Andrew Killian and Dimity Azoury in 'Aurum'. The Australian Ballet, 2019. Photo: © Daniel Boud

Dance diary. January 2020

Alice Topp’s Aurum

Aurum, choreographed by Alice Topp, a resident choreographer with the Australian Ballet, was first seen in Melbourne in 2018. It was followed by a 2019 season in Sydney, a scene from which is the featured image for this post. Also in 2019 it had a showing in New York at the Joyce Theater. In fact the Joyce was in part responsible for the creation of Aurum. Aurum was enabled with the support of a Rudolf Nureyev Prize for New Dance, awarded by the Joyce. Major funding came from the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation. Aurum went on to win a Helpmann Award in 2019.

Now Topp will stage her work for Royal New Zealand Ballet as part of that company’s Venus Rising program opening in May 2020. She has recently been rehearsing the work in RNZB studios in Wellington.

Madeleine Graham and Allister Madin in rehearsal for Alice Topp's 'Aurum'. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2020. Photo: © Jeremy Brick — Madeleine Graham and Allister Madin in rehearsal for Alice Topp’s *Aurum*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2020. Photo: © Jeremy Brick

I can still feel the excitement of seeing Aurum for the first time in 2018 when it was part of the Australian Ballet’s Verve program. My review from that season is at this link.

Dance Australia critics’ survey

Below are my choices in the annual Dance Australia critics’ survey. See the February/March 2020 issue of Dance Australia for the choices made by other critics across Australia. The survey is always interesting reading.

Highlight of the year
West Side Story’s return to Australian stages looking as fabulous as it did back in the 1960s. A true dance musical in which choreographer Jerome Robbins tells the story brilliantly through dance and gesture.

Most significant dance event
Sydney Dance Company’s 50th anniversary. Those who have led, and are leading the company—Suzanne Musitz, Jaap Flier, Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon, and currently Rafael Bonachela—have given Australian audiences a varied contemporary repertoire with exposure to the work of some remarkable Australian choreographers and composers, as well as the work of some of the best contemporary artists from overseas.

Most interesting Australian independent group or artist
Canberra’s Australian Dance Party, which has started to develop a strong presence and unique style and has given Canberra a much needed local, professional company. The 2019 production From the vault showed the company’s strong collaborative aesthetic with an exceptional live soundscape and lighting to add to the work’s appeal.

Most interesting Australian group or artist
Bangarra Dance Theatre. Over thirty years the company has gone from strength to strength and can only be admired for the way in which Stephen Page and his associates tell Indigenous stories with such pride and passion.

Beau Dean Riley Smith (centre) as Bennelong, Bangarra Dance Theatre 2017. Photo: Vishal Pandey — Beau Dean Riley Smith (centre) as Bennelong in *Bennelong*, Bangarra Dance Theatre, 2017. Photo: © Vishal Pandey

Most outstanding choreography
Melanie Lane’s thrilling but somewhat eccentric WOOF as restaged by Sydney Dance Company. It was relentless in its exploration of group behaviour and reminded me a little of a modern day Rite of Spring

Scene from Melanie Lane's 'WOOF'. Sydney Dance Company, 2019. Photo: © Pedro Greig — Scene from Melanie Lane’s *WOOF*. Sydney Dance Company, 2019. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Best new work
Dangerous Liaisons by Liam Scarlett for Queensland Ballet. Scarlett has an innate ability to compress detail without losing the basic elements of the narrative and to capture mood and character through movement. It was beautifully performed by Queensland Ballet and demonstrated excellence in its collaborative elements.

Most outstanding dancer(s)
Kohei Iwamato from Queensland Ballet especially for his dancing in Dangerous Liaisons as Azolan, valet to the Vicomte de Valmont. His dancing was light, fluid, and technically exact and he made every nuance of Scarlett’s choreography clearly visible

Tyrel Dulvarie in Bangarra’s revival of Unaipon in which he danced the role of David Unaipon. His presence on stage was imposing throughout and his technical ability shone, especially in the section where he danced as Tolkami (the West Wind).

Dancer(s) to watch
Ryan Stone, dancer with Alison Plevey’s Canberra-based Australian Dance Party (ADP). His performance in ADP’s From the vault was exceptional for its fluidity and use of space and gained him a Dance Award from the Canberra Critics’ Circle.

Yuumi Yamada of the Australian Ballet whose dancing in Stephen Baynes Constant Variants and as the Daughter in Stanton Welch’s Sylvia showed her as an enticing dancer with much to offer as she develops further.

Boos!
The Australian Government’s apparent disinterest in the arts and in the country’s collecting institutions. The removal of funding for Ausdance National, for example, resulted in the cancellation of the Australian Dance Awards, while the efficiency dividend placed on collecting institutions, which has been in place for years now, means that items that tell of our dance history lie unprocessed and uncatalogued, and hence are unusable by the public for years.

