Don Quixote. The Australian Ballet (2023)

This post contains two reviews of the 2023 Don Quixote. The first and longer one is of the digital screening; the second, shorter one refers, with particular reference to one dancer, to a matinee performance I saw in Sydney towards the end of the season.

Digital screening, March 2023. (Filmed live on 24 March 2023, Arts Centre, Melbourne)

This production of Don Quixote is meant to pay homage to the 1973 Australian Ballet film of the work and, in fact, has been spoken of as being ‘transposed from screen to stage’, especially with regard to the set. The early film production was choreographed by Rudolf Nureyev and was directed by Nureyev in conjunction with Robert Helpmann. Helpmann played the role of the Don, Nureyev was Basilio and Lucette Aldous danced Kitri/Dulcinea. To tell the truth I’m not sure why the ‘screen to stage’ comment was necessary as the ballet stands by itself without any pretence that it is a transposition. The 1970s film is, however, worth watching, especially now that it has been restored and remastered in high definition. It contains some exceptional performances, especially from Lucette Aldous whose performance in my opinion outshines that of Nureyev.

But to the production of 2023. I found this staging beautifully paced and full of action from every performer. Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo as the leading characters were just brilliant, both technically and in terms of the emotional and dramatic relationship they built up between them. They also dance so well as partners with bodies and limbs moving smoothly together and with complementary line through the two bodies always obvious. Then there were those amazing moments when Guo lifted Kondo into the air and held her there with one hand (as seen in the featured image). The music paused momentarily for us to have a good look! Spectacular.

Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo in Don Quixote Act I. The Australian Ballet, 2023. Photo: © Rainee Lantry

Adam Bull was an impressive Don Quixote. He had worked on a particular portrayal of the Don and maintained the behaviour of his character from beginning to end. He was eccentric but introspective and contemplative, and I got the feeling he was lost in another world, a world where windmills can be monsters and dreams can become reality in his mind. What I liked was that his character was strong but without any overplay.

Adam Bull as Don Quixote in Don Quixote, Prologue. The Australian Ballet, 2023. Photo: © Rainee Lantry

Amy Harris as the Street Dancer performed nicely but I would have liked a little more colour in her characterisation. Sharni Spencer as the Queen of the Dryads managed her difficult variation skilfully and Yuumi Yamada was a charming Cupid. A highlight of the last act (apart from the grand pas de deux from Kondo and Guo) was an exciting Fandango danced by sixteen, magnificently dressed dancers led by Dana Stephensen and Nathan Brook.

Ludwig Minkus’ score was played by Orchestra Victoria conducted by Charles Barker, who was, I am assuming, visiting from New York. As with other conductors whom I admire, Barker ensured that the music and the dance worked beautifully as one. Then, as part of the curtain calls the dancers moved forward and, with a simple sweep of the arm, acknowledged the orchestra. It was a perfect, dancerly, elegant acknowledgement rather than the lengthy clapping by the dancers leaning towards, almost into, the pit that we have had to get used to over the past 20 years or so from the Australian Ballet.

The streaming also featured David Hallberg and Catherine Murphy discussing various aspects of the production with some segments featuring various artists associated with the production, including backstage staff.

Michelle Potter, 28 March 2023

22 April 2023 (matinee). Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Apart from the fact that there is ‘nothing like being there’ as the saying goes, most of my comments above from watching the streamed version of the Australian Ballet’s 2023 Don Quixote apply equally to the live performance I saw towards the end of the company’s Sydney season. The Australian Ballet is, in general, dancing beautifully, even stunningly at the moment. Apart from the technical standard being high, there seems to be an inherent joy emanating from the dancers. And what’s more I don’t feel the need to complain about the production looking squashed on the Sydney Opera House stage. For some reason (perhaps the joy mentioned above?), instead of looking squashed the production looked intimate. What a thrill!

But the highlight of the afternoon came from Yuumi Yamada dancing the leading female role of Kitri/Dulcinea. She isn’t a tall dancer, but then nor was Lucette Aldous in the Nureyev/Helpmann film made in 1972. As Kitri/Dulcinea Aldous gave Nureyev a run for his money. Yamada was, similarly, a deliciously feisty Kitri in Act I and was outstanding technically throughout. It was a performance that I feel privileged to have seen. Yamada was partnered by Brett Chynoweth as Basilio.

