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.
– ‘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 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. 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. January 2024

BOLD Bites

The BOLD Festival started as a biennial event in 2017 but it suffered in terms of being biennial as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will, however, be back in a mini form in March 2024. BOLD24 will be a ‘Bite Size’ initiative and will feature a series of events celebrating International Women’s Day 2024. It will anticipate the next major BOLD festival in 2025. BOLD Bites will, as is the focus of all BOLD activities, honour intercultural, inclusive and intergenerational dance.

The program will take place over three days, from 8 to 10 March, in various venues in Canberra. Further information shortly on the BOLD website. Stay tuned. UPDATE: Here is a link to the schedule.

I will be involved in three conversation sessions:

BOLD critique with author Emma Batchelor on writing about dance in reviews, articles and other formats. Our conversation will be followed by an open Q & A session.

BOLD Moves with Elizabeth Cameron Dalman focusing on the foundations of Mirramu on Lake Weereewa, and on the inspiration Dalman finds in nature. It will be a prequel to the premiere screening of a new film, Lake Song, choreographed by Dalman, directed by Sue Healey and featuring Canberra’s company of older dancers, the GOLDS.

BOLD Diva with Morag Deyes, former director of Dance Base in Scotland. This conversation will focus on the rich tapestry of Deyes’ career as the leader of Dance Base and as the founder of PRIME, Scotland’s premier dance company of elders.

New dancers for Sydney Dance Company

Sydney Dance Company has announced that five new dancers will join the company for its 2024 season—Timmy Blakenship, Ngaere Jenkins, Ryan Pearson, Anika Boet and Tayla Gartner. It was more than interesting to read a brief biography of each of these new dancers. Two have strong New Zealand connections (Jenkins and Boet); Blakenship was born, raised and trained in dance in the United States; and Pearson and Gartner are Australian with Pearson having a strong First Nations background and a memorable early career with Bangarra Dance Theatre.

Sydney Dance Company 2024. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Sydney Dance Company has always been a company of dancers with diverse backgrounds but with the new additions in 2024 that diversity is being strengthened. And from a personal point of view, after watching Ryan Pearson perform so magnificently with Bangarra Dance Theatre, I really look forward to watching him work with Sydney Dance Company. Below are brief biographies of the five new artists (taken from the Sydney Dance Company media release):

American dancer Timmy Blakenship was born on the Lands of the Arapaho Nation/Colorado, and completed his early training in contemporary dance and choreography at Artistic Fusion in Thornton, Colorado and Dance Town in Miami, Florida. He continued his training at the prestigious University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance on scholarship, graduating with a BFA in 2023 where he performed works by William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Merce Cunningham and Yin Yue.

Ryan Pearson was born and raised in Biripi Country/Taree, New South Wales and is of Biripi and Worimi descent on his mother’s side and Minang, Goreng and Balardung on his father’s side. Ryan began his dance training at NAISDA at age 16, after taking part in the NSW Public Schools’ Aboriginal Dance Company, facilitated by Bangarra’s Youth Program Team in 2012. Ryan joined Bangarra Dance Theatre in 2017 as part of the Russell Page Graduate Program and was nominated in the 2020 Australian Dance Awards for Most Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer for his performance in Jiri Kylian’s Stamping Ground.

Originally from Wadawurrung Country/Geelong in Victoria, Tayla Gartner commenced full-time training at the Patrick Studios Australia Academy program in 2018 before undertaking the Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year in 2022, where she performed works by choreographers including Melanie Lane, Stephanie Lake, Jenni Large, Tobiah Booth-Remmers and Rafael Bonachela. In 2022, Tayla worked with and performed repertoire by Ohad Naharin and was a finalist in the Brisbane International Contemporary Dance Prix.

Born in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Ngaere Jenkins is of Te Arawa and Ngāti Kahungunu descent. Ngaere trained at the New Zealand School of Dance, graduating in 2018. Throughout her studies, she worked with influential mentors including James O’Hara, Victoria (Tor) Colombus, Taiaroa Royal and Tanemahuta Gray. Ngaere represented the school as a guest artist in Tahiti at the Académie de Danse Annie FAYN fifth International Dance Festival and Singapore Ballet Academy’s 60th Anniversary Gala. From 2019 Ngaere was a dancer with The New Zealand Dance Company and was the recipient of the Bill Sheat Dance Award.