Standing ovation
I’m standing up and cheering for the incredible variety of dance that goes on beyond our major ballet and contemporary companies. Youth dance, community dance, dance for well-being, dance for older people, and more. It is indicative of the power that dance has to develop creativity, health and welfare, and a whole range of social issues.

Scene from *Eye to Eye* in *On course*. QL2 Dance, 2019. Photo: © Andrew Sikorski/Art Atelier

New oral history recordings

In January I had the pleasure of recording two new oral history interviews for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program. The first was with Chrissa Keramidas, former dancer with the Australian Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and Sydney Dance Company. Keramidas recently returned as a guest artist in the Australian Ballet’s recent revival of Nutcracker. The story of Clara. The second was with Emeritus Professor Susan Street, AO, dance educator over many years including with Queensland University of Technology and the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts.

News from James Batchelor

James Batchelor’s Redshift, originally commissioned by Chunky Move in 2017, will have another showing in Paris in February as part of the Artdanthé Festival. Redshift is another work emerging from Batchelor’s research following his taking part in an expedition to Heard and McDonald Islands in the sub-Antarctic in 2016. Artdanthé takes place at the Théâtre de Vanves and Batchelor’s works have been shown there on previous occasions.

Study for *Redshift*. Photo: © Morgan Hickinbotham

Batchelor is also about to start work on a new piece, Cosmic Ballroom, which will premiere in December 2020 at another international festival, December Dance, in Bruges, Belgium. Below are some of Batchelor’s thoughts about this new work.

Set in a 19th Century Ballroom in Belgium, Cosmic Ballroom will playfully reimagine social dances and the aesthetic relationship they have to the space and time they exist within. We will work with movement as a plastic and expressive language that is formed through social encounters: the passing of thoughts, feelings and uncertainties from body to body. It will ponder the public and private and the personal and interpersonal as tonal zones that radiate and contaminate. How might movement be like a virus in this context? How might space-times be playfully spilling across and infecting one another from the baroque ballroom to the post-industrial club space?

Batchelor will collaborate with an team of Australian, Italian and UK artists on this work.

Liam Scarlett

Not such good news…

Michelle Potter, 31 January 2020

Featured image: Andrew Killian and Dimity Azoury in Aurum. The Australian Ballet, 2019. Photo: © Daniel Boud

Lucy Green as Cecile and Alexander Idaszak as Valmont in 'Dangerous Liaisons'. Queensland Ballet, 2019. Photo David Kelly

Dance diary. December 2019

The best of …

At this time of the year ‘the best of …’ is a common feature of many print and online sources. My thoughts on the dance highlights of the year will appear in the February/March issue of Dance Australia. But I can’t help commenting here on one or two particular highlights. For me, Liam Scarlett’s Dangerous Liaisons, created for Queensland Ballet, stands at the top of my list of best production for 2019.

What impresses me about Scarlett’s work in general is his ability to compress complex stories into clear narratives that never lose the major thread of the storyline, but are never so complicated that we get lost. This was especially noticeable in Dangerous Liaisons. It was a work in which quite a lot of subplots were evident, and in which there were many characters involved in many clandestine activities. Scarlett managed, however, to leave us in no doubt as to what was happening. He also seems to have a real knack of collaborating with the other creatives who have input into his work. Again, this was evident in Dangerous Liaisons, which had a great arrangement of music, stunning costumes and evocative lighting. Read (or reread) the review at this link.

My Dance Australia contribution also mentioned Yuumi Yamada but I had not seen her perform as Clara in Peter Wright’s Nutcracker until after my Dance Australia deadline had passed. So I need to document here that I thought she was a standout as Clara, as well as in other works throughout 2019.

Yuumi Yamada_and dancers of the Australian Ballet in 'The Nutcracker', 2019. Photo: © Daniel Boud — Yuumi Yamada and dancers of the Australian Ballet in *The Nutcracker*, 2019. Photo: © Daniel Boud

The Kristian Fredrikson project

As a very special end to 2019 (for me anyway), I signed a contract with Melbourne Books who will begin editing of my book on the life and career of Kristian Fredrikson in February with publication scheduled, at this stage, for August. Things Fredrikson have been occupying my life since 2011 and the book has been researched across Australia; in Wellington, New Zealand; in the United States, in New York and Houston; in London; and in La Mirande en Ardèche in the French Alps, where choreographer Gray Veredon lives. Below is one of the many striking images that will appear in the book.