I also admired the dancing of Lilly Maskery as Cupid in Act II. She has a good presence onstage and gave the role a characterisation that attracted the eye, as well as dancing strongly. I look forward to seeing more of her work.

Unfortunately, I have no images of the cast from this matinee performance.

Michelle Potter, 25 April 2023

Featured image: Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo in Don Quixote, ACT I. The Australian Ballet, 2023. Photo: © Rainee Lantry

My year, 2022

by Jennifer Shennan

My year’s list of dance highlights seems thinner than usual since a number of productions didn’t make it to curtain-up. There are no lowlights though (why would you write about lowlights?) so I’ll just call them lights.

From a screen viewing I followed with interest the choreographic venture, Journey, by Lily Bones. I remember Lily’s serene sense of line as an unusual individual dancer at both NZSchool of Dance and later in RNZBallet.  After a time performing in Europe she is now based in Sydney and is a colleague there of Martin James. Her resilience in surviving serious illness, and her determination to make dances despite zero external resources has given her a maturity and quiet confidence to choreograph themes that speak and that we can hear. No glamour or glitz, just her truth. Refreshing.  

It was a treat indeed to see again an Arts Channel broadcast of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre in Rice. Choreographed by Lin Hwai Min in 2013 (and toured to Auckland in 2017), it is talisman to their repertoire, with typically perfect proportion in shaping the cycle of rice growth and harvesting. Like all Lin’s work, there is pacing and spacing through the episodes that deliver at one level of nature at work in the titled theme, and also allegorical layers of reference to human and personal experience. The erotic sensuality in a single central duet in Rice defines the original power of creation. I own a dvd of this work but choose not to watch it alone—so how is that different from sitting alone and watching a broadcast? just a sense that there will be others out there watching ‘with me’, a feeling of being in the audience that is shaped by a performance in time. Cloud Gate’s repertoire has a strength in its Chinese legacy and vocabulary that is yet accessible to the wider world. Riveting.   

Another memorable experience on screen was the final sequence by the young boy in the studio, as epilogue to the film The White Crow, the dramatisation by Ralph Fiennes of Nureyev’s defection to the west.  Overall I was not as transported by the film as others seemed, but was certainly moved by how that final dance was allowed to speak for itself. Poignant.

Pump Dance Studio’s Roll the Dice also transformed the commitment of young performers  into something more than the sum of its parts. Infectious.

From NZSchool of Dance, Loughlan Prior’s Verse, a solo to the Folies d’Espagne played by the consummate ensemble Hesperion XXI, shone with the clarity of a beacon, both in choreography and performance. Luminous.

Joshua Douglas in Loughlan Prior’s Verse. New Zealand School of Dance, 2022. Photo: © Stephen A’Court.

Two books—by Michelle Potter on Graeme Murphy, and by Ashley Killar on John Cranko—offered insights into those prolific choreographic careers, with welcome reminders of the live performances we have seen by their companies. Revelatory.

Not from this year, but nevertheless shaped by the pandemic term we are still experiencing, the tour de force of Strasbourg 1518 by Lucy Marinkovich and Lucien Johnson, remains the total standout dance season of recent times. Their earlier work, Lobsters, also holds its place on the list of memorable works of the decade. Indelible.

It has been indeed moving to follow the heroic project by Raewyn Hill, artistic director of Co3 Contemporary Dance in Perth, where she re-staged Gloria, the celebrated work by the late Douglas Wright, New Zealand’s visionary choreographer. Immortal.

A dance lives for as long as it is remembered, and can cheat death by a measure. Russell Kerr died earlier this year, and for many people the memory of his production of Petrouchka in which he cast Douglas in the title role, also stands as an indelible milestone in this country’s dance history. Legendary.

We are looking forward to the fifth in the series of the Russell Kerr Lecture in Ballet & Related Arts, in Wellington, late February. The subject will be Patricia Rianne, celebrated dancer, teacher and choreographer whose long career spans years both in New Zealand as well as UK, Europe and Asia. A delight.

Season’s greetings and good wishes to all those who watch dance, who create dances, who perform, who write and who read about dancing. Sprezzatura.

