Dance diary. June 2026

Lucy Guerin moves on

Lucy Guerin, director and founder of the Melbourne-based contemporary dance company Lucy Guerin Inc, will step down from her position at the end of 2026. Guerin established her company 25 years ago and, while 25 years is a more than commendable time to have been at the helm of a dance company, the news came as something of a shock. Guerin said of her decision:

After 25 years, I have decided to step down as Artistic Director of LGI to explore new directions in dance. I founded the company in 2002 to support the making and touring of my productions, but over the years it has become so much more than that. It is now a centre for choreography, discussion, learning, connection and ideas and there are so many who have worked incredibly hard to support this organization. I am deeply grateful to all of them

Guerin will continue to lead the company until the end of 2026 and will perform a solo work in October before relinquishing her role as director. The LGI Board will begin a search for a new director in the coming weeks. It will be interesting to see who will be selected to take on the position vacated by Guerin, and what new role Guerin will take on in the future.

For posts about Lucy Guerin on this website follow this link.

Adelaide College of the Arts

I had the pleasure of being in Adelaide recently where I saw a performance by dance and design students from Years 2 and 3 at the Adelaide College of the Arts. The evening consisted of two original dance works, Made to_ by Singaporean guest choreographer Ru Ma, along with there & gone by Peter Sheedy, lecturer and course co-ordinator for the dance program at the College.

The students performed exceptionally well in both works although I especially admired the Sheedy work. It was a thoroughly abstract work making great use of onstage objects that were moved around the stage at various times. It also had the dancers constantly regrouping in various ways and was in fact an exceptional way of introducing students to the various possibilities of choreography. A great training piece although the dancers performed like professionals rather than students in training.

News from Loughlan Prior

Loughlan Prior’s production of Hansel Gretel, made originally for Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2019, has just recently been performed in Las Vegas by Nevada Ballet Theatre. It was really well received there and was described in one review as a ‘spectacular, surreal imagining’ of the well-known story with ‘stunning visual design’ and ‘high energy choreography’.

Read Jennifer Shennan’s review of the work as seen in Wellington in 2019 at this link, and also her review of the 2023 return season at this link.

Prior is currently working in London on a new show, The McRae/Vassiliev Project, in collaboration with director Natalie Abrahami, dancer and choreographer Steven McRae, musician Vasko Vassilev, and dancer Sarah Lamb. Inspired by the work of violinist Niccolo Paganinit, it will premiere in September in the Linbury Theatre at London’s Royal Opera House.

See more about The McRae/Vassiiev Project at this link.

Loughlan Prior and Laura Saxon-Jones performing with artists from the New Zealand School of Music, 2019. Photo: © Stephen Gibbs

Beth Dean

I quite accidentally came across a small manuscript collection of material about Beth Dean held in the National Library in Canberra (MS 10011, received 2004). I was always under the impression that her collection was held in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales, and indeed there is a substantial collection there. But somehow a small number of items found their way to Canberra. It was a thrill to find some early photographs of Dean, which I had never seen before.

Beth Dean in Cleveland, Ohio, 1935. Photo: © Harry A Cole

But especially interesting, given that several years ago now (and without being aware of the NLA material), I had given a paper on dance in Australia in the 1950s. My talk focused on Australian themes and, not surprisingly, my mention of Dean included a brief discussion of her choreography to John Antill’s score Corroboree. So, I was especially interested in Dean’s writings in the NLA collection regarding her extensive research for her production of Corroboree, and the story as she conceived it. Of her approach to the story she wrote:

The story of my “Corroboree” was about a young boy and his initiation, and his facing of himself and of the chimeras of our fears and our imagination. The Dreamtime stories of his ancestors are shown to him, as they were when we sat in the red dust with those people during all their ceremonies.

And of her background research she wrote:

For my version of the ballet I had spent those months [on which she elaborates at length elsewhere in the papers] living with the Aboriginal people studying their mythology, but even more finding the beauty and the depth of their discipline.

It is totally fascinating material, provided we look at it as coming from the 1950s.

Press for June 2026

– ‘Opera Gala (Snow Concert Hall ).’ Review of Opera Gala. Limelight Magazine, 1 June 2026. Online at this link.

– ‘Physicality fuels Sydney Dance Company’s engine.’ Review of Engine, Sydney Dance Company. CBR CityNews, 25 June 2026. Online at this link

Michelle Potter, 30 June 2026

Featured image: Portrait of Lucy Guerin. Photo: © Amber Haines

Dance diary. April 2023

International Dance Day, 2023

Every year a message from an outstanding dance artist is circulated throughout the world by the International Theatre Institute and the World Dance Alliance. In 2023 those organisations have chosen dancer and choreographer YANG Liping from China to write this annual message. YANG Liping is a member of the Bai ethnic group from Dali, Yunnan Province. She is a National First-class Dancer and the Vice Chairperson of China Dancers Association. YANG Liping’s message is available to read at this link.