Study for Captain Hook in Russell Kerr's 'Peter Pan', 1999. © 1998 Kristian Fredrikson — Study for Captain Hook in Russell Kerr’s *Peter Pan*. Royal New Zealand Ballet 1999. © 1998 Kristian Fredrikson. This version of *Peter Pan* was also staged by West Australian Ballet in 2013. There have been various revivals

John O’Brien (1933–2019)

After posting my obituary for Barry Kitcher last month, I was contacted by a reader who brought to my attention another death in the dance world—that of former Rambert dancer and much admired teacher, the Australian-born John O’Brien. Much of O’Brien’s life was spent in England and I never saw him dance. Apart from his many performing and teaching accomplishments, O’Brien founded the bookshop, which I knew as Dance Books, in Cecil Court in central London. How many hours did I spend ferreting around in its second hand department! And how sad that it had to close. But now I know that it was founded by O’Brien.

Happy New year 2020

All best wishes to all those who read my posts, and especially to those who contribute in one way or another. It also continues to thrill me that we in Australia (and elsewhere) benefit from dance news from New Zealand with some great posts from Jennifer Shennan. So my particular thanks to her for her contributions and the manner in which they expand our understanding of dance and its context.

And here’s to a great year of dance in 2020.

Michelle Potter, 31 December 2019

Featured image: Lucy Green as Cécile and Alexander Idaszak as Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons. Queensland Ballet, 2019. Photo: © David Kelly

Ryan Stone in Australia Dance Party's 'From the Vault', 2019. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Dance diary. November 2019

Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards (Dance)

The Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards for 2019 were announced on 19 November at the Canberra Museum and Gallery. Four dance awards were given, as follows:

Australian Dance Party for the company’s production of From the Vault, choreographed and directed by Alison Plevey in collaboration with dancers, Olivia Fyfe, Stephen Gow, Eliza Sanders, Alana Stenning, and Ryan Stone. With live music and sound by Alex Voorhoeve and Andy McMillan, along with evocative lighting by Mark Dyson, costumes designed by Imogen Keen, and dramaturgy by Karla Conway, From the Vault was an outstanding collaborative endeavour. Brilliantly conceived and executed, it was the [Canberra] dance highlight of the year.

Zara Bartley and Daniel Convery of Bravissimo Productions for their initiative in attracting outstanding national and international dancers to Canberra for a gala production, World Stars of Ballet. The enterprise demonstrated courage and resourcefulness, along with a determination to put Canberra forward as a venue for world-class ballet productions.

Ryan Stone for his committed performance in Australian Dance Party’s From the Vault. His outstanding dancing, with its freedom and fluidity within the set choreography, displayed a remarkable mastery of how the body moves through and in space, which is at the heart of all dancing.

Nathan Rutup for his high-energy choreography for the musical Heathers directed by Kelly Roberts and Grant Pegg for Dramatic Productions. Rutup’s dance numbers were so polished and in-tune with the material that it is difficult to imagine these songs done any other way.

Shaun Parker & Company

Shaun Parker & Company has recently announced its program for 2020, the company’s 10th anniversary year. Some of the works for the season focus on Parker’s interest in social issues affecting young people. They include The Yard with its anti-bullying message, which will be restaged and will tour areas across Sydney and regional New South Wales beginning on 9 March 2020.

Also during 2020 the company will present In the Zone, which had its premiere earlier this year, and which will be performed at the York Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney, from 16–19 September 2020. Developed in collaboration with musician Alon Ilsar, who co-designed the AirSticks that are pivotal to the work, In The Zone combines hip-hop dance with gaming technology to showcase the importance of stepping away from our screens and experiencing the real world. In The Zone will feature Western Sydney hip-hop dancer Libby Montilla.

Study for *Bubble*, Shaun Parker & Company, 2019.

The company will also develop three new works in 2020 including one with the working title of Bubble. It is a collaboration with Taiwanese bubble performance artist, Mr Su Chung Tai, and will explore such issues as global warming.

More about Shaun Parker & Company is on the company’s website at this link.

Site news

As the end of the year approaches I am always interested in which post has received the most views over the year. Although we are not quite at the end of the year yet, I checked the January–November stats to find that the review of Liam Scarlett’s Dangerous Liaisons, as danced by Queensland Ballet, topped the list by a very big margin. Deservedly so. It was a brilliant production and performance. It was so far ahead of everything else in terms of statistics that I can’t imagine it will be knocked out of first place once December stats are added. In case you missed the post here is the link.

Laura Hidalgo and Alexander Idaszak in *Dangerous Liaisons.* Queensland Ballet, 2019. Photo: © David Kelly

Press for November 2019

‘A pleasingly old-school Cinderella.’ Review of Queensland Ballet’s Cinderella on tour to Canberra. The Canberra Times, 7 November 2019, p. 16. My expanded review is at this link.

Michelle Potter, 30 November 2019

Please consider supporting my Australian Cultural Fund project to help Melbourne Books publish Kristian Fredrikson. Designer in a high quality format. Donations are tax deductible. See this link to the project, which closes on 31 December 2019.