Jennifer Shennan, 21 December 2022

Featured image: Huang Pei-hua and Tsai Ming-yuan in Rice. Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, 2021. Photo: © Liu Chen-hsiang

Nureyev. Legend and Legacy. Marquee TV

Marquee TV is streaming for a limited time a ticketed program, for which I paid just over AUD 10, called Nureyev. Legend and Legacy. As a live show it happened in London early in September at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Reproduced to honour Rudolf Nureyev, it was directed by former Royal Ballet principal Nehemiah Kish and included works in which Nureyev performed, and some that he had restaged or choreographed for various companies. The dancers who appeared in the show came from various companies, with a strong contingent from the Royal Ballet.

The program opened with the Entre’Acte solo from The Sleeping Beauty Act II, as interpolated into the ballet by Nureyev, as he did on other occasions in other ballets when he felt more choreography was needed for male dancers. Somewhat hesitantly danced by Guillaume Côté from the National Ballet of Canada, it made me feel that Nureyev was not such a good choreographer. The choreography seemed quite static and as a result the performance was a little underwhelming. But things got better and the dances that preceded interval included a lovely performance of the pas de deux from Bournonville’s Flower Festival in Genzano performed by Francesco Gabriele Frola and Ida Praetorius and the pas de six from Laurencia (which I had never seen before) showcasing an inspired Natalia Osipova and a dramatically stunning Cesar Corrales, along with Yuhui Choe, Marianna Tsembenhoi, Benjamin Ella and Daichi Ikairashi. The flamboyance of Laurencia with its Spanish flavoured choreography from Nureyev after Vakhtang Chabukiani contrasted well with the gentle beauty of Flower Festival.

Francesco Gabriele Frola and Ida Praetorius in the pas de deux from Flower Festival in Genzano, 2022. Photo: © Andrej Uspenski

The second half of the program included the grand pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty performed by Natascha Mair and Vadim Muntagirov, a moving performance of the pas de deux from Act II of Giselle from Francesca Hayward and William Bracewell, and an excerpt from John Neumeier’s Don Juan danced by Alina Cojacaru and Alexander Trusch.

The program closed spectacularly with the pas de deux from Le Corsaire, a work that is undeniably connected to Nureyev’s astonishing career in the West. It was danced by the beautiful Yasmine Naghdi, whose work I have admired for a number of years, and the simply astonishing Cesar Corrales. In particular, Corrales’ solo demonstrated the extraordinary way he uses his body. He sweeps the floor at times as he leans into a step, but then reaches skywards at other times. His manège of grand allegro steps flies high and is perfection in performance, and his turns, in whatever position his legs are held, are just breathtaking in speed and execution. Then, the way he engages with his partner is thrilling, as is the pride he shows throughout in the way he holds his body. The coda was distinguished by brilliant dancing and a series of fouettés from Naghdi was filled with doubles, not just one every so often but often a single was followed by three consecutive doubles. My one complaint is that Corrales stretches his thumbs so that they look overly dominant. But astonishing work really from both dancers.

Yasmine Nahgdi and Cesar Corrales in the pas de deux from Le Corsaire, 2022. Photo: © Andrej Uspenski

Australian audiences of a certain age were fortunate enough to see Nureyev perform in the 1960s and 1970s when he was here on various occasions. I can still remember his entrance in the pas de deux from Le Corsaire and the thrill that ran through my body even from my standing room position way at the back of the ’gods’ at the old Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown (Sydney). So watching this program, despite the odd moments that did not resonate well, was an absolute delight. And how I hope I will get to see Cesar Carroles perform live one of these days. He gives me the same thrill as I got from watching Nureyev.

Nureyev. Legend and Legacy, which includes short interviews with some who worked with Nureyev (including Monica Mason), is available on Marquee TV as a ticketed offering until 26 September only.

Michelle Potter, 21 September 2022

Featured image: Natalia Osipova in Laurencia pas de six. Photo: © Andrej Uspenski

Lucette Aldous, AC (1938-2021)

One of Australia’s best known and most admired ballerinas, Lucette Aldous, has died in Perth at the age of 82.

New Zealand-born, Lucette Aldous trained in Brisbane with Phyllis Danaher and then in Sydney at the Scully-Borovansky School where her main teacher was Kathleen Danetree. She was awarded the Frances Scully Scholarship to continue her training overseas and entered the Royal Ballet School in London in 1955.