In the ACT International Dance Day was celebrated with a gathering hosted by Ausdance ACT. The event featured a speech from the ACT’s Minister for the Arts, Tara Cheyne, and performances by Grace Peng, with a brief appearance by Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, and by the multi-cultural youth group, Passion and Purpose.

Elizabeth Dalman and Grace Peng at the International Dance Day celebration. Canberra 2023

Clanship. Stephen Page

Stephen Page gave the 2023 Andrew Sayers Lecture, which he called Clanship, at the National Portrait Gallery on 27 April 2023. The lecture included information on, stories about, and photographs of his extended family, as well as information about the works he made over a thirty-year period as artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre. Page was hugely popular with the audience and the more they laughed and clapped the more he responded in a theatrical way!

Stephen Page, 2021 Photo Daniel Boud — Stephen Page, 2021. Photo: © Daniel Boud

Page was welcomed by the new director of the National Portrait Gallery, Bree Pickering. Pickering was appointed to the position in February 2023 and, hopefully, will continue to offer dance performances in conjunction with exhibitions (as has happened frequently in the past).

.Pierre Lacotte (1932-2023)

I was sorry to hear of the recent death of Pierre Lacotte, French dancer, choreographer and director. It sent me back to my collection of programs for productions by the Paris Opera Ballet, specifically to that for Paquita, which I saw in Paris back in 2002, a full-length production that Lacotte restaged (as far as was possible) from the original production of 1846. The program gives a fascinating account of the history of Paquita, which is most commonly seen, including in Australia, in an abbreviated version of Act III only. While I have to admit I did not find the full-length production immensely appealing, I was lucky to have seen it as a complete work.

An obituary by Laura Capelle, as published in the Financial Times, is at this link. Unfortunately, like most of the obituaries I accessed, this one probably requires payment to read. I’ll keep looking for others that are free and that make worthwhile reading.

Lucy Guerin

News from Lucy Guerin Inc is that the company will be appearing at the Venice Biennnale in a program curated by Wayne McGregor. Lucy Guerin Inc will be presenting PENDULUM (commissioned by RISING) and Split alongside a suite of other programming activities including artist talks, film screening, and a masterclass with Guerin. Other dance artists/companies who will be presenting include Simone Forte, Tao Dance Theater, Rachid Ouramdane, Xie Xin, Michael Keegan-Dolan, Oona Doherty, Acosta Danza, and William Forsythe.

A terrific opportunity for Lucy Guerin Inc.

Michelle Potter, 30 April 2023

Featured image: Promotional image for International Dance Day 2023. Photo credit: Yunnan Yang Liping, Art & Culture Company

Talking to Melanie Lane

My first encounter with the choreography of Melanie Lane was in 2019 when her work WOOF was part of a Sydney Dance Company triple bill called Bonachela/Nankivell/Lane. WOOF, which two years earlier had been a hit in Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed program, was for me the outstanding work on the 2019 triple bill. I had also seen Lane perform, along with Lilian Steiner, in Lucy Guerin’s SPLIT in 2018. But really I was way behind the times. Lane had already established herself as a choreographer and performer well before I had the chance to see her productions.

Lane was born in Sydney but grew up in Canberra and undertook intensive training with Janet Karin at the National Capital Ballet School. Lane recalls with pleasure and admiration the influence Karin had on her development and remembers in particular a program Karin staged in 1989 for the school’s National Capital Dancers. It featured newly choreographed works by Joe Scoglio (Midstream), Natalie Weir (The Host) and Paul Mercurio (A Moment of Choice). ‘Janet was so supportive of new choreography,’ Lane says. ‘I really got connected with contemporary movement as a result.’

After completing her school studies at Canberra’s Stirling College, Lane went to Perth to study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) from where she graduated with a Diploma of Performing Arts, and where she developed further her interest in contemporary dance and choreography. Between 2000 and 2014 she worked with a range of companies and in a range of cities and venues in Europe as both a performer and choreographer. Now Lane is back in Canberra and her newest work, Metal Park, will be performed by Quantum Leap, Canberra’s youth dance company, in a triple bill named Terra Firma.

After the opening in Vienna in April of The Trojan Women, a theatre piece directed by Australian Adena Jacobs with choreography by Lane, and following a brief stint in Heidelberg doing preliminary work on a dance theatre piece due to open next year, Lane arrived in Canberra just two weeks before Metal Park’s opening night. I wondered how she would go about teaching the new work, and preparing the dancers of Quantum Leap for the experience.