Featured image: Ryan Stone in Australia Dance Party’s From the Vault, 2019. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Apsara relief, Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Cambodia, 2008. Photo: © Michelle Potter

Dance diary. October 2019

Ten years ago …

This website is now ten years old. While I initially went it alone, Jennifer Shennan from New Zealand joined me as contributor in 2014. Between us we have written 650 reviews, news items, and articles since the site went live in 2009.

My first post was really just a very small photo diary of an amazing few days I spent in 2008 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on a job for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. It was the last job I did for the Division and was an initiative of one of the Division’s most generous donors, Anne H. Bass. In those few days in Phnom Penh I helped set up a project to interview dancers who had survived the Pol Pot regime and who had gone on to perform, teach and pass on the rich Cambodian dance heritage. I sat in as an observer for the first two interviews, one with Em Theay, the other with Soth Sam On.

Em Theay, 2008. Photo: © Michelle Potter

The full project, the Khmer Dance Project, was completed a few years ago and several of the qinterviews are now available online (with English subtitles as the interviews were conducted in the Khmer language). Here is a link to the online version of the very first interview, that with Em Theay, which was conducted on the terrace in front of the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

I kept a diary of daily events during the short time I was there, largely so I could report back to the donor in New York. Looking back over what I wrote, the diary entries focused mostly on technical issues and how to improve the methodology of the project. But I also discovered a non-technical (more or less) incident that I had forgotten. I wrote for day five:

The working part of the day began with a tuk tuk issue when my regular tuk tuk man was not at the entrance to the hotel. I eventually got to Bophana [an audio-visual centre in Phnom Penh] but had to ask Pen [Hun Pen, the interviewer for the project] to work out whether this other guy was prepared to stay with us for half a day. Yes and no. Eventually no. Pen found someone else. I went to the interview location [the home of Soth Sam On] in the car with the crew. Pen, Pen’s boyfriend and Suppya [Suppya Nut, member of the project team] took the tuk tuk. The car got lost and the driver (the translator) took great pleasure in pointing out to me a rat eating at the garbage in one of the streets we went down.

The whole experience, despite the odd rat, was an amazing one and I returned to Cambodia on a private visit several months later when I visited the temples in Siem Reap. The featured image on this post is from that visit.

Adelaide Festival 2020

Next year’s Adelaide Festival has some interesting dance events. I am especially looking forward to Lyon Opera Ballet’s Trois grandes fugues, a triple bill from three choreographers whose contemporary dance works I have always enjoyed—Lucinda Childs, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, and Maguy Marin.* All three have exceptionally individualistic choreographic styles and for this production have created separate works to the same musical composition—the 1825 Grosse Fugue by Beethoven. Judith Mackrell, writing in The Guardian in London, calls the show ‘one of the most exhilarating, uncompromising evenings of dance I’ve seen in ages.’

Scene from Lucinda Child’s work for *Trois grandes fugues*. Photo: © Bernard Stofleth

Then, having recently interviewed Lloyd Newson for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program, I am looking forward to his revival of Enter Achilles. In addition, Australian Dance Theatre will be performing in a production of Mozart’s Requiem as directed by Romeo Castellucci.

For more information on the Adelaide Festival 2020, follow this link to the Festival website. There you can read more about the items mentioned above, as well as other dance works being performed, and can download the full program. [UPDATE: 2020 link no longer available].

Norton Owen and Jacob’s Pillow

I was delighted to discover recently that my friend and colleague in the United States, Norton Owen, was honoured with the award of the prestigious Louis Rachow Distinguished Service Award by the Theatre Library Association in the US. The image and biography below are from the Association’s website.

Norton Owen is a curator, writer, and archivist with more than 45 years of professional experience in dance. He has been associated with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival since 1976 and has been Director of Preservation since 1990, overseeing the PillowTalks series as well as all activities involving documentation, exhibitions, audience engagement, and archival access. He is the curator of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive, an acclaimed online video resource, and host of a new podcast entitled PillowVoices. In 2000, Dance/USA selected him for its Ernie Award, honoring “unsung heroes who have led exemplary lives in dance.” He has also received awards from the Martha Hill Dance Fund, Dance Films Association, and the José Limón Dance Foundation, and he is a past chair of the Dance Heritage Coalition. In recognition of his 40th anniversary at Jacob’s Pillow, the Norton Owen Reading Room was dedicated in his honor.

See also Norton’s advice for visitors to the beautiful venue that is Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts, at this link. I hope to get back there in 2020.