Raised in Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Anika Boet is of South African and Dutch descent. Moving to Sydney in 2020, Anika completed two years of full-time training at Brent Street School of Performing Arts, receiving her Diploma of Dance (focusing on Contemporary) with Honours. Anika made her professional debut in Sydney Festival in January 2022 performing a work Grey Rhino, choreographed by Charmene Yap and Cass Mortimer Eipper. Anika completed a post-graduate course at Transit Dance, performing works by Chimene Steele Prior, Prue Lang, and Paul Malek.

Ruth Osborne, OAM

Ruth Osborne, outgoing director of Canberra’s QL2 Dance, was honoured with the richly deserved award of a Medal of the Order of Australia at the 2024 Australia Day Awards. Osborne has had a distinguished career over several decades, most recently since 1999 with Canberra’s outstanding youth dance organisation, QL2 Dance. Among her previous awards are an Australian Dance Award (Services to Dance), 2011; a Churchill Fellowship, 2017; and three Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards, most recently in 2023 for her performance and input into James Batchelor’s Shortcuts to Familiar Places. For more about Ruth Osborne on this website see, in particular, this link and, more generally, this tag.

Ruth Osborne, Canberra, 2023. Photo: © Olivia Wikner

Meryl Tankard: a new work

My colleague Jennifer Shennan has passed on the news that Ballet Zürich has just premiered a new work by Meryl Tankard. Called For Hedy, it is part of a triple bill called Timekeepers, which looks back to the artistic achievements of the 1920s. Other choreographers represented in Timekeepers are Bronislava Nijinska (Les Noces) and Mthuthuzeli November (Rhapsodies). More information is on the Ballet Zürich website.

Press for January 2024

It has been a while since I have been able to add a section called ‘Press …. ‘ in a dance diary, but in January I had two items published in print outlets (which of course also appeared in an online version). The first appeared in Canberra’s City News, the second in Dance Australia for the 2023 Critics’ Choice section.

‘Flatfooted funding threatens company’s future.’ City News (Canberra), 4-10 January 2024, p. 17. Online version at this link.

‘MICHELLE POTTER, Canberra’. Dance Australia: ‘Critics’ Choice’. Issue 242 (January, February, March 2024), p. 46. The text for this item is quite difficult to read against its black background, even in a blown-up version, so that text is inserted below next to a small image of the page.

Choreographer James Batchelor regards himself as a Canberran, although at this stage in his dance life he works between Australia and the rest of the world. To make a career as a professional, independent artist he goes where work is available for him and most recently has been working in Sweden with Norrdans. But he grew up in Canberra and had his dance training with QL2, Canberra’s youth dance organisation. He returns frequently to his home town and in 2023 presented Shortcuts to Familiar Places, a work that in fact had a significant connection with Canberra. It was a major highlight in the city’s dance calendar.

The work began as an investigation into the transmission of dance from one generation to another. Batchelor was especially interested in his own “body luggage” as passed on to him by his early dance teacher at QL2, Ruth Osborne, whose background had links to the work of pioneering dancer and teacher Gertrud Bodenwieser. Shortcuts to Familiar Places was the end result of this interest and investigation.

Shortcuts began with footage of Osborne giving an insight into the swirling movements of the arms and upper body that she absorbed via her own teacher, former Bodenwieser dancer Margaret Chapple.

As the footage came to an end, Batchelor appeared onstage and performed a shadowy solo that began slowly but that gathered momentum as time passed. From then on there was a beautifully conceived melding of film footage and onstage movement with Batchelor being joined by Chloe Chignell in a series of duets. It was a fascinating experience to watch the movement unfold and to feel a clear connection to what Osborne and others demonstrated and spoke about on film at various moments during the work. In addition to Osborne we saw on film Eileen Kramer, who demonstrated the movements she recalled from Bodenwieser’s Waterlilies, as well as Carol Brown and Shona Dunlop MacTavish. But it was also interesting to see how Batchelor and Chignell moved away from the movement of Bodenwieser and her followers to develop an individual but connected style.

One moment stood out in an exceptional way. It happened when, on film, Osborne stretched her arm forward in a straight line towards Batchelor and Chignell on stage as if reaching to them in a gesture of transmission, which they accepted with arms outstretched towards the footage. There it was, the lineage and its transmission for us all to see.