‘I began working with Quantum Leap on Metal Park, which is the first work I have created in Canberra, in January of this year,’ she says. ‘We had an intensive two and a half weeks of development time. It was a little challenging because of the pandemic, which was at a peak. We had dancers in lockdown, dancers zooming in and a number of other difficulties. Then I had to go back to Europe. But now I’m here and I am looking forward to getting back to work in person with the dancers. I find working with young people quite inspiring. There is something magical about the sense of imagination and creativity they have, and their level of enthusiasm and energy is thrilling.’

Quantum Leap dancers rehearsing *Metal Park*, 2022. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Metal Park is an extension of aspects of some of Lane’s earlier works in which she has examined links between the body and objects or props. ‘It’s about zooming in on everyday reactions we have with materiality,’ she explains, ‘and using those reactions to question how we relate to our environment. It is a way too of encouraging the dancers to work with materials—objects of various kinds— as part of their practice.’ Metal Park will be performed to a sound composition by Lane’s partner, Christopher Clark, and will have lighting by Mark Dyson.

We can look forward too to further work from Lane in Canberra. In June she will be appearing at the National Gallery of Australia with Jo Lloyd (details to be confirmed). Also in June the Brisbane-based Australasian Dance Collective will present her work Alterum at the Canberra Theatre Centre as part of a triple bill, Three. She will also shortly start preliminary work on a future production in collaboration with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. Stay tuned.

Terra Firma, which will include works by Cadi McCarthy and Steve and Lilah Gow in addition to Lane’s Metal Park, is at the Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, from 26 to 28 May 2022.

Michelle Potter, 15 May 2022

Featured image: Melanie Lane conducting a summer intensive for her new work Metal Park, 2022. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Michelle Ryan in 'Rasa'. Photo: © Régis Lansac

Dance diary. March 2020

Award for Michelle Ryan

It was a thrill to hear that Michelle Ryan, currently director of Restless Dance Theatre in Adelaide, has received the Australia Council’s 2020 Award for Dance. The award, whose previous recipients have included Vicki van Hout, Phillip Adams, Stephen Page, Lucy Guerin and Garry Stewart, is to acknowledge an artist ‘who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to Australian dance’.

Ryan will be especially well known to Canberra and Adelaide audiences for her performances with Meryl Tankard Company in Canberra and with Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Michelle Ryan for the National Library of Australia’s Oral History and Folklore Collection. That interview, recorded in Adelaide in 2014, is now available as an online audio file at this link. It also has a summary and a transcript (uncorrected).

Art, not Apart, 2020

One of the last public dance performances in Canberra before such things were no longer permitted (for the moment we hope) was a joint production between Australian Dance Party and QL2 Dance. It was an outdoor event held on the grassy slope in front of the National Film and Sound Archive.

QL2 Dance and Australian Dance Party in 'Art, not Apart', Canberra 2020. Photo: Neville Potter — Scenes from *Art, not Apart*. QL2 Dance and Australian Dance Party, Canberra 2020

Called YGen to IGen it explored through cross-generational performance ‘the fears, hopes and imaginings of possible futures’. It was a beautiful Canberra afternoon but in retrospect the topic was more apposite than anyone might have imagined.

National Photographic Prize

After a portrait of Elizabeth Dalman won the inaugural Darling Portrait Prize, another dancer featured in the 2020 National Photographic Portrait Prize announced shortly after the Darling award. The portrait of Eileen Kramer by Hugh Stewart was Highly Commended. Read more about Eileen Kramer at this link.

David Hallberg

One of the events I had booked to see in London in mid-March, which, like the Scarlett Swan Lake, I didn’t manage to get to (and it was cancelled anyway) was Insights: In Conversation with David Hallberg. But here is the image I was given to use in my discussion of the event.

I am curious about Hallberg’s forthcoming new role as artistic director of the Australian Ballet of course. Here is what he said in a recent article in Dance Magazine:

The dancing is already at a very high standard, the repertoire is solid and the audience base is dedicated. But I want to add certain things to the repertoire that haven’t yet been seen in Australia. I’ve seen such a variety of work in New York—and not just at Lincoln Center—and in Russia and Europe. I have a really broad palette. It’s just a matter of tailoring it to the interests of the dancers and the tastes of audiences in Australia.

I also want to bring the company around the world. I have these amazing contacts I’ve made throughout my career that I want The Australian Ballet to benefit from.