In the wings …

As we head further into the eleventh year, watch this website for reviews and/or news of these upcoming November events:

Sydney Dance Company’s Bonachela/Obarzanek, which is season two in the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations;
Ben Stevenson’s Cinderella from Queensland Ballet on tour in Canberra;
Bespoke from Queensland Ballet in Brisbane with new choreography from Lucy Guerin, Amy Hollingsworth and Loughlan Prior;
Loughlan Prior’s Hansel and Gretel from Royal New Zealand Ballet;
Stanton Welch’s Sylvia during the Australian Ballet’s Sydney season; and
Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards for 2019.

Michelle Potter, 31 October 2019

*Links to my reviews of Dance by Childs and Rain by de Keersmaeker go back to 2014 and 2011 respectively. My access to and capacity to embed imagery has changed markedly since then!

Kevin Jackson, Robyn Hendricks and Nathan Brook in a study for Anna Karenina. Photo: © Justin Ridler

Dance diary. September 2019

The Australian Ballet 2020

The Australian Ballet’s 2020 season, announced earlier this month, looks to be the most interesting the company has offered for years. I was thrilled to see that Yuri Possokhov’s Anna Karenina was on the list. Although I haven’t seen this particular work I was lucky enough to see San Francisco Ballet perform Possokhov’s Rite of Spring back in 2013. It was totally mesmerising and I can’t wait to see Anna Karenina.

Another work I have seen elsewhere, which I am also anticipating with pleasure, is Frederick Ashton’s A Month in the Country, which dates back to 1976. Seeing it just a few years ago I wrote, ‘I found myself swept along by a strong performance from Zenaida Yanowsky as Natalia Petrovna and by Ashton’s ability to define characters through movement. The young, the old, different levels of society, everything was there in the choreography’.

The Australian Ballet’s 2020 season includes A Month in the Country as part of a triple bill, Molto, which also comprises Tim Harbour’s Squander and Glory, one of his best works I think, and a revival of Stephen Baynes’ crowd pleasing Molto Vivace. A Month in the Country needs strong acting (as no doubt Anna Karenina does too), so fingers crossed that the company’s coaching is good.

For other good things on the 2020 program, including Graeme Murphy’s delayed Happy Prince and a new work, Logos, from Alice Topp.

In the wings

Two stories that were meant to be posted in September were held up for various reasons. One is a profile of Shaun Parker who is currently in Taiwan performing at the Kuandu Arts festival in Taipei. The other is Jennifer Shennan’s account of a tribute held recently in Wellington to celebrate 40 years of teaching by Christine Gunn at the New Zealand School of Dance. Jennifer’s story is reflective and personal without ignoring the stellar input from Gunn over 40 years.

The issues that delayed these two posts have been sorted and the stories will appear shortly.

Press for September 2019

None! I am reminded of Martin Portus’ comment to me in a recent email ‘Ah! The death of the [print] outlet!’

Michelle Potter, 30 September 2019

Featured image: Kevin Jackson, Robyn Hendricks and Nathan Brook in a study for Anna Karenina. Photo: © Justin Ridler

Natalia Osipova and Jason Kittelberger in 'Six Years Later'. 'Pure Dance, Sydney Opera House, 2019. Photo: © Daniel Boud

Dance diary. August 2019

Pure Dance

A performance highlight for August was undoubtedly Natalia Osipova’s Pure Dance, a program of six short works curated by Osipova and featuring Osipova and David Hallberg, along with two guest artists Jonathan Goddard and Jason Kittelberger. A link to my review of the show, written for Limelight Magazine, appears below.

Of course Pure Dance reminded me a little of a similar show Sylvie Guillem put together four or so years ago called Life in Progress. Osipova and Guillem, fabulous classical technicians, both have an abiding interest in contemporary choreography and it is an exceptional experience to see how their skills translate into dance works beyond classical ballet.

Youth Dance Festival, Canberra

Canberra has long been a centre for youth and community dance and September sees the 35th season of the city’s Youth Dance Festival, or Youth Fest as it is more commonly known. An inclusive, non-competitive dance festival, it brings together dancers from schools across Canberra and surrounding districts for performances staged by Ausdance ACT at the Canberra Theatre Centre. The 2019 program, called Generation Next, is made up of 61 different dance works created by 40 high schools and colleges from the region!

Jamie Winbank, creative director of the show, tells me that 45,000 young dancers have participated since the festival began in 1985, an astonishing number really. Winbank sees Dance Fest as ‘a platform for young people to express their ideas and opinions, and have their voices heard through dance.’ Generation Next runs from 7-13 September and bookings can be made through the Canberra Theatre Centre website.