In 1957 she began her professional career with Ballet Rambert where she danced not only the classics like Giselle and Coppélia and but also early works by Antony Tudor, Frederick Ashton, Walter Gore, John Cranko and Kenneth MacMillan. Her time with Rambert also included a 1957 tour to China.

Following her time with Rambert she danced with London Festival Ballet and then with the Royal Ballet (second company). It was while working with the Royal Ballet that she first performed with Rudolf Nureyev, partnering him in Nutcracker during a European tour.

Her partnership with Nureyev blossomed after she returned to Australia in 1970. She joined the Australian Ballet that year and danced the role of Kitri to Nureyev’s Basilio in Don Quixote, jointly directed by Nureyev and Robert Helpmann. The role of Kitri particularly suited Aldous’ vivacious and effervescent personality. She also performed with extraordinary technical accomplishment both on stage and in the film version, which premiered in 1973, when she truly gave Nureyev a ‘run for his money’ —no easy feat. Over her career she did, however, dance the role with others.

Lucette Aldous and Robert Helpmann in rehearsal for the film, 'Don Quixote', the Australian Ballet 1972. Photo: Don Edwards
Lucette Aldous and Robert Helpmann in rehearsal for the film production of Don Quixote. The Australian Ballet 1972. Photo: Don Edwards. National Library of Australia

Aldous danced a wide variety of roles while with the Australian Ballet and another milestone in her career occurred in 1975 when Ronald Hynd created the role of Valencienne on her in his production of The Merry Widow. During the 1970s Aldous continued to guest with companies in England, America and Europe and had a featured role with Fernando Bujones in the film The Turning Point.

Kelvin Coe and Lucette Aldous in Frederick Ashton’s The Two Pigeons. The Australian Ballet, 1975. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia

After retiring from full-time performing in the mid 1970s Aldous taught at the Australian Ballet School and then in 1982 joined the faculty of the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), Edith Cowan University, Perth. She and husband Alan Alder, whom Aldous had married in 1972, also spent a number of months in St Petersburg studying the teaching methods and philosophy behind the Vaganova system of training as espoused by the Kirov ballet school. Aldous has also been an advocate of Boris Kniaseff’s floor barre as a system of training.

After retiring from full-time work at WAAPA, Aldous continued to live in Perth and to coach, adjudicate and teach.

In 1999 Aldous received an honorary doctorate from Edith Cowan University while at the Australian Dance Awards she received the award for Services to Dance in 2001 and Lifetime Achievement in 2009. In the Australia Day Honours List of 2018 she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).

Lucette Aldous is survived by her daughter, Floeur Alder.

Lucette Aldous: born Auckland, New Zealand, 26 September 1938; died Perth, Australia, 5 June 2021

Michelle Potter, 6 June 2021

Some resources:
Lucette Aldous was interviewed for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program in 1999. The interview is available online and is full of information about her background as well as containing many fascinating anecdotes about those she worked with during her extensive career. Listen at this link.

Aldous has also featured in a 2001 film by Michelle Mahrer, The Three Ballerinas. She appears along with Marilyn Rowe and Marilyn Jones in the trailer below.

She also appears in Sue Healey’s On View Series. Read a little about it at this link.

Lucette Aldous in a sitll from Sue Healey's short film 'Lucette Aldous'.
Lucette Aldous in stills from Sue Healey’s short film Lucette Aldous

Featured image: Portrait of Lucette Aldous as Kitri in Don Quixote. The Australian Ballet, 1970. Photo: Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia

The White Crow. A film from Ralph Fiennes

I remember how much I enjoyed reading Julie Kavanagh’s biography of Rudolf Nureyev—Nureyev. The Life published in 2007. It was so beautifully researched and very readable. So the recently released ‘biopic’ The White Crow, which was inspired by Kavanagh’s book, had something to live up to for me. Well, despite a swag of less that ecstatic reviews from film critics around the world, I loved this movie. Directed by Ralph Fiennes, it follows the early life of Rudolf Nureyev, from his birth until his defection to the West in 1961.

As this is a dance site I am assuming that readers are aware of the basic outline of Nureyev’s early life so I won’t recount the story. Instead I am selecting moments, some that brought me close to tears, some that made me smile, and some that, despite knowing what was going to happen, had me the edge of my seat. And others.