And I want to dive into the company’s responsibility to the greater Australian community. A lot of that has to do with education and really getting into isolated communities in Australia, communities that don’t necessarily make it to the Opera House in Sydney or the State Theatre in Melbourne. I think every cultural organization in this era needs to question what their responsibility is to the greater community, and not just put on a beautiful ballets in a beautiful opera house.

Of course, living in Canberra as I do and knowing the lack of interest the Australian Ballet has in visiting Canberra, I wonder whether the national capital is an ‘isolated community’. Fingers crossed! Here is a link to the Dance Magazine article and a link to writing about Hallberg on this site.

Michelle Potter, 31 March 2020

Featured image: Michelle Ryan in Rasa, Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre, Adelaide 1996. Photo: © Régis Lansac

Scene from Loughlan Prior's 'The appearance of colour.' Bespoke, Queensland Ballet, 2019. Photo: © David Kelly

Bespoke 2019. Queensland Ballet

9 November 2019. Brisbane Powerhouse

Bespoke is the generic name given to an initiative started by Queensland Ballet a few years ago to encourage new choreography. This year, which is the first year I have managed to catch the show, the selected choreographers were Lucy Guerin, Amy Hollingsworth and Loughlan Prior. Briefly, Guerin is a well-established artist working out of Melbourne, Hollingsworth has recently been appointed artistic director of Brisbane’s Expressions Dance company, taking over from Natalie Weir, and Prior is an Australian-born dancer/choreographer currently working with Royal New Zealand Ballet as that company’s resident choreographer. Dancers in the Bespoke program were from Queensland Ballet’s main company along with the company’s Jette Parker Young Artists.

Prior’s work, The appearance of colour, opened the program. It began with the dancers, dressed in skin-coloured, body-hugging costumes by William Fitzgerald, grouped tightly together in a circle of light that grew in size over the first few minutes. The choreography was fast and full of sharp movements. At first there was little use of the stage beyond the circle but gradually a wider area of the stage was used and the dancers began to manipulate small square blocks of white, and later coloured, light, which they occasionally used to form geometric patterns in the darkness that surrounded them.

The second section, the most exciting choreographically, began with a duet between a man and a woman and was distinguished by slow motion lifts and movements where bodies drifted across and around each other. The two dancers were later joined by a third, another man, giving more capacity for bodies to be transferred across, around and over each other. As the section came to an end, the woman was left alone on the stage and we witnessed quite suddenly the arrival of coloured light washing across the stage floor.

In the third section the space was filled with colour in clear contrast to the first two sections where black and white light predominated. The choreography once again returned to faster movement, and we again saw a larger cast of dancers.

The arrival of colour was an interesting idea that Prior says was inspired by thoughts of ‘human responses to colour emerging from darkness’. The lighting, designed by Cameron Goerg, was quite mesmerising and for me overpowered the dancing much the way the use of film footage so often does when used as part of a dance work. Prior’s choreography for the duet/trio in the second section gave most insight into his choreographic talents, but I hope he can avoid having certain features of a work overpowering the choreography.

Guerin’s pointNONpoint occupied the middle part of the program. Whatever Guerin might have written about it, I could only think, throughout the entire piece, of the subtitle of Peter Oswald’s biography of Vaslav Nijinsky—A leap into madness.

pointNONpoint began with a single female dancer wearing a simple translucent grey dress/overshirt and moving her fingers. Progressively she was joined by more and more dancers, some on pointe (including some of the male dancers), others barefoot. Their movements were usually highly eccentric, and often included odd hand and finger movements. Some dancers had red-coloured fingers. But the choreography was also often predictably balletic—échappés to second position, simple retirés, arabesques and other easily recognised on pointe ballet vocabulary. To say it was a mish-mash of movement is something of an understatement.

John Paul Lowe in Lucy Guerin’s *pointNONpoint* from *Bespoke*, 2019. Photo: © David Kelly

The costumes, designed by Andrew Treloar, got more complicated as each group of dancers joined in. Various kinds of trailing items were attached to the back of the overshirts, while collars, some stiffened and heightened so they almost obscured the dancer’s face, were added. On one or two occasions the stage and dancers were suddenly engulfed by red light, and just as suddenly the red light was removed. To me this work was about accumulation and the progressive arrival of dancers into the group, and the build up of items to the costumes both developed this idea. But there were may facets of pointNONpoint that seemed not to add to anything other than eccentricity.

Hollingsworth’s contribution, From within, occupied the closing section of the program. After struggling with the vagaries of pointNONpoint it was a relief to see something that was a little easier to watch. It was meant to be an immersive experience and the unoccupied white chair, complete with its own spotlight, situated in an upstage corner was (I assume) meant to be for us, the audience. From within also contained the best performance of the entire program, a beautiful solo from Vanessa Morelli. It was danced almost on the spot but Morelli’s exceptionally smooth, flowing dancing was an absolute joy to watch as it coursed through her body.