New Breed from Sydney Dance Company

Sydney Dance Company recently announced the four emerging choreographers who have been commissioned to make a work for the 2019 New Breed season. They are Josh Mu and Lauren Langlois, both from Melbourne, and Ariella Casu and Davide Di Giovanni both from Sydney. This will be the sixth New Breed season and takes place at Carriageworks in Sydney from 28 November to 7 December. Book via sydneydancecompany.com

Davide Di Giovanni in Rafael Bonachela’s *Cinco*. Sydney Dance Company, 2019. Photo: © Wendell Teodoro

Demise of Ausdance National

The most distressing dance news for August was the announcement that Ausdance National, the national advocacy body for dance in Australia over the past 42 years, has been forced to close. Ausdance National was responsible for organising the Australian Dance Awards, but its work extended to industry development, conferences, publications, and a host of other initiatives. Decreasing government funding has had a weakening effect over several years and, while state-based offices of Ausdance will continue to operate (at least for the moment), the national body no longer exists to bring broad, national issues to the fore. A huge loss.

Oral history: Lloyd Newson

I had the privilege of recording an oral history interview in August with Lloyd Newson, Australian-born choreographer and founder of the London-based company DV8. It will join the National Library’s ever expanding collection of dance-related interviews. As you read this, Newson will be in Europe working towards the opening of Enter Achilles, reworked for Rambert Dance Company. We will see Enter Achilles in Australia next year. Stay tuned for details of when and where.

Press for August 2019

Review of Pure Dance. Limelight Magazine (online), 28 August 2019.

Michelle Potter, 31 August 2019

Featured image: Natalia Osipova and Jason Kittelberger in ‘Six Years Later’. Pure Dance, Sydney Opera House, 2019. Photo: © Daniel Boud

Bright Young Things and Eastern Corset Dancers, 'Undercover' Palm Beach Pictures, 1982. Design by Kristian Fredrikson, National Library of Australia

Dance diary. July 2019

The Fredrikson Project

At the beginning of July, I set up a funding project via the Australian Cultural Fund in an effort to raise enough money to pay for digitisation of designs for inclusion in my forthcoming book on the life and career of designer Kristian Fredrikson. Following Fredrikson’s death in 2005, the executors of his estate placed a large collection of his personal papers and designs in the National Library in Canberra. Unfortunately very little of this material has been digitised so the costs of acquiring material at a resolution suitable for publication are high. The same applies to material held in the National Gallery also in Canberra.

Well the project has now ended and I am thrilled to report that we achieved our funding goal. I thank from the depths of my being those incredibly generous people who supported the project and allowed us to reach our goal. Below, in low resolution, are three images that may well appear in the book. They are all, as is the featured image, from Fredrikson’s film commissions from the 1980s. Just a tiny sample of the kinds of designs to which I now have access.

Clockwise from top left: Two Bods from The Magic Telescope; Village Men
from Vietnam; Boxing poster from The Shiralee.

Fredrikson’s designs are filled with surprises. All images are from MS 10122, National Library of Australia.

Deon Hastie appointed to head NAISDA College

The latest news from NAISDA College is that Deon Hastie has been appointed Head of Dance at the College. Hastie is a former student of NAISDA and graduated from there in 1998. Many will remember him as an exceptional artist with Leigh Warren and Dancers between 1999 and 2010. He both danced and choreographed during those years and, on leaving the company worked as an independent choreographer and teacher and has been artistic director of Kurruru Youth Performing Arts in Adelaide since 2010. He is seen below in an image by Adelaide-based photographer Alex Makeyev.

Deon Hastie in *Divining*. Leigh Warren and Dancers, 2000. Photo: © Alex Makeyev. National Library of Australia

Press for July 2019

‘Bangarra celebrates 30 years with pride.’ Review of Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Bangarra: 30 years of sixty five thousand. The Canberra Times, 23 July 2019, p. 13.

Michelle Potter, 31 July 2019

Featured image: Bright Young Things and Eastern Corset Dancers from Undercover. Palm Beach Pictures, 1982. Design by Kristian Fredrikson, National Library of Australia

Dance diary. June 2019

Shona Dunlop MacTavish (1920-2019)

The death of Shona Dunlop MacTavish in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 18 June at the age of 99 sent me back to her autobiography, Leap of faith. It was published in 1997 and the early sections give a fascinating account of her schooldays in New Zealand and her time in Europe over four years beginning 1935. Those four years included her introduction to dance and in Leap of faith Dunlop MacTavish gives her thoughts on her early teachers, one of whom was Gertrud Bodenwieser. Of Bodenwieser and how her classes affected people, Dunlop MacTavish writes

Frau Gerty, as she was known by her students, was a small erect figure who, when not demonstrating, examined her class through an intimidating lorgnette … Although nervous at first, I began to relax and enjoy myself as it appeared she was taking little notice of me. Soon I was swept up with the rest of the class—a mass of whirling bodies with ecstatic faces.

The book continues through Dunlop MacTavish’s life in in South America on tour with Bodenwieser’s dancers; follows her experiences in Australia, China and Africa (the latter two with her missionary husband Donald MacTavish); and then moves on to the Philippines. The story then comes back to New Zealand and her home city of Dunedin where she set up a number of dance-related initiatives.

