Dance diary. January 2025

Queensland Ballet. The news is out

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

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

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

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

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

News from Paul Knobloch

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

Paul Knobloch. Photographer not identified

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

Dancing and Fatboy Slim

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

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

Oral histories

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

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

Reading in December

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

Vale Carolyn Brown (1927 –2025)

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

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

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

Press for January 2025

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

Michelle Potter, 31 January 2025

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

Eileen Kramer (1914–2024)

Dancer, visual artist, choreographer and writer Eileen Kramer has died in Sydney at the age of 110. Born in Sydney, Eileen spent her early years in the suburb of Mosman and then, after her parents’ divorce, in Coogee. After leaving school at the early age of 13, she eventually began studying singing, piano and theory at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music but did not take up dancing until she was in her twenties when she saw a performance of The Blue Danube and other works from the Bodenwieser Ballet. Of that experience she has said:

Well, Blue Danube is beautiful and flowing and expressive and not at all tight and rigid, so I just fell in love with it. Another dance they performed at that concert was the Slavonic, those great big skirts with big motifs on them, and that struck me because when they came onto the floor they took wonderful poses that looked as though they were accidental. But of course it was art, so I went immediately to become a student.

She was accepted as a student by Gertrud Bodenwieser and later became a company dancer touring with the troupe around Australia and overseas for the next decade. Of her time with Bodenwieser she recorded:

Well, to us [Bodenwieser] was exotic and wonderful and we felt she was teaching us not only dance but about European culture and sophistication as well. And she also recognised each one’s quality. So while we learned to work as a group, she also developed our qualities, which was quite wonderful. So then she’d give solo dances inspired by us, not something that she got from somewhere else. My dance that I loved most of all was Indian Love Song. I wasn’t doing a traditional Indian movement but it was inspired by Indian poetry and some Indian postures, but I had to sing the song with that.

Eileen Kramer in 'Indian Love Song', 1952. Photo: Noel Rubie — Eileen Kramer in *Indian Love Song*, 195Os. Photo: © Noel Rubie. Papers of Gertrud Bodenwieser, National Library of Australian, MS 9263

For Bodenwieser, and for the rest of her life, Eileen was a designer of costumes. Speaking of her interest in design she said:

I didn’t make so many drawings and that upset Madame a little bit, because she liked to see what she was getting, but I worked in a way of giving more freedom to the fabric so I would make it on the figure and not so much from drawings, although generally you had to have an idea of what you were doing and make a kind of a sketch, but not a detailed sketch. I have been doing this since I was about five years old, making dolls’ clothes and then eventually making my own clothes and making backyard concert clothes.

Eileen Kramer, design for a character in *O World*. Papers of Gertrud Bodenwieser, National Library of Australian, MS 9263

After leaving the Bodenwieser Ballet she lived and worked in India, France and the United States for the next 60 years. Those years included relationships of various kinds including with her husband Baruch Shadmi, whom she met in Paris. They collaborated on a number of activities but he suffered a stroke and she gave up her career to nurse him until his death.

On her departure from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where she had spent the last several years of her career the local newspaper wrote:

A crowd of costumed friends gave one of Lewisburg’s most colorful residents, Eileen Kramer, a wonderful send-off at the Greenbrier Valley Airport Wednesday afternoon upon her departure for Australia. Garbed in attire designed and sewn by Eileen from Trillium performances over the years, and bearing large masks she’d painted, the gathering lovingly gave tribute to say “Thank you” and “We love you” and “We will miss you.’ Fare thee well, Lovely Lady Mountain Messenger, Lewisberg, 9 September 2013 https://mountainmessenger.com/fare-thee-well-lovely-lady-2/

Eileen lived in Sydney from 2013 until her death. In those last 11 years she continued to create. Her activities are recalled on her website, Eileen Kramer. Of the many activities in which she was involved during those last years, perhaps my favourite is the beautiful film by Sue Healey made for the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, available at this link. See also my thoughts on the film here.