A driving, original score from Morgan Hickinbotham was played live and a changing pattern of light and dark came from lighting designer Vinny Jones. With dramaturgy by Bek Berger, Shortcuts was an intelligently thought through show. The idea of embodied transmission is one that is so often mentioned in dance discussions today, but with Shortcuts Batchelor showed the concept to us specifically through dance, and demonstrated in particular how a style from an older period can be developed to suit the current era. Shortcuts to Familiar Places was just brilliant to watch and consider.

Michelle Potter, 31 January 2024

Featured image: A moment during the filming of Lake Song, directed by Sue Healey and choreographed by Elizabeth Cameron Dalman (seen in the foreground, coaching from the shore), 2023. Photo: © Sue Healey

Dance diary. December 2023

Li Cunxin’s farewell

Li Cunxin’s farewell as artistic director of Queensland Ballet was celebrated in a gala show over three performances on 12 and 13 December. Below is a tribute to Li from a range of people who worked with him, along with some terrific photos and footage from the decade of his directorship, and earlier. So worth a look!

See more about Li and his incredible input into the growth of Queensland Ballet at this link.

Leanne Benjamin and that outback photograph by Jason Bell

Early in her autobiography, Built for ballet, Leanne Benjamin talks about the circumstances surrounding the creation of the photo taken of her in outback Australia, which I have used on this website on occasions and which (not surprisingly) always generates comments of one kind or another.

Leanne Benjamin who describes this image with the words ‘flying across the outback in my red chiffon.’ Photo: © Jason Bell, 2006

Benjamin was in Australia in December 2006 as a participant in Advance 100 Leading Global Australians Summit, which she says brought together ‘a diverse group of 100 of the best international minds in business, science, education, research and the arts’. A photo shoot with English photographer Jason Bell and his team, unrelated to Advance 100, followed. It was specifically for a Royal Ballet series called A World Stage in which artists were shown in images, and sometimes on brief film footage, reflecting their country of origin. Benjamin calls it ‘an advertising campaign … which emphasised the international character of the Royal Ballet, and the Opera House where it has its home.’ Her costume, which she describes as ‘a Chanel lipstick-red dress with a skirt that would flash out behind me as I moved, and catch the breeze if we were lucky enough to get one in forty-degree heat’, was made in London by the costume department of the Royal Opera House.

‘Jason’s idea,’ Benjamin writes, ‘was to go for the centre of the continent, where even the colour of the earth tells you that you are in Australia. We’d hoped to shoot in front of Uluru, the country’s most famous landmark, but we couldn’t get permission to film there. The previous day, the team had been to the iconic domed rocks of Kata Tjuta and I’d had a terrific time, going through my paces on a flat floor, surrounded by looming boulders. It was as if someone had built a perfect set for a shoot.

The next day—the day we actually got the photograph Jason had been dreaming of—the terrain was much rougher, and the weather more overcast. To my surprise, the team had organised for a local ‘truckie’ to drive an authentic Australian road train slowly back and forth behind the shoot for a few hours. ….. This was not a stunt photograph, it was me, launching myself into the sky, in touch with the red, red earth of my beloved country.’

Who can forget that image?

Quotes above are from Benjamin’s book Built for ballet. An autobiography (Melbourne: Melbourne Books, 2021) pp. 21–22.

Oral history interview with James Batchelor

My final National Library oral history interview for 2023 was with James Batchelor, Canberra-born performer and choreographer who works between Australia and Europe. Amongst the many topics addressed during the interview was a discussion of his choreographic process, including in relation to two of his most recent works—Event and Short cuts to familiar places—and some information about his trip to the sub-Antarctic, including how it came about and the developments that followed the trip. The interview, once processed, will be available for all to hear.

James Batchelor performing in the Mulangarri Grasslands, Canberra, 2021. Photo: © Andrew Sikorski

Stephanie Lake. New resident choreographer at the Australian Ballet

Alice Topp’s term as resident choreographer at the Australian Ballet finished at the end of 2023 and the newly appointed holder of the position is Stephanie Lake. Lake will present her first work for the Australian Ballet, Circle Electric, in Sydney in May 2024 and in Melbourne in October 2024. Circle Electric will share the program with Harald Lander’s Études, which explores the intricacies of the classical ballet technique. The potential is certainly there for audiences to experience two vastly different approaches to dance.