Dunlop MacTavish’s choreographic output was extensive and a list of her choreographies in Australia and New Zealand forms an appendix to Leap of faith. It is remarkable list. As one example, the first solo she created for herself was Two souls alas reside within my breast. Along with others of her early works, she danced it when her husband-to-be came to the Bodenwieser studio in Sydney to be introduced to her dancing. In her oral history interview for the National Library of Australia she explains the origin of the work:

I’d seen a young man in a nightclub with a very scarred face, beautiful on one side, all scarred on the other. It suddenly gave me the image of how many of us actually have two personalities. The title of the work was taken from some writing by Goethe. [Faust, First Part]

Shona Dunlop in a study for *Two souls alas reside within my breast*, c. 1945. Photo: Clifton Firth. From a card using material from the National Dance Archive of New Zealand

For more on the remarkable life of Shona Dunlop MacTavish, here is a link to an oral history interview I recorded with her for the National Library on 13 April 1998. It is available online both as audio and as a transcript. Leap of faith is also definitely worth a re-read.

Queen’s Birthday Honours list

Congratulations to Li Cunxin, Meryl Tankard and Régis Lansac, who were all recognised in the 2019 Queen’s birthday honours list. Li and Tankard received an AO, Lansac an OAM.

In a recent conversation with Patrick Harding-Irmer and Anca Frankenhaeuser I also heard that Robert Cohan, founding artistic director of London Contemporary Dance School and London Contemporary Dance Theatre, had also been honoured in England. Cohan influenced the careers of many Australian dancers and choreographers. He was knighted!

With regard to the Australian awards, Lansac’s work is not often acknowledged as much and as appropriately as it should be, so it is especially pleasing to see that he has been recognised. Below are a few of many photographs taken by Lansac that are part of a collection held in the National Library of Australia. His career has crossed boundaries as these images show. Here, too, is a link to an article that appeared in the now-defunct National Library of Australia News, which gives a little insight into Lansac’s early Australian collaborations and commissions. See also the tag Régis Lansac on this website.

Below left: Pierre Thibaudeau of Entr’acte Theatre in a solo performance, Sydney 1985. Below right: Richard Talonga of One Extra Company in Kai Tai Chan’s Midnight Moon, Sydney 1984.

Above left: Portrait of dancer Mary Duchesne, 1987. Above right: Tim Coldwell, Circus Oz, 1982. All photos: © Régis Lansac

Dancing under the southern skies

A new book by Valerie Lawson has just been published. I have not yet had time to read the copy I have but, flicking through the pages, there are some great photographs in it that, as far as I am aware, have never been published before. Lawson also sets the scene for what is (or rather what is not) contained in the book when she writes: ‘Dancing under the southern skies is not a detailed description of professional ballet performances in Australia—the dates, the theatres, the casts, the designers—although the detail is important and, one day, might become a dictionary of ballet.’ The next paragraph in the introduction explains what is included. But I will leave that for your further reading!

Further information is on the publisher’s site.

Press for June 2019

‘Vale Jonathan Taylor’, Dance Australia, June/July 2019, p. 13. PDF at this link

Michelle Potter, 30 June 2019

Please consider supporting my Australian Cultural Fund project to raise money to have hi-res images made for my book on the career of designer Kristian Fredrikson, which is heading towards publication. See the project, which closes on 30 July 2019, at this link. Donations are tax deductible. [Update 1 August 2019: Project closed]

Featured image: Evelyn Ippen, Bettina Vernon, Emmy Towsey and Shona Dunlop, Bodenwieser Ballet, Sydney c. 1939. Photo: Max Dupain

Dance diary. May 2019

David McAllister to retire

The news for May is headlined by the announcement that David McAllister, artistic director of the Australian Ballet since 2002, will retire at the end of 2020. McAllister has always been generous in situations that are about dance but fall outside performances. He launched, for example, two of my books, A Collector’s Book of Australian Dance and Dame Maggie Scott. A Life in Dance. In this month’s featured image (above) he is seen in the Chunky Move studios in Melbourne launching A Collector’s Book. The banner on the left shows an image that appears in the book, which was taken by Greg Barrett.

I have also enjoyed seeing McAllister at various conferences, including the first BOLD Festival held in Canberra in 2017.

Who will be the next director? The names that have been mentioned in the press so far (I have arranged them alphabetically by family name) include Leanne Benjamin, David Hallberg, Li Cunxin, Graeme Murphy, and Stanton Welch. One or two of them have declared they are not interested (not sure if I necessarily believe that). I have one or two others in my mind but I won’t mention them here! I do hope, however, that whoever survives the selection process and becomes McAllister’s successor will be someone who will be audacious in repertoire choices.