I was moved when Nureyev’s mother, Farida, was about to give birth on the train rattling its way through the Russian countryside. Her daughters stood in the corridor, shielded from the birth but hearing the groans and shrieks coming from their mother. The smallest of the daughters had tears in her eyes— such a beautiful moment from such a little girl. It brought me close to tears.

Another moment connected with Farida also moved me. Nureyev, sitting alone in the office of the French Police Department at Le Bourget Airport, had to decide which door to take to leave the office. Would he leave via the back door and choose freedom, or would he leave through the main door, back into the hands of the Soviet representatives? They had told him, amongst other things, that he would never see his mother again if he chose freedom. We knew, of course, which door he would choose, but nevertheless, the tension throughout the airport scenes was gripping. As we sat there waiting for him to make his decision, however, the filmed location changed. We were transported back to Ufa, where Nureyev grew up and where he took his first dance lessons. In this flashback the young Nureyev entered the Ufa studio and his teacher asked his mother to leave. The young Nureyev began to dance a folk dance—it was performed so well by a little boy playing Nureyev aged eight or so. But as Farida disappeared down the corridor we knew that the choice had been made way back there in Ufa.

The scene in the dance studio was not the only time the film flashed back to Nureyev’s earlier life. I found these flashbacks, which were in black and white rather than the colour of the main footage, quite mesmerising. They were evocative and developed the storyline in an inspired way.

In the movie I really enjoyed meeting Clara Saint played by Adèle Exarchopoulos. As the woman who befriended Nureyev and then was instrumental in facilitating his defection, she has always seemed a mysterious character. She was somewhat mysterious, or perhaps reserved in personality, in this movie too but it was interesting to have a three dimensional reading of her.

Fiennes, the director, played Alexander Pushkin, Nureyev’s main teacher at the Kirov school and the man who, with his wife, accommodated Nureyev in their St Petersburg apartment during a momentous time in his early dancing life in St Petersburg. Fiennes’ portrayal was restrained and it was hard to know what he really thought of any situation in which he found himself. I had to wonder why he didn’t react a little more strongly to his wife’s sexual relationship with Nureyev, which was made very clear to us. But then maybe the real Pushkin didn’t mind?

Oleg Ivenko, a dancer himself, played the grown up Nureyev and we saw some respectable dancing from him. I couldn’t help but think, however, that his dancing owed a lot to Nureyev whose approach, all those years ago now, to turns, jumps, manèges and the like changed the look of male dancing forever. Having said that, it was interesting to see Nureyev himself in the credits (in dancing footage that had been reduced to minuscule size) and to realise that his technique was really quite raw in many ways.

And the moment that made me smile? After negotiating his way through the crowd at Le Bourget, not to mention managing the ongoing harassment of the Soviet representatives, Nureyev finally reached the office of the Police Department. ‘Do you have a cognac?’, he asked. And of course, being French, they did.

A film well worth seeing!

Michelle Potter, 30 July 2019

My most recent writing on Nureyev was for the printed program for the 2018 visit to Brisbane by Teatro all Scala from Milan. Here is a link to that article.

Elma Kris and Daniel Riley in 'Spear'. Photo Tiffany Parker

Dance diary. November 2018

  • The changing face of Bangarra Dance Theatre

Bangarra Dance Theatre has just announced that the company is saying farewell at the end of the year to six of its dancers: Waangenga Blanco, Daniel Riley, Tara Robertson, Kaine Sultan-Babij, Luke Currie-Richardson and Yolanda Lowatta. Each has made an amazing contribution to Bangarra over recent years. Who can forget Daniel Riley’s remarkable performances in the film Spear, and his equally powerful dancing and acting as Governor Macquarie in Jasmine Sheppard’s Macq? Then it’s hard to forget, again in Spear, Kaine Sultan Babij as ‘Androgynous Man’ stalking through long grass and between trees? And there is a myriad of performances from Waangenga Blanco that stand out. As well as his role in Patyegarang, there is the ‘Angel’ duet, danced with Leonard Mickelo, in Riley, and his powerful performance in Frances Rings’ Terrain. So much more …

I wish them all well for wherever their dancing takes them and look forward to seeing them before they leave in Dubboo, opening shortly in Sydney. And of course there is the thrill of seeing new dancers in 2019.