Vale Eileen. How lucky I was to meet you when and how I did. When we spoke last you recalled the oral history we did—now more than 20 years ago. You remembered that we lunched in between sessions. You said that no other interviewer had done that! Well I loved that I was able to do so.

Eileen Kramer: born Sydney, 8 November 1914; died Sydney, 15 November 2024

Michelle Potter, 17 November 2024

For other posts about Eileen on this website, follow this tag.

Unless otherwise identified, quotes from Eileen in this post are from an oral history I recorded with her in 2003 for the National Library of Australia, TRC 4923, available online at this link. Eileen’s autobiography, Walkabout Dancer was published in 2008 by Trafford Publishing.

Featured image: From Sue Healey’s film Eileen, 2017. See this link to view the film.

Update: When I first posted this obituary I added an image that was purported to be of Eileen as a baby along with her father and mother. Well, when I looked through Walkabout Dancer, the autobiography, it turned out that it wasn’t Eileen as a baby but Edward (her brother). I am assuming Eileen knew who it was and that the source I used got it wrong! So I have removed the image from the post proper but have included it below. The photographer has not been identified but the date would be 1913.

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.

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. August 2023

Recent (and future) reading

Jennifer Homans’ recent book Mr B. George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century is perhaps the most spectacularly researched and written dance book I have ever read. As the title suggests, its major subject is George Balanchine, who was known to his dancers as Mr B, and Homans certainly tells us a lot about Balanchine’s life, much more than the many other Balanchine-focused books I have read. Little is held back, which sets it apart from those reminiscences that see Balanchine as perfection embodied.

Homans has drawn on a huge range of material including personal letters to and from Balanchine, diaries of dancers who worked with him, interviews with a huge range of those who knew him, and many other examples of primary and secondary source material. His relationships with his dancers and those around him, including his sexual activities, are not ignored. Nor is it only a new understanding of Balanchine that emerges in Homans’ ‘no holds barred’ examination, but we discover in depth the nature of so many of his early dancers, not to mention Lincoln Kirstein, Jerome Robbins, and so many others who were part of the scene. But what was also brilliant throughout was Homan’s discussion of how Balanchine worked with composers and used music as an essential component of his choreography. Most books I have read comment on Balanchine’s musicality but Mr B is for me the first to look in depth, and analytically, at this aspect of his work.

But basically I guess what I loved most was how Homans was able to set Balanchine’s life in a wide social and cultural context. This is what made the book outstanding and I hope to do a more detailed review of this book shortly.

Two books are on my reading list for the immediate future: David McAllister’s Ballet Confidential, shortly to be reviewed on this site by Jennifer Shennan, and a new book from Eileen Kramer, Life keeps me dancing. Inspired by Kramer’s new book, an interesting article appeared in The Guardian. Here is the link.

Jennifer Irwin

I have long been a fan of the design work of Jennifer Irwin and this site features many mentions of her costume work, especially for Bangarra Dance Theatre, Sydney Dance Company and the Australian Ballet. I have admired her use of materials, the cut of the costumes she makes, the way they move with the dance, the way in some cases a single item on a costume can represent a range of ideas, and much more. So it was a thrill to read that she has just been awarded the Cameron’s Management Outstanding Contribution to Design Award by the Australian Production Design Guild.

Read more on this site about Irwin’s work for various dance companies at this tag, and on Bangarra’s Knowledge Ground. I also interviewed Irwin in 2011 for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program and that interview is available online at this link.