Two of Lake’s recent works (for companies other than her own Stephanie Lake Company), are reviewed on this website at these links: Auto Cannibal (2019) and Biography (2022)

Promotions at the Australian Ballet

There were a number of promotions announced as the Australian Ballet’s 2023 season came to an end. Seen below in a scene from Don Quixote are newly appointed principals Jill Ogai and Marcus Morelli.

Jill Ogai and Marcus Morelli as Kitri and Basilio in *Don Quixote*. The Australian Ballet, 2023. Photos: © Christopher Rodgers-Wilson

In addition, Yuumi Yamada is now a senior artist, Maxim Zenin, Aya Watanabe, Katherine Sonnekus, Misha Barkidjija and Cameron Holmes have been newly appointed as soloists, and Montana Rubin, Evie Ferris, Saranja Crowe, Sara Andrion, Hugo Dumapit, Adam Elmes, Larissa Kiyoto-Ward, and Lilla Harvey have been promoted to the rank of coryphée.

Yuumi Yamada has constantly impressed me over recent years and her promotion is definitely worth celebrating, but congratulations to all who were promoted. I look forward to watching their progress in 2024.

Some statistics for 2023

In 2023 this website received 48,959 visits, that is just over 4,000 per month. The top five 2023 posts in terms of number of visits were, in order, ”Talking to Martin James … about teaching’, ‘Swan Lake. The Australian Ballet (2023)’, ‘Strictly Gershwin, Queensland Ballet’, ‘Alice Topp’s Paragon’, and ‘David McAllister. An exciting retirement opportunity’. Of posts relating specifically to dance in New Zealand the top five posts accessed, again in order, were ‘(m)Orpheus. New Zealand Opera and Black Grace’, ‘Lightscapes. Royal New Zealand Ballet’, ‘Myth and Ritual. Orchestra Wellington with Ballet Collective Aotearoa’, ‘Platinum Royal New Zealand Ballet’ and ‘Ballet Noir. Mary-Jane O’Reilly and Company’. Top tags accessed, some used largely it seems for research purposes, were Mary McKendry, The Australian Ballet, Vadim Muntagirov, Graduation Ball, and Bodenwieser Ballet

Unfortunately Google Analytics, from which my data is obtained, has changed its format and the ability to access the number of visits from particular cities is limited to just one week prior to the period of each visit! But of overseas cities, London and New York appear every week.

Michelle Potter, 31 December 2023

Li Cunxin, 2023. Farewell image from Queensland Ballet. Photographer not identified.

Season’s greetings and the ‘best of’ 2023

To all those who have accessed this website over 2023, especially those who have made comments on various posts, thank you for your interest. I look forward to your continued involvement in 2024. May the coming year be filled with great dance and may peace descend upon the world.

Below are my ‘top five’ productions for the year arranged chronologically according to the date (month only) of the performance I saw. I have this year chosen to select brand new works rather than restagings. This means I have left out a few amazing productions including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Strictly Gershwin, both from Queensland Ballet, and both of which were just stunning. It is always difficult to choose just five works but I feel it is sometimes a good thing to have to adhere to some kind of restriction, so it’s new works only this year.

What remains (Melbourne. Bodytorque digital—a series from the Australian Ballet, February)

Tim Harbour’s What remains was an exceptional tribute to dancer Kevin Jackson on his retirement as a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet. In just a few minutes of film it showed Jackson’s exceptional technique and Harbour’s inventive choreography, while taking every advantage of an ‘off stage’ setting and a score from George Bokaris.

Shortcuts to familiar places. (Canberra. James Batchelor and Collaborators, April)

James Batchelor’s Shortcuts was an examination of how dance is transmitted from generation to generation—a beautifully conceived and outstandingly presented look at the theoretical idea of ‘embodied transmission’.

Paragon. (Sydney. The Australian Ballet, May)

Alice Topp’s Paragon was a tribute to the dancers of the Australian Ballet, past and present, with great input from design and sound collaborators, and with exceptional, visually stunning choreography from Topp. It was an experience, too, to see some of the Australian Ballet’s dancers from past decades return to the stage and to be reminded of their contribution to the art form.

My brilliant career. (Brisbane. Queensland Ballet, June)

Cathy Marston’s examination of Miles Franklin’s novel, My brilliant career, was a masterly production in which every character was clearly drawn choreographically. Marston created a range of movements that gave an exceptional understanding of the nature of each person in the story. My brilliant career was part of a triple bill from Queensland Ballet.