Waangenga Blanco in 'Patyegarang', Bangarra Dance Theatre, 2014. Photo: Greg Barrett
Waangenga Blanco in Patyegarang, Bangarra Dance Theatre, 2014. Photo: © Greg Barrett
  • Robert Helpmann. The many faces of a theatrical dynamo

A new book of essays on Robert Helpmann has recently been published. It contains essays from a range of scholars and performers and is supplemented by a DVD of archival footage, including a documentary on the revival of Miracle in the Gorbals in 2014 by Birmingham Royal Ballet

My chapter, ‘Elektra. Helpmann uninhibited’ considers the origins of Helpmann’s ballet Elektra, Helpmann’s choreographic approach, and the differences, particularly in relation to Arthur Boyd’s designs, between the English production of Elektra in 1963 and that presented by the Australian Ballet at the Adelaide Festival in 1966.

Robert Helpmann book cover

Edited by Richard Cave and Anna Meadmore. Published in the United Kingdom by Dance Books in October 2018.
ISBN 9781852731793

Available from Dance Books Ltd and other retailers.

  • Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards, 2018 (Dance)

Canberra Critics’ Circle, now almost 30 years old, held its annual awards in November. This years dance awards went to:

Liz Lea: For the multi-media production RED, which drew together the work of four choreographers, including Lea, in a moving, courageous and dramatically coherent exploration of the medical condition of endometriosis.
My review of RED is at this link.

Alison Plevey and the Australian Dance Party: For Seamless, an innovative, well-considered and theatrically staged comment on the fashion industry, performed with wit and skill at the 2017 Floriade Fringe.
My review of Seamless is at this link.

Seamless, Floriade Fringe 2017. Australian Dance Party. Photo: Lorna Sim
Scene from Seamless, Floriade Fringe 2017. Australian Dance Party. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Emma Nikolic and Karen Brock: For their innovative choreography for the Canberra Philharmonic Society’s production of Strictly Ballroom. Their inventive interpretations of a number of traditional ballroom dance styles allowed the large ensemble of dancers to convince as champion ballroom dance contestants.

Michelle Heine: For her choreography for Free Rain Theatre Company’s production of 42nd Street. Her choreography for the spectacular production numbers successfully captured the authentic Broadway feel of the musical and was exceptionally well danced by the ensemble.

  • James Batchelor

Canberra dance goers will be interested to learn that James Batchelor will be back working in Canberra in 2019. He will be showing his latest work, Hyperspace, at a time and a Canberra venue to be announced. Hyperspace was made in 2018 during residencies in Nottingham, England, and Bassano del Grappa, Italy, and was recently performed in the B.motion festival in Bassano and at La Briqueterie Paris. It will also be part of the Dance Massive 2019 line up in Melbourne.

Batchelor is also looking forward to creating a new full-length work for Quantum Leap. It will premiere as QL2’s major work for the full ensemble at the Playhouse in August.

  • NGA Play. Sally Smart

The National Gallery of Australia has just installed a new children’s play area that highlights aspects of the Gallery’s extensive collection of costumes from the era of the Ballet Russes. It is designed by Melbourne-based artist Sally Smart, one of whose interests is in the juxtaposition of the art of the Ballets Russes with contemporary ideas of assemblage, cut-out items and patchwork-style lengths of fabric.

Dance features in a series of projections of dancer Brooke Stamp improvising in homage to and inspired by the dances of the Ballets Russes era (with a nod to Javanese dance). Stamp performed live (a one-off performance) at the opening of the play area early in November.

Brooke Stamp improvises for 'NGA Play. Sally Smart', 2018
Brooke Stamp improvising at the opening of the National Gallery of Australia’s children’s installation. Photo: Michelle Potter
  • Press for November 2018

’Rudolf Nureyev.’ Program article for La Scala Ballet’s Australian season, 2018. This article contains two very interesting, casual photos of Nureyev (one with Fonteyn), which I have not come across before.