Yolande Brown as Earth Spirit in Spear. Photo Jacob Nash — Dancers from Bangarra Dance Theatre wearing Jennifer Irwin’s costumes. (left) Yolande Brown in *Spear*. Photo: © Jacob Nash; (right) Tyrel Dulvarie in *Unaipon*. Photo: © Daniel Boud

Scene from 'Unaipon'. Bangarra Dance Theatre, 2019. Photo: © Daniel Boud — Dancers from Bangarra Dance Theatre wearing Jennifer Irwin’s costumes. (left) Yolande Brown in *Spear*. Photo: © Jacob Nash; (right) Tyrel Dulvarie in *Unaipon*. Photo: © Daniel Boud

Oral history: Daniel Riley

At the end of August I had the huge pleasure of interviewing Daniel Riley in Adelaide for the National Library of Australia’ oral history program. Riley, recently appointed artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre, is the company’s sixth director since its foundation by Elizabeth Cameron Dalman in 1965. He is also the initial First Nations artist to take on the role. The interview has not yet been catalogued but it was a rewarding occasion for me and the interview covers an exceptional range of material. It is certainly an important addition to the National Library’s collection of dance interviews.

(left) Daniel Riley in Sydney in 2015. Photo: © Peter Greig; (right) Daniel Riley in Canberra in 2021. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Before heading back to Canberra I made a quick visit to the Art Gallery of South Australia and the featured image for this month’s dance diary comes from that Gallery’s extensive and beautifully presented collection of art works from a range of First Nations’ artists.

Amber Scott to retire

The Australian Ballet has announced that principal artist Amber Scott will retire at the end of September. Scott joined the Australian Ballet in 2001 and was promoted to principal in 2011. Her diverse career to date has included leading roles in Swan Lake (Stephen Baynes, Graeme Murphy), The Sleeping Beauty (David McAllister), Giselle (Maina Gielgud), La Bayadère (Stanton Welch), The Nutcracker (Peter Wright), Manon (Kenneth MacMillan), Onegin (John Cranko), and The Merry Widow (Ronald Hynd). She will give her final performance at the end of September in the company’s new production of Swan Lake.

Ty King-Wall and Amber Scott in 'La Bayadère', the Australian Ballet. Photo: Jeff Busby — (left) Ty King-Wall and Amber Scott in *La Bayadère*. Photo: © Jeff Busby; (right) Amber Scott takes a bow. Photo: © Kate Longley

(left) Ty King-Wall and Amber Scott in *La Bayadère*. Photo: © Jeff Busby; (right) Amber Scott takes a bow. Photo: © Kate Longley

For more about Amber Scott see this tag.

Michelle Potter, 31 August 2023

Featured image: Detail from (Stitched bark canoe: laden with painted snail shells), 1994 by Johnny Bulunbulun. Art Gallery of South Australia. Photo: © Neville Potter

Talking to Shaun Parker

Back in 2017 I had the pleasure of interviewing dancer and choreographer Shaun Parker for the National Library’s oral history program. In that interview Parker talked at length about his childhood in Mildura, his schooling, his interest in science, taking up dancing, his work with Meryl Tankard and the early days of Shaun Parker & Company. I had watched some of his performances with Meryl Tankard’s company in Adelaide and my interest in his career continued when I saw Blue Love in Canberra in 2017. My recent conversation with him, however, focused on KING, a work originally staged in 2019. KING is making its return in February as part of the Sydney WorldPride 2023 before touring to Germany, Luxembourg and Italy in June and July.

The genesis of KING actually goes back to 2015, Parker tells me. With his strong background in science that predates his dance career, he had always wanted to do a work called XY. He envisaged it as a work about gender, behaviour and world politics, all based on macro and micro aspects of chromosomes. When a workshop he set up in 2015 generated a range of ideas about what ‘maleness’ entails, and how that affects us globally, a point of departure for KING was established. At the heart of KING is, Parker says, ‘a different way of thinking about sexual identity and power and how they are linked.’

The current production is set partly in a cocktail bar and partly in a jungle, a double focus that Parker explains as highlighting the difference between rich male-identifying people ‘swanning around in dinner suits with their wine’ and the ‘thousands being slain under the watch of the rich and powerful’.