Bespoke. (Brisbane. Queensland Ballet, July)

Bespoke was a remarkable triple bill, the sixth in a series named Bespoke, showing the way artistic director, Li Cunxin, curates an evening of dance. With works from Remi Wortmeyer, Paul Boyd and Natalie Weir, the audience saw an amazing array of ideas and dance styles and approaches from humour to a serious examination of the process of life.

Michelle Potter, 26 December 2023

Dance diary. November 2023

Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards 2023: Dance

In November the Canberra Critics’ Circle announced its awards for 2023. This year five dance awards were presented:

Ruth Osborne, outgoing director of QL2 Dance, which Osborne has led since 1999.
Osborne’s award recognised in particular her outstanding input into James Batchelor’s production Shortcuts to Familiar Places, which was presented at Canberra’s Playhouse in April 2023. My review of Shortcuts is at this link.

Natsuko Yonezwa and Itazura Co for the film Kiku.
Kiku and its accompanying documentary explored dance and the ageing body through the experiences of six Canberra women. My review is at this link.

The six dancers in *Kiku*. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Australian Dance Party for Culture Cruise.
Culture cruise gave those who joined the cruise an innovative experience over land and water, which fused the performing arts, fine dining and Canberra’s cultural institutions. Read my review at this link.

Yolanda Lowatta in a scene from *Culture Cruise*. Photo: © Michelle Potter

Gretel Burgess for A Stroke of Luck.
A Stroke of Luck gave Gretel Burgess the opportunity to produce and direct her lived experience as a stroke survivor. Bill Stephens’ review is at this link.

Caitlin Schilg for her choreography for the Canberra Philharmonic Society Production of Cats.
Caitlin Schilg drew on a diverse range of dance styles to create a series of brilliantly staged production numbers for the musical Cats. Read a review by Bill Stephens at this link.

Oral history interview with Alice Topp

In November I had the pleasure, and honour, of recording an oral history interview for the National Library of Australia with Alice Topp, outgoing resident choreographer with the Australian Ballet.

Alice Topp during an oral history recording, 2023. Photo: © National Library of Australia/Michelle Potter

Alice was most forthcoming about her life and career to date and the interview contains some detailed material about her choreographic process and the establishment of Project Animo, her joint initiative with lighting designer Jon Buswell. The interview is currently undergoing accessioning but cataloguing details will be available in due course.

For more about Alice Topp on this website follow this link.

News from Queensland Ballet

Queensland Ballet has announced details of changes to its line-up of dancers for 2024 including the news that principal dancers Mia Heathcote and Victor Estévez will leave the company at the end of 2023 to join the Australian Ballet in 2024. Heathcote and Estévez have made a remarkable contribution to Queensland Ballet over the past several years. Each has given me much pleasure (Heathcote from as far back as 2013 before she even joined Queensland Ballet) and I hope they will be given every opportunity with the Australian Ballet.

(left) Victor Estévez in *Elite Syncopations*. Queensland Ballet, 2022; (right) Mia Heathcote in *Giselle* Act I. Queensland Ballet, 2023. Photos: © David Kelly

In other news from Queensland Ballet, the company recently announced the establishment of the Van Norton Li Community Health Institute with the goal of sustaining and expanding its Dance Health programs across socioeconomic, age and geographic boundaries and all abilities. For more about the program, including information about the donors to this project, follow this link.

Michelle Potter, 30 November 2023

Featured image: Ruth Osborne (left) receiving her award from Dianne Fogwell, 2021 City News Artist of the Year. Photo: © Len Power

Dance diary. October 2023

News from James Batchelor

James Batchelor continues to make a name for himself in Europe and November will see a national tour around Sweden by Norrdans (Northern Dance) of Batchelor’s latest work Event. Event will share the program with Everlasting—a new love by New York-based choreographer Jeanine Durning. Media for Event describes it as follows:

In Event by Australian choreographer James Batchelor, you encounter a sensuous world of looping patterns and oceanic ripples. Ornamented with a hint of the baroque, the dancers find joy in connection, synchronising and falling into rhythm with an original score from collaborator Morgan Hickinbotham.