Choreographically, however, I have to say From within reminded me a lot of what we see from Sydney Dance Company, where movement is meant to evoke emotion. Hollingsworth worked with Sydney Dance under Rafael Bonachela for a number of years as a dancer and then as Dance Director. But despite what seemed like a strong choreographic connection with Bonachela’s style, Hollingsworth’s directing experience is perhaps why From within looked so focused, so beautifully rehearsed and so easy to watch, with its lovely bursts of humour as Siri, everyone’s assistant, was called upon at various times.

Dancers in Amy Hollingsworth’s *From Within*. *Bespoke* 2019. Photo © David Kelly

Bespoke 2019 was not the most exciting dance event I have been to this year (or any year). But it’s a great initiative and deserves applause for what it might achieve—if not this time.

Michelle Potter, 12 November 2019

Featured image: Scene from Loughlan Prior’s The appearance of colour. Bespoke, Queensland Ballet, 2019. Photo: © David Kelly

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!

SPLIT. Lucy Guerin Inc.

12 August 2018. The Studio, Sydney Opera House

SPLIT began with two dancers, one wearing a rather drab, blue-grey dress, the other naked, performing on a marked-out square on the floor of the Studio, the Sydney Opera House’s most intimate performing space. Both dancers executed the same movements in unison. At times the choreography consisted of small movements of the arms, even just the fingers. At other times it gathered momentum and was almost wild as arms flew up and around. Sometimes it was done on the spot. Other times it moved around the marked-out square. The dancers were astonishing, both of them, in keeping together no matter what the choreography encompassed. They reminded me of the best Cunningham dancers whose sense of ‘body time’ produces similar qualities.

But, in this opening section, what fascinated me more than anything else was how different the choreography looked on the naked dancer (Lilian Steiner) from the view one had of it on the clothed dancer (Melanie Lane). On the naked body the choreography showed how remarkable and articulate the dancing body can be. This is not at all to take away from the performance of Lane but it was a shock to see how much of the mechanics and beauty of Lucy Guerin’s choreography was lost with a covered up torso (as naive as that might sound).

After this opening, and also longest section, the splits occurred. Over the course of the performance the dancers stopped several times and, using white tape that adhered to the floor, divided into two the space in which they had been dancing. After several such divisions, the space was so small that the show came to an inevitable end. And of course as the space got smaller the connections between the dancers was affected, as of course was their freedom to move.

But, while the split caused by these divisions was spatially determined, there was also an emotional split between the dancers. The unison dancing gave way to what was a kind of anger-driven connection between them. There were times when silent screams seemed to fill the air and in one tortured moment it looked like Steiner was ripping out Lane’s insides and eating them. A few recurring motifs indicated ongoing conflict.

But in my mind there was also a split in Guerin’s approach. At times she seemed to have made SPLIT from a totally intellectual point of view. The beautiful unison of the opening section was quite matter of fact in many respects and throughout that opening section there was no real emotional connection between the dancers and us—no change of facial expression for example. And the spatial division made in subsequent sections was also quite matter of fact. It was simple geometry. Even the timing was intellectually motivated with each section being half as long as the preceding one. So how then did we sit on the edge of our seats as the work progressed? That effect was not matter of fact but emotional involvement. Extraordinary really.

Music was by London-based electronic musician Scanner and was just a two and a half-minute sample on a loop. (I read this in an interesting article about Guerin and her musical tastes in the August 2018 edition of Limelight). It was relentless, as one might expect, but its match with the choreography was absorbing. I also enjoyed being drawn in by the lighting (Paul Lim), which moved between down lights and side lights, with the latter projecting shadows of the dancers onto a white screen at one side of the performance area.

SPLIT was a totally absorbing 45 minute (or so) show and was brilliantly danced by Lane and Steiner. I look forward to Lucy Guerin’s next show and regret it has been so long since I saw her work.

Michelle Potter, 13 August 2018

SPLIT. Lucy Guerin Inc. Photo: Gregory Lo

Scene from 'Great Sport!' Canberra 2016. Photo © Lorna Sim

Australian Dance Awards 2017

24 September 2017. The Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne

The winners of the 2017 Australian Dance Awards were announced in a ceremony in Melbourne on 24 September. The Playhouse at the Victorian Arts Centre was packed for what turned out to be an occasion with strong emotional and political overtones. The evening was hosted by cabaret star Sarah Ward and dancer Benjamin Hancock, both of whom brought a somewhat outrageous element to the evening. (To be absolutely honest, I can never understand why hosts of such events have to behave as if the show belongs to them). The politics came in the form of references by several of the presenters to the current same-sex marriage campaign.