Dancers from Shaun Parker & Company in *KING*. Photo: © Prudence Upward

KING is a music-dance collaboration between Parker and his dancers and Bulgarian vocalist Ivo Dimchev who composed the entire score. Parker says of Dimchev:

Ivo is the protagonist. He is a phenomenal opera, cabaret, blues, pop singer. There is no one like him. He is very tall and wears velvet and tattoo-ed make-up. He sings from gut-wrenching baritone to soaring, ethereal counter-tenor. He can be both male and female sounding. Throughout the entire piece he is always among the men, provoking them, giving them ideas to play with. We watch in an observational way: what will they do now? They end up dishevelled and naked as we follow the deconstruction of power.

Ivo Demchiv and dancers from Shaun Parker & Company in *KING*. Photo: © Prudence Upton

The role Dimchev plays is one that Parker himself was originally planning to take on. There are aspects of the work that reflect part of Parker’s life experiences, although he stresses that it is not an autobiographical work. Once he discovered Dimchev, however, and once Dimichev had agreed to take on the role, Parker stepped back. He had plenty to do beyond performing in the work. Dimchev, Parker says, is his ‘Bulgarian arts brother.’

As for the dancers, they are a mix of heterosexual, bi-sexual and homosexual artists and they are from several different cultures. As a result, they all have a unique quality to their performance.

The research and construction of the work seems to have been a complex procedure, but Parker says the result is ‘almost the simplest I have ever done.’ Parker commissioned two dramaturges, Veronica Neave and Felicity Nicol, to be part of KING. He worked extensively with them so that each scene would be clear through the choreography. ‘What can we say through the body?’ Parker asks. ‘The possibilities are endless.’ He is adamant, however, that he has to be tough on himself as he creates. He says he works on a section and then takes it to his dramaturges. He asks them to write down what the section means in just three words: he has no interest in being verbose. His intention must come across clearly to the audience. He wants the audience to see ‘a banger’.

Is KING a banger? To decide, you can see it in Sydney from 28 February to 4 March 2023.

Shaun Parker’s oral history interview recorded in 2017 is available for online listening at this link.

Michelle Potter, 8 February 2023

Featured image: Portrait of Shaun Parker. Photo: © Michele Aboud

An Australian Dance Collection. The oral history component

Below, attached as a PDF file, is a list of oral history recordings with artists working in dance related fields, as held in the National Library of Australia (NLA) and the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). Interviews conducted by the National Library are in audio format while many of the National Film and Sound Archive projects are film/video recordings, although the list includes early radio interviews acquired by the NFSA.

The collection was significantly augmented as a result of an Ausdance National initiative to create an Australia Council-funded project spread over several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Its ultimate aim was the building up of a national dance collection that crossed two of Canberra’s major collecting institutions—it was to cover dance across a range of media and was to have a coherent and easily accessed existence. The oral history recordings made as a result of this project augmented existing oral history material in both institutions, and the collecting of dance material in oral history format has continued to grow. The ultimate aim of the Australia Council-funded project was, however, never fully realised. A website, Australia Dancing, made an important start but it was closed down as an active site in 2012. An Australian Dance Collection certainly exists but the links between organisations, and even links within individual organisations but across formats, are not always easy to discover.

There have been other significant projects in which oral history has been a major component, including the Esso Performing Arts and Oral History Archive Project, managed by the National Library between 1988 and 1990, and the Heath Ledger Oral History Project with emerging artists, managed by the National Film and Sound Archive in 2011 and 2012. The featured image on this post shows Geoffrey Ingram, an early general manager of the Australian Ballet, being interviewed in 1989 as part of the Esso Performing Arts and Oral History Archive Project. Below is a brief excerpt from an interview with Joe Chapman for the Heath Ledger Project.

More information about individual interviews can be found via the catalogues of the respective institutions. Access to the interviews varies according to the wishes of the interviewee. Many National Library interviews, however, are available online and online access instructions are also available via the catalogue. The significance of the oral history dance collection across the National Library and the National Film and Sound Archive cannot be overestimated. So often an oral history recording is the sole record of the life and career of certain of our dance artists.

I encourage readers of this post to alert me to any NLA or NFSA interviews that are missing from the list. There are sure to be some! Here is a link to the current list.