Event premiered in late October. One reviewer (Yvonne Rittval) remarked, ‘The stage is covered by a painting with sinuous, swelling shapes in warm colors reminiscent of the Baroque. One gets the exciting feeling that the ten dancers, some wearing crinolines others in many layers of frills, have risen from the painting and are bringing it to life.’

Below is a brief teaser.

Diaghilev’s Empire

Browsing one day in Dymocks bookshop in Sydney I spotted a book called Diaghilev’s Empire. How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World. It was written by English opera critic and (in his own words) ‘incurable balletomane’ Rupert Christiansen and was published in late 2022. It had not previously come to my notice for whatever reason and my initial reaction was ‘not another book about Diaghilev’. But I bought it anyway and am in the process of reading it. So far it has turned out to be a fascinating read and more than interesting for the comments Christiansen has included from books written by those who danced, or otherwise engaged with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. But the one paragraph that continues to make me smile is a quote from American author and critic, Carl van Vechten, about the opening performance in Paris of Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring. Van Vechten remarked (and according to Christiansen this quote comes from Romola Nijinsky’s book Nijinsky):

A young man occupied the place behind me. He stood up during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was labouring, thanks to the potent force of the music, betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great I did not feel the blows for some time. They were perfectly synchronised with the beat of the music.

And so I continue with my reading!

News from Houston Ballet

The most recent news from Houston Ballet is that Australian conductor Simon Thew has been appointed as the company’s musical director and chief conductor. Thew has had a distinguished career across many countries to date and has been the recipient of many awards including the Dame Joan Sutherland/Richard Bonynge Travel Scholarship and a Churchill Fellowship. Thew and Welch first came into contact in 2016 when Houston Ballet staged Welch’s Romeo and Juliet in Australia. On that occasion, Thew joined Houston Ballet’s Ermanno Florio as a guest conductor.

Portrait of Simon Thew. Photo: © Alana Campbell

In other news, Stanton Welch has been at the helm of Houston Ballet for some 20 years now but last year former principal with American Ballet Theatre and recent artistic director of Washington Ballet, Julie Kent, joined him as co-artistic director. An article on that joint directorship written by Nancy Wozny recently appeared in Pointe Magazine. Read it at this link.

Houston Ballet artistic directors Stanton Welch and Julie Kent. Photo: © Julie Soefer

Press for October 2023

’Yummy’ dancers strive for the taste of success.’ Canberra City News, 14 October 2023. Online at this link.

And if you are a Halloween fan …

Enjoy!

Michelle Potter, 31 October 2023

Featured image: Publicity for Norrdans’ double bill Ever. Everlasting (from the Norrdans website)

Ruth Osborne. News from QL2 Dance

A surprise announcement arrived in my inbox today. Ruth Osborne, currently artistic director of QL2 Dance, Canberra’s youth dance organisation, is stepping down from the role she has held for 25 years. The transition to a new chapter for QL2 Dance will be made over a 12 month period and at the end of that time the organisation will be led by Alice Lee Holland.

Osborne’s career to date has been diverse and quite extraordinary. Below are the first two paragraphs of an article I wrote about Osborne at the end of 2016, just before she was about to take up a Churchill Fellowship. Then follows a link to the whole article, which was published in The Canberra Times in December 2016.

Canberra youth dance pioneer Ruth Osborne to continue her work with Churchill Fellowship

Michelle Potter, The Canberra Times, 17 December 2016

Ruth Osborne has been setting up and facilitating dance projects for the young people of Canberra since 1999. It was then that she was invited to come to Canberra from Perth to set up the Quantum Leap Youth Program for the Australian Choreographic Centre at Gorman House. Osborne had had an extraordinarily diverse dance career in Perth, involving teaching, directing and choreography across a range of institutions. She was also a founding board member and artistic director of STEPS Youth Dance Company for 10 years.

As we sit in the beautifully green and cool courtyard of Gorman House, Osborne talks of her experience in Perth. ‘When I started working with young people in Perth, I could see the benefits of bringing them together from different places, not just from one dance school,’ she says. ‘It was about opening up minds; attracting boys into dance, and youth programs were a great way of doing that; and looking at who were our artists, and how young people might benefit from their input. The move to Canberra was an exciting prospect as it gave me the opportunity to work full-time with young people.’

Read the full article at this link.

