“The dancers are at peak energy, seemingly hungry to embrace rarely performed choreography.” Sunday Herald Sun
This November in Sydney The Australian Ballet presents Concord, three works by three of the most daring choreographers in the world. Take a peek at Nacho Duato’s Por vos muero, Alexei Ratmansky’s Scuola di ballo and Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929 in our latest gallery.
More images of the Concord season can be viewed on our Facebook fan page
Concord runs in Sydney 11 – 30 November
In her latest film, award-winning documentary maker Mandy Chang has captured the magic and extraordinary past of one of the greatest performing arts companies of the 20th century. A Thousand Encores: The Ballets Russes in Australia follows the Ballets Russes, the company that changed ballet, and the face of performing arts in Australia, forever. The Ballets Russes awoke a nation, transformed the cultural landscape of conservative ‘30s-Australia, leaving a rich legacy that lasts to this day. The film includes footage of Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon working with The Australian Ballet to create their Ballets Russes tribute Firebird.
A Thousand Encores: The Ballets Russes in Australia premieres Tuesday 3 November at 8.30pm on ABC1.
What is it about the Ballets Russes era that sends your heart racing?
For me it’s the incredible combination of design, dance, choreography and music, all fused into one sublime art form. The sheer cutting-edge nature of it and that it was created by the greatest artists, composers, dancers and choreographers of the time. The idea of fusing these disciplines equally was first dreamed up by Wagner, who called it Gesumstkunstwerk. It inspired and drove Sergei Diaghilev to achieve the incredible.
You spoke to some ex-Ballets Russes dancers. Could you name just one who was particularly inspiring to you?
I found them all inspiring, but I loved the vitality, enthusiasm and outspokenness of Anna Volkova. She had a treasure trove of incredible stories about the Ballets Russes. Only a tiny fraction of them made it into the film. When she talked about ballet and the music, her whole being would come alive. Her hands, and then her whole body (totally unconsciously), began to move as a way of communicating. Even at the age of ninety-something, dance is still in her. (more…)
Ballet and fashion are timeless partners and this spring the pairing was no more apparent than at New York Fashion Week, Spring/Summer 2010. Pastel and nude shades, romantic shapes and delicate fabrics mingled with theatrical elements to create wearable fashions, inspired by ballerinas in their various guises.
Rachel Antonoff transformed the Henry Street playhouse on the unofficial opening night of NYFW using a playful vintage aesthetic. Models, who included ballerinas and performers, acted out ‘parts’ in what resembled a 1940s small-town variety show meets A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ethereal creatures in demure ensembles comprising tutus, ballet slippers, Albertus Swanepoel crowns, floral frocks and ice-cream-coloured dresses flitted through the golden cardboard trees and swing sets of the ‘Enchanted Forest’ and the ‘Disenchanted Forest’.
Designer Malan Breton, himself a former dancer, sent dapper, high-sheened ballerinas (Audrey Hatch, Brittany Franklin, and Kevin Wiltz) dancing down the runway to the sounds of a 30-piece orchestra at the Metropolitan Pavilion for his collection. The show was inspired by the Karin Pritzel photograph Flight of Freedom featuring Breton’s muse Leigh Alderson and evoked the silk-and-satin regality of a ballet opening. (more…)
Alice Topp, corps de ballet member with The Australian Ballet, has been performing as one of Graeme Murphy’s swans for three years to sell-out crowds across Australia and the globe. She has danced in cities as far flung as Paris and London, and this week she graces the stage in the riverside city of Perth.
Swan Lake is incredibly special to me as a corps dancer: the movements lend themselves to artistic interpretation and expression for every individual on the stage. While we appear as a collective in corps swans, we are still dancing as if we are experiencing the love and pain of the lead swan.
There are these incredible, choreographed moments where we are very protective of Odette – we swoop in to support her and, as the music is so dramatic, it’s hard not to get completely involved in the story and swept up in the emotion of the tragedy.
No matter how many times I perform swans, I never grow sick of it. It’s always a challenge to move as a synchronised flock and I always feel that even though I am but one of many swans, we are all equal contributors to the production – when you realise the beauty of the shapes and patterns we are creating, there’s a real sense of team spirit and unity between us onstage.
Every time I do Swan Lake, and this is my third year performing as a swan, it’s so exciting to see the production grow as dancers take on new challenges in principal roles and new company members share their first Swan Lake experience. It’s definitely one of my favourite productions!
After landing in Perth to prepare for the opening night of Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, David McAllister took time to breathe, see family and blog.
At times, going back to Perth has felt like mission-impossible. We have been trying to return for the last three years, and impediments surface at the most crucial time. But as I boarded the plane on Friday night it sunk in that this time all the stars were aligned. We were travelling west with our most successful production of the new millennium.
It has been a particularly great lead-up to this tour. The ballet centre was alive with Tchaikovsky as we revisited Graeme Murphy’s production of Swan Lake. We prepared the new casts that will be performing at Burswood Theatre alongside Phillip Adams’ creative development for Aviary, which saw three of our men working with BalletLab.
It was great to have BalletLab with us and the showing last Friday was fabulous. Their rehearsals were a closed affair, but the sounds were emanating from the studio – the dancers were singing a variety of Abba and Messiaen! Steve Reich echoed down the hall as we rehearsed Dyad 1929 and Rachmaninov sounded from the studio while Stephen Baynes revisited his wonderful ballet At the edge of night.
Apart from adjusting to the three-hour time change, a weekend at home in Perth with my family was bliss! I had a chance to spend time with my two budding ballerina nieces who scored the very latest ballet T-shirt. Family time is always at a premium so it was wonderful to just hang out and catch up.
In 2009, dancers from The Australian Ballet made two guest appearances on reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance to many a rave review. One corps de ballet member of the company has just returned from making a splash on China’s version of the same show, known as Top Dancer. The Australian Ballet’s Chengwu Guo was a contestant in the competition, and finished up on top. Out of 20,000 hopefuls Chengwu danced his heart out before thousands of adoring fans, many of them screaming and waving home-made signs, and won the competition. Chengwu’s parents were secretly flown from Beijing to Guizhou to show their pride – a big highlight for Chengwu during his time on the show.
Chengwu also appears as the teenage Li Cunxin in the feature film, Mao’s Last Dancer. The Australian Ballet congratulates Chengwu on his recent successes!
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