Michelle Potter, 10 August 2021

Featured image (detail): Geoffrey Ingram being interview by Michelle Potter. National Library of Australia, 1989. This interview is available online at this link.

Dancers of the Ballet du grand Théâtre de Genève in Francesco Ventriglia's Transit Umbra, 2010. Photo: © Vincent Lepresle

Dance diary. February 2021

Sydney Choreographic Centre

To establish a new choreographic venture, the Sydney Choreographic Centre, Francesco Ventriglia, formerly artistic director of Royal New Zealand Ballet, has returned to the southern hemisphere after leaving New Zealand ‘to pursue opportunities overseas’. The Centre, co-founded by Neil Christopher as its general manager, is located in the Sydney suburb of Alexandria and will open in March with an intensive program for emerging choreographers and the opportunity to take class with the resident dancers of the Centre: Ariella Casu, Victor Zarallo, Holly Doyle, Brittany-jayde Duwner and Alex Borg.

The Centre’s first production, Grimm, with choreography by Ventriglia, will open in April at the Lennox Theatre, Riverside Theatres Parramatta. ‘Expect the unexpected in this very modern version of old stories,’ we are told.

For more on the Centre and its programs, and on the new ballet Grimm, visit the Centre’s website.

In 2014 I had the pleasure of interviewing Ventriglia in Wellington for Dance Tabs. Follow this link to retrieve the DanceTabs article.

Oral history news

After an hiatus of very close to 12 months, I was finally able to get back to recording oral history interviews. Given the problems associated with dance in the media, oral history is one very significant way in which careers of those in the dance world can be documented for posterity. Early in February I interviewed Ruth Osborne, artistic director of Canberra’s youth dance organisation, QL2. The interview focused largely on Ruth’s connections with the choreography of Gertrud Bodenwieser and those who carried on her legacy in Australia, in particular Margaret Chapple and Keith Bain. The interview is yet to be fully processed but when that process is completed it will be available online through the National Library’s catalogue.

Ruth Osborne, 2016. Photo: © Lorna Sim — Ruth Osborne, 2018. Photo: © Lorna Sim

A little later in the month I recorded Part 1 of what is potentially a two part interview with fashion designer Linda Jackson. Her colleague, the remarkable Jenny Kee, is lined up for April.

Tanya Pearson, OAM (1937-2021)

The much admired Sydney-based teacher Tanya Pearson died in February. See an obituary for her in Dance Australia at this link, and watch a lovely 30 minute tribute, filmed in 2012.

Kristian Fredrikson. Designer. More reviews and comments

Another review, this time from Lee Christofis, appeared in the March issue of Limelight Magazine. It is a rather special review as Christofis knows something of the backstory behind the National Library’s Papers of Kristian Fredrikson, as his opening paragraph reveals. The online version is locked to non-subscribers but see this link for a taster. The full review is also available in the print edition for March.

Michelle Potter, 28 February 2021

Featured image: Dancers of the Ballet du grand Théâtre de Genève in Francesco Ventriglia’s Transit Umbra, 2010. Photo: © Vincent Lepresle

Anne Hendricks Bass (1941–2020)

Anne Hendricks Bass, who has died in New York at the age of 78, was one of the most generous donors to the Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I met her very soon after I arrived in New York in 2006 to begin my tenure as Curator of the Dance Division. I have so many fond memories of the occasions I worked with her on one or other of her projects. I loved that she was so passionate about dance, ballet in particular, and the visual arts, and that she worked tirelessly to support and promote the things that mattered to her. She was an absolute perfectionist, which I also loved. I count myself fortunate that I met her in so many different situations. Here are some of my favourite memories.

Anne had an apartment on 5th Avenue and I recall clearly going there on one occasion on official Dance Division business. Stepping out of the elevator I was ushered in without noticing what I was walking past. On the way out I almost tripped over what I didn’t notice initially. It was a Degas sculpture, the one I use as the main image on the home page of this website, Little dancer aged fourteen (1878-1881). I was staggered to be so close to it and very relieved I hadn’t tripped over it!