Shaun Parker and Company

In September 2010, dancer (and singer in the counter tenor mode) Shaun Parker registered a name: Shaun Parker and Company. Next year the company that bears that name will celebrate its 10th anniversary with, I believe, a special program.

The company has just recently returned from the Middle East and Austria where Parker’s most recent production, KING, was performed. In the meantime, Parker is now working on a new show for young people, IN THE ZONE, which will premiere in Sydney this coming September. It will feature street dancer Libby Montilla and the technology of AirSticks.

Scene from KING, Shaun Parker and Company, 2019. Photo: © Prudence Upton

Archibald Prize 2019

Among the finalists for the 2019 Archibald Prize, Australia’s well-known portrait prize hosted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was a portrait entitled Mao’s Last Dancer by Chinese-born artist Jun Chen. Chen, who is currently based in Brisbane, was commissioned last year by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra to paint a portrait of Li Cunxin, artistic director of Queensland Ballet. It was one of twenty portraits commissioned to celebrate the Gallery’s twentieth anniversary. Chen followed up with a second portrait of Li and entered it for the Archibald Prize. While it didn’t take first place it was good to see a portrait of a dancer among the 2019 finalists. See all the finalists here.

*Mao’s Last Dancer*: Jun Chen’s portrait of Li Cunxin

Following new posts

I have had a number of requests recently asking how to join up to receive notification of new posts. Here’s how to do it:

1.Make a comment by going to the ‘Leave a reply’ form, which you will find at the end of every post.
2. Before hitting the ‘Post comment’ field, check the box that says ‘Notify me of new posts by email’. (Make sure you have also filled out your name and email address. A website address is not necessary).
3. After you have submitted the comment you will receive a follow-up email asking you to confirm. It will say ‘Confirm follow’. Once you have clicked on this field you should begin to receive notifications of new posts.

[UPDATE: A new ‘subscribe’ box is now on the home page just under the box that says ‘View Full Tag Cloud’].

Michelle Potter, 31 May 2019

Detail on a vase, Royal Apartments, Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo

Dance diary. April 2019

Mirramu turns 30

When Elizabeth Dalman’s reign as founding artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre came dramatically to an end in 1975, she went to Italy where she spent the next decade. Not long after her return to Australia she moved to a new home on a property on Lake George, close to Canberra. There she created Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, which has just celebrated its 30th anniversary. See this link for a list of Dalman’s incredible range of activities over recent years, at Mirramu and elsewhere. Those activities stand as a testament to Dalman’s total commitment to dance.

Bodenwieser Dance Centre

Many in the Australian dance world will remember the Bodenwieser Dance Centre on City Road in Chippendale, Sydney. The building is up for sale and will go to auction on 3 May. This link takes you to a petition to save the building for future use by the dance community. Consider signing.

D H Lawrence on dance

It has been a long time since I read anything by D. H. Lawrence—it goes way back to English II at Sydney University. But in looking for something to read while on holidays, I bought Lawrence’s Twilight in Italy (first published in 1916). In the following extract he is describing a dance by locals from the area around Lake Garda in the northern part of Italy.

‘… It is a strange dance, strange and lilting, and changing as the music changed. But it had always a kind of leisurely dignity, a trailing kind of polka-waltz, intimate, passionate, yet never hurried, never violent in its passion, always becoming more intense. The women’s faces changed to a sort of transported wonder, they were in the very wonder of delight. From the soft bricks of the floor the red ochre rose in a thin cloud of dust, making hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, in their black hats and their coats, sat obscurely in the corner, making a music that came quicker and quicker, making a dance that grew swifter and more intense, more subtle, the men seeming to fly and to implicate another strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, the women drifting and palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a breeze …’

I have cut the quote above in mid-sentence, as that particular sentence is VERY long, probably too long. I must admit, however, that I enjoyed reading Lawrence’s thoughts and his mode of expression. But would we write like that about dance these days?

Link to articles and reviews published in The Canberra Times

I was somewhat shocked to discover that I can no longer make links to online versions of my articles and reviews published by The Canberra Times. At this stage pretty much every Canberra Times link on this website now goes to a page with the news of the current day. My predilection for providing online links via The Canberra Times’ (old) website goes back to May 2013 so it will be something of a task now to remove those links. Taking readers to the latest news of the day is useless for my purposes. Luckily I have kept a paper copy (what is paper you may ask?) of everything published. So, while a plug has been pulled, not everything has gone down the sink.

Press for April 2019

‘Farewell to a grand dame.’ Obituary for Dame Margaret Scott. Dance Australia, April/May 2019, pp. 13–14. PDF at this link.

‘Sydney Dance Company turns 50.’ The Canberra Times/Panorama, 20 April 2019, p. 7. Expanded version at this link.

Michelle Potter, 30 April 2019

Featured image: Detail on a vase, Royal Apartments, Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Sicily. Photo: Neville Potter