review of Voices of the Italian Baroque, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. CBR City News, 25 August 2024. Online at this link.

Michelle Potter, 30 August 2024

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References
*Quoted in Edward H Pask, Ballet in Australia. The second act 1940-1980 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982) p. 85.

**Quoted in Richard Buckle, In the wake of Diaghilev (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982) pp. 21, 24, 31.

Dance diary. July 2024

Looking ahead …

As August approaches I am looking forward to a number of dance performances beginning in Wellington with Royal New Zealand Ballet’s triple bill program Solace. Solace opens on 1 August and consists of Wayne McGregor’s Infra and two new works, To Hold by Sarah Foster-Sproull and High Tide by Alice Topp. Infra was seen in Australia in 2017 when it was performed by the Australian Ballet in a season called Faster. It is not my favourite McGregor work and it suffered somewhat in 2017 by being programmed alongside an absolutely brilliant work, Squander and Glory, by Tim Harbour. But I am very much looking forward to seeing the new works by Foster-Sproull and Topp.

I interviewed Topp in November for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program. It is available to listen to online at this link.

Then, in mid-August, the fifth Ballet International Gala begins a series of one night stands in Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra. Annoyingly it is not clear which works will be presented in Australia. Nor is it clear which dancers will be performing. I guess we just have to wait and see! Here is the website, which may eventually include some specific information.

Iana Salenko and her husband and dance partner Marian Walter in a moment from *Swan Lake*. Photo: © Carola Hoelting

News from James Batchelor

James Batchelor was recently funded by artsACT to develop a new work ‘inspired by the late choreographer, Tanja Liedtke.’ This follows on from his Shortcuts to familiar places, which examined the influence of Gertrud Bodenwieser on those who were close to her and those who followed her methods of dancing and teaching.

Liedtke’s career was relatively short. She tragically died when quite young (she was just 29) and, while she was definitely an influential choreographer, she was, as a result of her early death, without the extended connections Bodenwieser had developed over many decades. So, it will be interesting to see how Batchelor develops this new work.

News from QL2 Dance

Late in July, at the invitation of the Australian Embassy in Thailand, some dancers from Canberra’s youth group QL2 Dance performed in Bangkok as part of a large-scale event to celebrate the birthday of His Majesty King Maha Vajiralongkorn Phra Vajiraklaochaoyuhua. Two First Nations’ dance artists, Julia Villaflor (Wagiman) and Jahna Lugnan (Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr) were part of the celebration and performed Connected, a duet they had created that acknowledges and explores their connection to the land and each other. Villaflor and Lugnan were accompanied on their journey to Bangkok by Alice Lee Holland, incoming director of QL2 Dance.

Jahna Lugnan and Julia Villaflor working in the QL2 Dance studio, Canberra. Photo: © O&J Wikner Photography

Last minute July news.

Leanne Benjamin is to leave her role as artistic director of Queensland Ballet. Read the media release at this link.

Press for July 2024

‘Bangarra shares the dance stage to great effect.’ City News (Canberra). Online at this link.

MIchelle Potter, 31 July 2024

Featured image: Ana Gallardo Lobaina and Branden Reiners in Alice Topp’s High Tide. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2024. Photo: © Ross Brown

Dance diary. June 2024

Remi Wörtmeyer

Former Australian Ballet dancer (and a graduate of the Australian Ballet School), Remi Wörtmeyer, has been appointed artistic director of BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. The press from BalletMet has further information and some online examples of his dancing and choreography. Follow this link.

Wörtmeyer’s career has been diverse to say the least. In addition to his dance-related activities, which include the creation of some 30 ballets for companies around the world, he established Maison Remi, an organisation that produces some incredible fashion accessories, including handbags, rings and more.

For mentions of Wörtmeyer on this website see this tag.

News from Queensland Ballet

Queensland Ballet goes from strength to strength as an organisation. The company recently announced it had taken another step towards its ‘Three Sites: One Vision’ concept by purchasing land in Brisbane on Montague Road close to the Thomas Dixon Centre. The new site will eventually house the company’s sets and costumes. ‘Three Sites’ includes the Thomas Dixon Centre with its exceptional small theatre and administration and classroom areas. The second site is the housing of the Queensland Ballet Academy at the Kelvin Grove State College Campus. The new site to house costumes and sets will be the third.

In another recent announcement, the company advised that it had become the first performing arts company in the world to become WELL Certified^TM at the Platinum level. This recognition came as a result of the restoration of Queensland Ballet’s home, the Thomas Dixon Cente. The media release reads, in part:

The WELL Building Standard is an evidence-based performance certification system hat marries best practices in design and construction with policy and operational strategies. The Thomas Dixon Centre earned the distinction based on ten concepts—Air, Water, Light, Nourishment, Movement, Thermal Performance, Sound, Materials, Mind and Community.