Anne also invited me to work with her on weekends with some material she had gathered for a film she wanted to make about a young Cambodian, Sokvannara Sar, whose familiar name is Sy. Anne brought Sy to New York to be trained as a ballet dancer after seeing him dance in Cambodia on a visit there in 2000. Those working weekends were spent on her property in South Kent, Connecticut, in truly beautiful surroundings. There were several buildings on the estate and my husband and I were accommodated in the cottage in the image below, seen through the surrounding wintery landscape. The film that we worked on in Connecticut, Dancing across Borders, was made after I had left New York but I will forever remember the beautiful countryside of Anne’s Connecticut estate, those mornings and afternoons examining material, and the dinners with Anne and her partner, artist Julian Lethbridge, in the ‘big house’ each night.

Rock Cobble Farm, Connecticut, 2007 — Cottage on Rock Cobble Farm, Connecticut, February 2007. Photo: © Neville Potter

During my tenure as Curator in the Dance Division Anne also initiated and funded a number of significant projects. The two that stand out for me are Speaking of Dancing and the Khmer Dance Project. Both were basically oral history projects. With Speaking of Dancing I had the honour of interviewing Lupe Serrano, which was an audio only interview, and I recall sitting in on another interview, a filmed one this time, with designer Holly Hynes. Other interviews were recorded after I left and interviewees included Carolyn Brown, Wendy Whelan, Julie Kent and Ethan Stiefel.

The Khmer Dance Project began just before I left and was designed to record, on film, interviews with three generations of artists, including dancers, musicians and singers, who kept dance alive during and after the regime of the Khmer Rouge.

Setting up for an interview with Em Theay (seated), Phnom Penh, March 2008. Photo: © Michelle Potter

The only photo I have of Anne in my personal collection is below. Taken by an unidentified photographer, it shows Anne on the right of the image standing next to Sy on his first visit to New York from Cambodia.

There are countless expensive-to-use images of Anne on the web, but I knew her as she appears in the image above. Anne was an exceptional human being whose humility and generous nature shone whether she was at a glamorous social gathering or standing in a New York street.

The flowers below were a gift from her to me for nothing more than the fact that I was happy to talk to her about my background, especially the work I had done at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, which led to the invitation to work with her on weekends. Who else would send flowers following what I regarded as just a friendly, informal chat? That was Anne.

Anne Hendricks Bass. Born Indianapolis, Indiana, 19 October 1941; died New York City, New York, 1 April 2020

‘Only in the darkness can you see the stars’

(Left) Portrait of Anne Bass, 2010. Centeno/WWD © Condé Nast. Promotional image from press gallery for *Dancing across borders*, a film by Anne Bass

Michelle Potter, 5 April 2020

Featured image: Anne Bass with Sokvannara Sar, 2010. Detail from a promotional image for the film Dancing Across Borders. © Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Courtesy Dancing across borders, a film by Anne Bass

Cecil Bates (1925–2019)

Cecil Bates had a remarkably diverse career both in and outside of dance. Born into a family in which the arts held a prominent place, he recalled that his first stage experience came at the age of three when, in one of his mother’s ballet concerts, he took the role of a teddy bear.

I first appeared in these shows, I believe, at the age of three, as a teddy bear. I remember being very angry with my mother because she didn’t think that I would know the time to come on to the stage, to know the right cue. But I was perfectly well aware of when to go on and, when she reminded me by giving me a gentle push, I was very angry and almost missed the entrance.1

His mother was a dancer and an operatic soprano. She was a pupil of Melbourne-based teacher Jennie Brenan and appeared in several productions by J. C. Williamson. She taught ballet in Maitland where her son was a pupil until he left primary school.

His father served in World War I and then took up teaching. It was he who convinced Bates to give up ballet once he entered high school and, at the end of his schooling, Bates took up a traineeship in metallurgy. He worked with Rylands Brothers Wire Mills in Newcastle while undertaking a technical college course in metallurgy.