The first half of the program suffered from what I can only describe as ‘technical issues’ in which the digital display of images and credit lines for nominees, and the eventual winner in each category (not to mention the life dates and images in the ‘In Memoriam’ section), didn’t fit properly on the screen. This was not a good look at all and resulted in confusion in some cases when the winner’s name was not given correctly by the presenter. I had to wonder whether there had been a tech rehearsal or not! Fortunately, the problem was fixed during the interval but it didn’t make up for the poor standard of production in the first half. The printed program was, however, beautifully designed and produced.

Nevertheless, for dance in the ACT, the outstanding news was that Liz Lea took out the award for Outstanding Achievement in Community Dance. She received the award for Great Sport!, a site specific work that Lea directed in collaboration with Canberra Dance Theatre, the National Museum of Australia, Dance for Parkinson’s ACT, and seven different choreographers—Lea herself, Martin del Amo, Kate Denborough, Tammi Gissell, Jane Ingall, Philip Piggin and Gerard van Dyck. This was a richly deserved award that recognised Lea’s significant effort to collaborate across the community spectrum, to seek out skilled choreographers from within the ACT and elsewhere, and to make dance that is inclusive. As it happens, however, Lea was one who suffered as a result of the ‘technical issues’. Her name was not called out as the recipient of the award!

Here is a link to my review of Great Sport! following its opening performance in celebration of World Health Day 2016.

Congratulations to Lea and all those who received an award. Here is the complete list of awardees.

Lifetime Achievement: Helen Herbertson
Services to Dance: Jennifer Irwin
Services to Dance Education: Kim Walker
Outstanding Achievement in Community Dance: Liz Lea and collaborators for Great Sport!
Outstanding Achievement in Youth Dance: Catapult Dance (The Flipside Project) for In Search of the Lost Things
Outstanding Achievement in Choreography: Lucy Guerin for The Dark Chorus
Outstanding Performance by a Company: Bangarra Dance Theatre for OUR Land People Stories
Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer: Ako Kondo (Australian Ballet) for Coppélia
Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer: Benjamin Hancock (Lucy Guerin Inc) for The Dark Chorus
Outstanding Performance in Commercial Dance or Musical Theatre: Jack Chambers (Stage Entertainment & Chichester Festival) for Singin’ in the Rain
Outstanding Achievement in Dance on Film or New Media: Tara and Pippa Samaya (The Samaya Wives) for The Knowledge Between Us.

In addition, Noel Tovey was inducted into the Hall of Fame and, in an emotion-filled acceptance speech, acknowledged those who had influenced his career, going right back to Jean Alexander and Xenia Borovansky. The Ausdance Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship, an award worth $10,000, went to Kristina Chan.

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Apart from Liz Lea’s award, and its significance for the growth of dance in the ACT, from a very personal perspective, I was thrilled with the following:

Australian Ballet principal dancer Ako Kondo took out the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer for her performance as Swanilda in Coppélia. While an ADA in this category refers in particular to a performance in a particular year, not for a body of work, I have watched Kondo perform in many productions over the past few years and I could not help but think back to those many and varied times when I have had the pleasure of watching her onstage. Her technique is spectacular and in certain roles, including that of Swanilda, she just sparkles. See my previous comments at this tag.

Ako Kondo in *Coppélia* Act II. The Australian Ballet 2016. Photo: © Kate Longley

Jennifer Irwin walked away with the award for Services to Dance. Irwin has been designing costumes for major dance companies since she began working with Sydney Dance Company in the 1980s. Apart from Sydney Dance Company under Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon, Irwin has had significant commissions from Bangarra Dance Theatre and the Australian Ballet. In her acceptance speech, Irwin acknowledged Graeme Murphy and Stephen Page for the influence they have had on her career. In addition, Irwin designed costumes for Dirty Dancing, the musical that had its first performances in 2004 in Australia. It featured well-known Australian dancer Joseph Brown, and the show went on to have popular seasons around the world. Irwin also designed parts of the 2000 Sydney Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. See this tag for further comments on various of Irwin’s designs.