‘Movement and message fail to link.’ Review of Australian Dance party’s Energeia. The Canberra Times, 22 November 2018, p. 20. Online version

Michelle Potter, 30 November 2018

Featured image: Elma Kris and Daniel Riley in Spear. Photo: © Tiffany Parker

Elma Kris and Daniel Riley in 'Spear'. Photo Tiffany Parker

Dance diary. August 2012

  • America’s irreplaceable dance treasures

This month my essays in the series America’s irreplaceable dance treasures: the first 100 went online on the website of the Dance Heritage Coalition. I was commissioned to write on Merce Cunningham and Rudolf Nureyev. The Irreplaceable treasures site is something to be treasured in itself. It is a continuing source of regret to me that in Australia we no longer have something similar. See my previous post on the demise of Australia Dancing: the Australia Dancing site was admired and used not just in Australia but around the world. [Update: Well it seems that the Dance heritage coalition website has also been taken down! so I have removed the links]

  • Tammi Gissell

I continue to be impressed with dancer Tammi Gissell who earlier in August was the solo performer in Liz Lea’s work in progress ‘Seeking Biloela’. A follow up conversation with Gissell revealed her strong and much treasured connections to her indigenous heritage. It was also interesting to hear her thoughts about working with scientists at CSIRO. She said: ‘What is also exciting for me in working with Liz is the opportunity to work with the scientists at CSIRO and to see the absolute relationship between traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge and how they support each other. For example, the scientists confirm that the Black Cockatoo rides ahead of the rain currents, heralding fertility for the land and people’.

Tammi Gissell in rehearsal for Seeking Biloela, 2012. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Gissell has recently been commissioned to create two new works for the Perth-based Ochre Contemporary Dance Company for a forthcoming season. She will choreograph one herself and make the other in collaboration with Jacob Lehrer. She is also currently in discussions with Queensland Theatre Company to develop a new work in 2013.

  • Claudia Gitelman

I was sorry to hear, just a day or so after posting my review of On stage alone, edited by Claudia Gitelman and Barbara Palfy, that Claudia Gitelman had died. Gitelman was associate professor emerita at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, and was well-known for her uncompromising scholarship. Her published writing includes a study of Hanya Holm. She also co-edited and contributed to a critical analysis of the work of Alwin Nikolais with whose company she performed.

  • Time in motion

The exhibition venue at the State Theatre in Melbourne is currently showing an exhibition celebrating the Australian Ballet’s 50th anniversary. Called Time in motion: 50 years of the Australian Ballet and curated by Margot Anderson, the Arts Centre Melbourne’s curator of dance and opera, the exhibition shows a diverse range of material including footage (some of which is archival), photographs, designs and memorabilia. It covers, if randomly, the company’s history from its first performance of Swan Lake in 1962 up to the triple bill, Infinity, staged in 2012.

Natasha Kusen of the Australian Ballet in Serenade, 2004. Choreography G Balanchine ©The George Balanchine Trust. Photo: © Justin Smith

I was especially taken by the works on paper from set and costumes designers working for the Australian Ballet across the decades. They ranged from highly detailed works, such as that by Kristian Fredrikson for Franz in the 1979 production of Coppélia, to others that were simply pencilled shapes, such as the designs by Moritz Junge for Wayne McGregor’s 2009 production, Dyad 1929. I especially liked the designs by Akira Isogawa for Graeme Murphy’s Romeo and Juliet (2011). They looked like they had been drawn in fine black pen on cloth rather than paper and were careful works of art with fabric swatches attached to become part of the art work rather pinned or stapled on in a less than careful manner. But probably my favourite was Michael Pearce’s design for the character played by Simone Goldsmith in Stephen Baynes’ At the edge of Night (1997). I loved how it was presented as a collage of sources with costume drawings complemented by historical images and a fabric swatch carefully placed to enhance the total effect.

My one gripe is that there were some issues with the display of archival footage. Some of the footage made the dancers look decidedly short and dumpy. While one can make excuses (perhaps) for the 1960s footage, there is no excuse for having Lisa Bolte and Robert Curran look short and dumpy in footage of Baynes’ beautiful pas de deux from Edge of night. I know they don’t look like that and suspect that something as simple as a change of monitor might have made a difference.

Time in motion finishes in Melbourne on 23 September 2012 and then goes to Sydney where it will be hung at the State Library of New South Wales, 12 November 2012–10 February 2013.

Michelle Potter, 31 August 2012