But he was ‘restless’, as he remarked in an oral history interview, and began taking ballet classes in Newcastle with Grace Norman. Then, with a fellow ballet student, he went to Sydney to take a class with Hélène Kirsova and, as a result, moved to Sydney, changed his course to a similar one at Sydney Tech, and began working for Commonwealth Industrial Gas.

Although Bates didn’t ever dance with the Kirsova Ballet, Kirsova was impressed with his potential and suggested to Marie Rambert that she audition him for the Rambert Australian tour of 1947–1949. Bates joined Ballet Rambert in Melbourne in 1947 where he made his debut as a professional dancer. He toured Australia and New Zealand with Ballet Rambert and, when the company returned to England in 1949, he went with them.

Cecil Bates in *Façade*, Ballet Rambert, Melbourne 1947

In England he became a principal dancer and later ballet master with Ballet Rambert and then, on leaving the Rambert company in 1953, danced with Walter Gore and in a variety of other productions including pantomime and film. It was during his time in England, encouraged by Marie Rambert, that he began to choreograph. His early choreographic works included two Scottish-themed productions for Rambert’s Ballet Workshop and a new version of Carnival of the Animals for the Rambert company. It was also the time when he took classes from Audrey de Vos, whose impact on his career continued throughout his life.

After the breakdown of his 1950 marriage to Rambert dancer Mary Munro, Bates returned to Australia to dance once more with Walter Gore who had set up Australian Theatre Ballet. When Gore’s Australian company folded, Bates went to work with Joanna Priest in Adelaide teaching and producing for her various initiatives and, in 1962, became artistic director of the recently-formed South Australian National Ballet Company. He also returned to choreography producing Design for a Lament (later staged as Requiem and dedicated to his mother, Frieda Bates), Villanelle for Four, Comme ci, comme ça, Seven Dances and A Fig for a King. In Adelaide Bates also staged some of the ballets he knew from his London experiences. They included Peepshow, Death and the Maiden, Czernyana and Façade. He also established his own dance school and then a small company, South Australian Repertory Ballet.

Bates eventually moved into a more academic life and began teaching maths and science, and drama on some occasions, at a series of high schools in Adelaide. He undertook a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English and Economic History at the University of Adelaide.

Bates was also an experienced Laban notator. His interest in notation began in London when he began taking lessons in Laban notation from an ex-dancer from the Kurt Jooss company. It was not, however, until he began working in Adelaide that he resumed his studies in notation, eventually taking a University course in the subject. He notated his own works and works by others with whom he had been associated, including Walter Gore, Andrée Howard, and Joanna Priest. He was later asked by Meg Denton to notate his work Requiem for Denton’s Australian Choreographic Project.2

Pages from Cecil Bates’ notated score for *Requiem*. National Library of Australia, MUS N m 792.842 R427

Bates is survived by his second wife, Glenis, his three children and numerous grandchildren.

Cecil Hugo Bates. Born Maitland, New South Wales, 26 May 1925; died Adelaide, South Australia, 20 December 2019

An oral history interview recorded in Adelaide in 2005 for the National Library of Australia’s Oral History and Folklore Collection, from which much of the information in this obituary has been obtained, is available at this link.

Michelle Potter 3 March 2020

Featured image: Cecil Bates in the pas de trois from Swan Lake (detail), 1940s? Photographer not identified. National Library of Australia, Papers of Cecil Bates, MS 9427

Notes:
1. Oral history interview with Cecil Bates recorded by Meg Denton in 1985. J. D Somerville Oral History Collection, Mortlock Library of South Australiana, OH 84/16. A transcript of this interview is in the National Library of Australia, Papers of Cecil Bates, MS 9427.
2. For more about the Australian Choreographic Project see Meg Abbie Denton, ‘Reviving Lost Works: The Australian Choreographic Project.’ Brolga, 2 (June 1995), pp. 57-69.