Wearing costumes designed by Jennifer Irwin: (left) Amy Harris and Lana Jones in *The narrative of nothing*. The Australian Ballet, 2012. Photo: © Jeff Busby; (right) Kaine Sultan Babij in a study for *Sheoak*. Bangarra Dance Theatre, 2015. Photo: © Edward Mulvihill

Bangarra Dance Theatre received the coveted award of Outstanding Performance by a Company for OUR land people stories. This triple bill was a truly stunning example of the way in which Bangarra produces work in which dance meets theatre, meets art, meets music. It showcased the choreography of three dancers from within the ranks of the company—Jasmin Sheppard, Daniel Riley and Beau Dean Riley Smith—with the addition of a work from artistic director Stephen Page. It demonstrated Bangarra’s interest in bringing a wide range of Indigenous issues to the stage. Politics, kinship, and art all played a major role in the production and, as always, the show was splendidly staged and thrilling to watch.Daniel Riley accepted the award on behalf of Bangarra and acknowledged David Page, who died in 2016 and to whom the production of OUR land people stories was dedicated.Here is a link to my review of OUR land people stories.

Bangarra Dance Theatre in 'Nyapanyapa' from 'OUR land people stories,' 2016. Photo by Jhuny Boy Borja — Bangarra Dance Theatre in ‘Nyapanyapa’ from *OUR land people stories*, 2016. Photo: © Jhuny Boy Borja

And finally, the performances that accompanied the announcements were extraordinarily varied. I have to say I enjoyed most of all the lively Hopak Kalyna by the Lehenda Ukrainian Dance Company. The dancers smiled at us! It was a shame, though, that the Australian Ballet’s contribution, the pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty danced by Amber Scott and Ty King-Wall, somehow looked out of place amid all the cabaret, hip hop, sexually-oriented material, angst and other dance elements. It made me wonder why I love ballet as much as I do. Perhaps there needs to be a change somewhere along the line. Perhaps a more contemporary piece from the Australian Ballet, or a bit more ballet in the program?

Michelle Potter, 24 September 2017

Featured image: Scene from ‘Annette’ in Great Sport! featuring dancers from the GOLDS, Canberra’s company of senior dancers. Photo © Lorna Sim, 2016

Dance diary. July 2017

Badu Gili (Water Light)

As part of NAIDOC Week 2017, and launched the night before the world premiere of Bangarra Dance Theatre’s latest production Bennelong, the eastern side of the ‘Bennelong Sail’ of the Sydney Opera House was lit at specified times during the evening by a series of stunning projections of indigenous design. Curated by Rhoda Roberts and featuring the work of several indigenous artists, Badu Gili celebrates ancient stories with a loop of constantly changing visual imagery. It was a fitting prelude to Bangarra’s spectacular Bennelong program and in many respects was ‘dancing art’. It will be shown each evening for the next year.

Made on the body. Choreography from the Royal Ballet

As an extra event during the Royal Ballet’s recent program in Brisbane, an exhibition of photographs, video clips and historical information was on show in the Tony Gould Gallery at QPAC. Six photographs by Rick Guest occupied the space just outside the main gallery space.

Photographs by Rick Guest, Made on the Body, QPAC 2017 — Photographs by Rick Guest, *Made on the Body*, QPAC 2017

Inside, the gallery had several large screens (or scrims really) on which footage was projected. The show was lit theatrically so that it occasionally seemed that visitors were onstage themselves.

Made on the body screens, QPAC 2017 — *Made on the body,* QPAC 2017

Other footage, some from archival sources, could be viewed on smaller screens situated on long tables elsewhere in the space. In addition to this footage, several areas in the exhibition space were devoted to the history of British choreography as made for the Royal Ballet, including a special focus on Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon, whose work we saw in Brisbane. My favourite quotes from Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon were:

I am designing an EXPERIENCE for the viewer that may stimulate their visual sense, their acoustic sense, their kinaesthetic senses, individually or all at the same time; it may move them emotionally or challenge them intellectually, and all of these are valuable and legitimate layers of meaning, or making sense. (Wayne McGregor)

Often in my own choreographies I have actively conspired to disrupt the space in which the body performs. Each intervention, usually some kind of addition, is an attempt to see the context of the body in a new or alien way. (Christopher Wheeldon)

At the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Currently on display, but hidden in a small room at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, is a 9 minute video portrait of actor Cate Blanchett, made in 2008 by David Rosetzky. I had not come across it before but it was quite a beautiful shoot with choreography by Lucy Guerin and music by David Franzke.

Guerin’s choreography was quite simple for the feet and legs, but more complex for the hands and arms, which folded themselves into intricate positions. It was very nicely performed by Blanchett who changed clothes often and spoke throughout, largely pondering on who she was, how she thought she connected with people, and so forth. Worth seeing if it comes your way. Below is a video from the National Portrait Gallery featuring Rosetzky discussing the making of this portrait.

Press for July 2016

‘Dance work with a timely message.’ Preview of This Poisoned Sea, Quantum Leap. The Canberra Times, 5 July 2017, p. 18. Online version.