Since the Churchill experience Osborne has continued, unrelentingly, her extraordinary work with young dancers in Canberra and surrounding regions. A very recent activity was a collaboration with James Batchelor, a former Quantum Leaper and now an acclaimed professional dancer and choreographer, on the transmission of dance from artist to artist. It resulted in a work called Shortcuts to Familiar Places. Read more about it at this link.

The official announcement from QL2 Dance is at this link.

Michelle Potter, 20 July 2023

Shortcuts to Familiar Places. James Batchelor and collaborators

29 April 2023. Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre

Shortcuts to Familiar Places began a few years ago as an investigation by James Batchelor into the transmission of dance from one generation to another. Dance is an art form that has no widely practiced method of reconstruction via a score or similar written derivative, and knowledge of a movement style or a particular choreographic work is most commonly regarded as being passed on from body to body—sometimes referred to as ‘embodied transmission’. Batchelor was especially interested in his own ‘body luggage’, transmitted to him by his early dance teacher Ruth Osborne whose background had links to the work of pioneering dancer and teacher Gertrud Bodenwieser, and who had mentored Batchelor at Canberra’s QL2. The work that emerged was the above-mentioned Shortcuts to Familiar Places and the result was somewhat unexpected with its beautifully conceived melding of film footage and onstage movement. A driving, original score from Morgan Hickinbotham was played live and a changing pattern of light and dark came from lighting designer Vinny Jones.

Shortcuts began with footage of Osborne giving us an insight into the swirling movements of the arms and upper body that she absorbed via her teacher, former Bodenwieser dancer, Margaret Chapple. As the footage came to an end, Batchelor appeared onstage and began a shadowy solo that began slowly but that gathered momentum as time passed. It was fascinating to watch the movement unfold and to feel a clear connection to Osborne’s demonstration, but also to see dancing that moved away from the initial style in a very geometrically structured manner.

James Batchelor in a moment from *Shortcuts to Familiar Places*, Canberra 2023. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Batchelor left the stage at the end of the solo and more footage appeared. This time we watched as Eileen Kramer, a surviving Bodenwieser dancer (now aged 107), recalled some of the choreography she had danced during the Bodenwieser era, in particular movements from the duet Waterlilies. This she was passing on to Batchelor and filmmaker Sue Healey (neither of whom we saw on the footage but whose presence was clear to us).

An onstage duet between Batchelor and another QL2 alumna, Chloe Chignell, followed and at times recalled, quite strongly for me, the intertwining of arms that characterised Waterlilies. But again, Batchelor’s choreography didn’t stay with Kramer’s recollections but moved on in a new direction using the Waterlilies movements as a starting point. That Batchelor named the duet Bodenwieser Remixed gives a clue to what was occurring and in fact probably encapsulates Batchelor’s whole process with Shortcuts. But that aside, the duet showed a truly exquisite dancerly connection between Batchelor and Chignell.

James Batchelor and Chloe Chignell in a moment from *Shortcuts to Familiar Places*, Canberra 2023. Photo: © Lorna Sim

The final piece of footage was an exceptional mix of different snippets of film including some relating to Osborne; some to Carol Brown, former student of Bodenwieser dancer Shona Dunlop MacTavish; and, briefly in archival footage, some to MacTavish herself, with Batchelor and Chignell reacting to the footage. In one amazing moment, Osborne on film stretched her arm forward in a straight line towards Batchelor and Chignell on the stage as if reaching to them in a gesture of transmission, which they accepted with arms outstretched towards the footage. There it was, the lineage for us all to see.

Ruth Osborne with James Batchelor and Chloe Chignell in a moment from *Shortcuts to Familiar Places*, Canberra 2023. Photo: © Lorna Sim

The duet that Batchelor and Chignell continued as the last section of footage faded was linked choreographically with the previous one, at least at first in terms of the connection that was set up between the two dancers. But gradually Hickinbotham’s score got stronger and more urgent, and the gentleness of the choreography gathered strength and speed. There was, throughout this last duet, a link back to Bodenwieser, I believe, as much of the movement seemed to be moving in a figure-of-eight pattern, which Osborne had mentioned in her early demonstration of the Bodenwieser technique. But the duet moved faster and faster with little skips and jumps inserted. Then it came to a sudden end with a blackout. When the lights went up, we saw how Batchelor and Chignell had gone all out, dancing on and on until pretty much exhausted, to give us a modern perspective on the transmission they had been examining.