Isadora Duncan

In last month’s dance diary I mentioned a 2001 publication, Isadora. A sensational life, by Peter Kurth, which I had just read. The book encouraged me to read some more of the books about Isadora, which have been languishing on my bookshelves—it has been years since I looked at them. Isadora’s autobiography, Isadora: My life originally published in 1928, was hugely personal (as I guess is typical of any autobiography). But it gave a clear picture of her approach to dance, and of her distaste for ballet as a style, although there were times when it seemed she was simply making sweeping generalisations. But it looked at events in her life from a different perspective from the way Kurtz described those occasions. The book I enjoyed most was The search for Isadora. The Legend and Legacy of Isadora Duncan by Lillian Loewenthal, published in 1993. It was the most analytical and perhaps divorced from hysteria of one kind or another.

Three very different approaches! It made very clear how much of a person and his/her/their background is revealed in a publication. Now I have Isadora Duncan. Une Sculpture Vivante, to examine. Published in 2009, it an exhibition catalogue, with some essays, from the Musée Bourdelle in Paris.

My comments on Kurth’s book are in the dance diary for May at this link.

Press for June 2024

Bangarra’s ‘Horizon’. Dance Australia, 17 June 2024. Online at this link.
SDC ‘Momenta’. Dance Australia. 24 June 2024. Online at this link.

Michelle Potter, 30 June 2024

Dance diary. May 2024

Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship

Given the publication of my book, Kristian Fredrikson. Designer by Melbourne Books in 2020, I am always interested in the winners of the biennial award of the Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship. My book would never have been published without the generous donations I received via the Australian Cultural Fund, and from royalties owing to Fredrikson during the year I was struggling to assist financially with the book’s publication. The committee that administers the scholarship was hugely supportive throughout all aspects of the book’s production.

The 2024 winner of the Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship is Charles Davis who graduated from NIDA in 2014, and who has also studied architectural design at Monash University. He has designed for Sydney Theatre Company, West Australian Opera, Opera Queensland, Pinchgut Opera and other theatrical groups. As far as his input into dance productions goes, Davis was set designer for the Australian Ballet’s recent production of Stephanie Lake’s Circle Electric. Incidentally, another recipient of an earlier Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship, Paula Levis, designed the costumes for that same production.

Frank van Straten (1936–2024)

This is a somewhat belated comment on the death of Frank van Straten, who died in Melbourne in April 2024. Van Straten was an amazing historian of the theatre across a range of genres and was the first archivist at Melbourne’s Performing Arts Museum (now the Australian Performing Arts Collection). I remember him particularly for his hugely valuable contribution to Graeme Murphy’s Tivoli, a joint production between the Australian Ballet and Sydney Dance Company, which premiered in 2001 to commemorate Australia’s Centenary of Federation. Van Straten acted as historical consultant for the work, which honoured and celebrated the Tivoli circuit and the remarkable nature of its repertoire. His input helped make Tivoli an exceptional ‘dance musical’.

Cover image for *Tivoli* national tour 2001

Van Straten’s knowledge of theatrical history in Australia was vast and I recall a post on this website in which, in a comment, he helped with identifying a particular Sydney-based teacher working in the 1930s named Richard White. His books on Australian performing arts history, too, have often given me information that I had struggled to find elsewhere. He was a truly generous person.

I can’t call this comment an obituary, but for what I would call an obituary see the article in Stage Whispers. Listen, too, to van Straten discuss the nature of Tivoli performances as recorded by Philippe Charluet on film at this link. Oral historian Bill Stephens has also recorded an interview with van Straten for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program. It currently requires written permission for access, but that may change in the near future following van Straten’s death. Here is the current catalogue link.

Backstage notes

Jennifer Shennan drew my attention to a recent article in The Guardian called Wings, Wigs and Wonder. It takes the reader backstage during a performance by Birmingham Royal Ballet and is called a ‘photo essay’. It has some interesting backstage images included within the text, which was written by Katie Edwards. Read at this link.

Recent Reading

In my dance diary for April 2024 I wrote about Deborah Jowitt’s recent publication Errand into the Maze. The Life and Works of Martha Graham, which to my mind was not always the easiest of reads, despite Jowitt’s extensive research and very strong dance background. As fate would have it, however, while mulling over Jowitt’s publication I came across an interesting article by Marina Harss, whose work I much admire, called On Point: Martha Graham’s Perfect Partnership with Isamu Noguchi. It’s available (at least for the moment) at this link.

Currently I am reading another of the books I bought at the recent Canberra Lifeline Book Fair—Isadora. A sensational life by Peter Kurth (Paperback edition, 2003). In an early page entitled ‘Press for Isadora‘, one comment is, ‘There is never a dull moment in Peter Kurth’s action-packed biography…’. True! Much of what is mentioned does not appear in other books about Isadora, or not nearly to the same extent. Nevertheless, with its different focus it provides another perspective on her life, perhaps with the word ‘sensational’, which appears in the book’s subtitle, emerging as characterising that different focus. Dance is probably not the major focus!

Press for May 2024

‘Dancers perform strong farewell to Ruth Osborne.’ City News (Canberra), 17 May 2024. Online at this link

Michelle Potter, 31 May 2024