‘Canberrans shortlisted for awards.’ Story on Canberran dance ventures shortlisted for the 2017 Australian Dance Awards, The Canberra Times, 13 July 2017, p. 19. Online version.

A moment from 'Annette' in Great Sport!, the GOLD company, 2016. Photo: © Lorna Sim — A moment from ‘Annette’ in *Great Sport!*, 2016. Photo: © Lorna Sim.

Great Sport! was devised and directed by Liz Lea, who is one on the ACT-based artists nominated for a 2017 Australian Dance Award. See this link for my 2016 review.

Michelle Potter, 31 July 2017

Canberra dance. A professional company?

Canberra hasn’t had a professional dance company for some time now and, as Dance Week 2012 approached, an article appeared in The Canberra Times in which Neil Roach, director of Ausdance ACT, suggested that the city should aspire to have an ‘emerging professional dance company … like those already being successfully funded by the Australia Council—Kate Champion, Lucy Guerin, Chunky Moves [sic]’. Well to put it bluntly, there is no reason why we in Canberra should expect to have a funded dance company. It is not a right.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aspire to one of course. Nor that we don’t want one. But Canberra isn’t Sydney or Melbourne. It’s an unusual place and those who have watched several professional companies come and go in Canberra since 1980, when Don Asker’s Human Veins Dance Theatre became Canberra’s first professional dance company, will all have an opinion as to what suits Canberra.

Anyone who knows me well will not be surprised when I say that for me the most vibrant time for dance in Canberra was 1989 to 1992 when the Meryl Tankard Company was the city’s resident dance company. The place was buzzing then—art attracts art—and if we look back to that period there is much upon which we can draw to make a case for what will inspire the Canberra population to embrace a dance company.

I have always been taken by the words of Stefanos Lazaridis, who directed Orphée et Eurydice for Opera Australia in 1993, which Tankard choreographed after she had left Canberra. He said on an Imagine program on SBS Television in ca. 1994:

The word ‘choreography’ did not apply as far as I am concerned. I wanted this dimension [of the opera] to be dealt with by somebody who has the demonic dance talent of Meryl Tankard, who is a woman of total theatre.

Tankard brought to Canberra something more than ‘just dance’. She brought that ‘total theatre’ that Lazaridis was smart enough to recognise and to declare in such a public forum. In my opinion that’s just what a small city needs. The population of Canberra at the moment is just 360,000. With that number of people, if a dance company aspires to be ongoing and viable it needs to be able to attract an audience from across the visual, literary and performing arts. A company that doesn’t aspire to attract, or isn’t capable of engaging audiences beyond the confines of the local dance community, will never make an impact.

Court of Flora. Photo Regis Lansac — Tuula Roppola as the Rose in *Court of Fora*, Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Australia, 1991. Photo: © Régis Lansac. Courtesy Régis Lansac

Tankard was always proud that her 1989 work Banshee, shown at the National Gallery of Australia in conjunction with an exhibition of Irish gold and silver, largely Celtic jewellery, attracted a small punk audience. And I can never forget Court of Flora first staged in 1990 at Floriade, Canberra’s annual outdoor spring event. It drew large crowds, who delighted in Anthony Phillips’ spectacular costumes and in the ability of Tankard’s dancers to imbue the floral characters they represented with human characteristics. The work was repeated many times in a variety of Canberra venues between 1990 and 1992. Marion Halligan wrote about Tankard’s work. The Embassy of France and the Goethe Institute in Canberra supported the company.

But what was also interesting about those years was that Tankard and her partner in art and life, Régis Lansac, embraced the Canberra community, its institutions, its landscape and its resident artists. They lived in the city. Lansac exhibited his photographs with other local artists. Tankard made a short film in the Federal Highway Park Quarry just out of the city. Lansac incorporated photographs of a local landmark, Mount Ainslie, in projections that accompanied Two Feet. Lansac received a Canberra Critics’ Circle Award for ‘his constant searching for, and discovery of, new frontiers in stage design’. And ultimately Tankard was made ACT Citizen of the Year in 1992 for having ‘brought the arts in Canberra to both national and international attention’ and for ‘enriching [Canberra’s] reputation as one of great diversity and creativity’. It was a heady time for dance in the ACT and one that has not been equalled since in my opinion.

So yes, I too would love there to be a professional dance company in Canberra. But I don’t think it should be an experimental, contemporary company with interests that attract only a minority of dance aficionados. Leave that to larger cities. Canberra needs a dance company that the wider community can feel belongs to Canberra, not just to dance.

Michelle Potter, 28 April 2012.