Shortcuts to Familiar Places, which includes dramaturgy by Bek Berger, was an intelligently thought through show and just brilliant to watch and consider.

Michelle Potter, 1 May 2023

Featured image: James Batchelor and Chloe Chignell in a moment from Shortcuts to Familiar Places, Canberra 2023. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Australian Dance Week, 2023. Ausdance ACT

Audiences in Canberra are being offered a wide range of dance events during the week beginning 29 April. That day is International Dance Day and the week of festivities, hosted by Ausdance ACT, will officially be opened on that very day by the ACT’s Minister for the Arts, Tara Cheyne MLA. The range of events is extraordinary and highlights the growing strength of dance, both professional and community, in the city and surrounds.

As a precursor to the week, Australian Dance Party, Canberra’s professional dance company, will present Hillscape at the National Arboretum on 28 April. Hillscape, choreographed by Ashlee Bye and co-commissioned by Ausdance ACT and Canberra International Music Festival (CIMF), will feature as part of a CIMF program called Seeds of Life. Seeds of Life marks the tenth anniversary of the National Arboretum and the twenty years that have passed since the disastrous bushfire season in Canberra in 2003. Hillscape, with an original score by Dan Walker, celebrates regeneration.

Yolanda Lowatta, Pat Hayes-Cavanagh and Ashlee Bye in *Hillscape*, 2023. Photo: © Olivia Wikner

But on International Dance Day itself audiences will be able to see two of Canberra’s professional, independent dance artists in a one-off performance, Batchelor & Lea, at the Canberra Theatre. James Batchelor will present his Shortcuts to Familiar Places, a solo work that premiered recently in Europe and that focuses on Batchelor’s examination, over an extended period, of how dance styles are transferred across generations of performers. Liz Lea will reprise her outstanding production, Red. Red was first seen in Canberra in 2018. Since then the production has toured extensively overseas.

(left) James Batchelor in an early iteration of *Shortcuts to Familiar Places*, 2022. Photo: © Morgan Hickinbotham; (right) Liz Lea in a study for *Red*, 2016. Photo: © Nino Tamburri

Liz Lea in a study for a forthcoming show, 'RED'. Photo: © Nino Tamburri — (left) James Batchelor in an early iteration of *Shortcuts to Familiar Places*, 2022. Photo: © Morgan Hickinbotham; (right) Liz Lea in a study for *Red*, 2016. Photo: © Nino Tamburri

The choreography of both Batchelor and Lea will feature elsewhere during the week. Batchelor’s new work for Canberra’s mature-age dancers, the GOLDs, is Leaning Rippling, Breathing. It will be featured at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) on 7 May as a pop-up experience in relation to the NPG’s current exhibition ‘Portrait 23: Identity’. This new, short work is accompanied by an original sound design by Morgan Hickinbotham. It will also be seen in the break between the two works on the Batchelor & Lea program.

The GOLDs in a study for *Leaning, Rippling, Breathing*, 2023. Photo: © James Batchelor/Zander Porter

Lea’s Stellar Company, a multi-arts dance company working in an inclusive, intercultural. intergenerational capacity, is presenting an online version of its earlier program, A Stellar Lineup (2022), over a 24 hour period. Check the Dance Week calendar (link below) for further details.

The focus on inclusivity by Batchelor and Lea in Leaning, Rippling, Breathing and A Stellar Lineup highlights the strength of community dance in Canberra and there are a number of community activities included during the week (see below for calendar link). One major community feature will be the free classes being offered by ZEST Dance for Wellbeing. ZEST offers a movement experience for adults who want to keep their body and brain active and healthy, regardless of their mobility, skill or age. A leading teacher for the ZEST program, and in many ways responsible for the existence of Dance for Wellbeing programs in Canberra, Philip Piggin, spoke to me about his interest in pursuing these projects stressing the importance of giving everyone a chance to experience the benefits of dance to mind and body.

ZEST Dance for Wellbeing class. Photo: © Art Atelier

Included in the Dance Week lineup are many other open classes in a variety of techniques from a variety of dance schools and organisations including a Hungarian folk dance workshop from Compagnie József Trefeli and a Bharatanatyam workshop from Vaidehi Subfamanyan. For information about classes and a number of events not mentioned in this post, see the full Dance Week calendar at this link (with apologies for non-inclusion of a number of exciting initiatives).

Michelle Potter, 19 April 2023