Monthly Archives: November 2009

Damien’s swan song

By Kate Scott
Concord, From the studio

Prince, peasant, artist, cad, student, swashbuckler – there’s no role Damien Welch hasn’t performed in his 18 years as a dancer. This Monday 30 November he’ll take his final curtain call as a Principal Artist with The Australian Ballet.

The son of Australian dance legends Marilyn Jones and Garth Welch, and the younger brother of choreographer Stanton Welch, Damien started ballet classes at the relatively late age of 15. He quickly made up for lost time, joining The Australian Ballet in 1992 and reaching the top rank of Principal in just six years. Dancing countless ballets both at home and overseas (often cast opposite his on-and-offstage partner, fellow Principal Artist Kirsty Martin), he’s worked with some of the world’s leading choreographers, and had numerous roles created on him, switching effortlessly between classical and contemporary works.

In recent years Damien has worked behind the curtain as well, restaging Stanton Welch’s masterwork Divergence and documenting new works. Earlier this year, he made his choreographic debut with a piece called Chemical Trigger for the Bodytorque 2.2 season, for which he also composed the score. The sight of Damien wandering the hallways of The Australian Ballet between rehearsals, guitar slung from his shoulder, will be sorely missed. He’ll return as a guest artist in 2010 and continue his long relationship with the company, but for now we bid farewell to an extraordinary talent.

Damien takes his final bow on the closing night of Concord in Sydney

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27 November 2009
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Comment of the month – juicy ballet prizes up for grabs!

By Kate Scott
Ballet V Fashion


At Behind Ballet we love comments. We LOVE comments. So we’ve decided to award a juicy ballet prize to the best reader comment on the blog every month.

This time around we’re giving away a copy of our 2010 calendar, à la mode: ballet & fashion (reckoned by The Sydney Morning Herald  “the world’s most beautiful calendar … a celebration of sexy bodies and sumptuous couture”) along with a box set of postcards from Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake. You don’t have to do anything to enter except jump onto Behind Ballet and have your say. It doesn’t matter if you’re commenting on an old or a new post, we’d love to hear from you. We’ll select the best for December just before Christmas and contact the lucky winner. Happy posting!

Image: Daniel Gaudiello, Amber Scott, Lana Jones and Kevin Jackson from à. la mode: ballet & fashion. Photography Justin Smith
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26 November 2009
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Flashback: 1962

By Kate Scott
Ballet V Fashion, Flashback


The Australian Ballet recently unearthed a series of photographs taken in its very first year of existence, 1962. The black and white images abound with youth and promise, not just of the dancers but the young company too. This snap of Leonie Leahy perched outside The Australian Ballet’s first home in East Melbourne, a disused ladies college, recalls the easy grace of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Hepburn, who trained as a dancer, was instrumental in popularising the ballet flat, and owned hundreds of pairs of the slipper named in her honour by Italian label Salvatore Ferragamo. Over 50 years since the ‘Audrey’ first debuted, ballet flats remain hugely popular amongst the sartorially discerning, inflicting none of the tortures of high heels – or pointe shoes.

Image & text from The Australian Ballet’s 2010 calendar, à la mode: ballet & fashion, now available from The Australian Ballet Shop

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25 November 2009
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Dancing poolside

By admin
From the studio

Tan lines had to be avoided at all costs as four exquisite dancers from The Australian Ballet rehearsed on a custom-built poolside stage at Hamilton Island’s luxury resort, qualia. Factor 30 sunscreen was applied liberally as Yosvani Ramos, Stephanie Williams, Ty King-Wall and Kristy Corea perfected their pas de deux for a one-night-only performance: a culmination of one month’s preparation. “You can’t have dancers with lines across their back,” said The Australian Ballet’s Executive Director Valerie Wilder, who incidentally helped apply the sunscreen.

The previous evening, over a scrumptious dinner of seared scallops, lamb loin and eggplant caviar, about 200 guests probed the dancers and Artistic Director David McAllister during a Q&A session. The audience were showered in honesty and insights. “You never stop dancing.  It’s dancing that gives you up. You can’t do what you want anymore”, reflected McAllister who, after 18 years of dancing, retired from the stage in 2001. Other topics included career injuries, body image, life after ballet, and the hefty cost of pointe shoes. (more…)

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23 November 2009
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Dyad 1909

By Kate Scott
Concord


The Ballets Russes were citizens of the world. Born in Paris, they performed in countless countries, propelled by a fast-beating Russian heart. It makes perfect sense, then, that Wayne McGregor’s Dyad diptych, honoring the Ballets Russes, premiered in two cities about as far away as cities can be: Melbourne and London.

Dyad 1909, which recently opened at Sadler’s Wells, was in some ways a more literal realisation of McGregor’s Antarctic preoccupations. Two dancers, dramatically muzzled in Swarovski Crystal masks, appeared alongside the fur-wrapped figure of an explorer. What unfolded was a dense and invigorating work, video, movement and music colluding to disarm and intoxicate. The lush and appropriately chilly score was composed and conducted by Icelandic prodigy Olafur Arnalds (snake-hipped, floppy haired, wearing a natty burnt-orange cardigan), who presided over a five-piece ensemble from his keyboard, occasionally unleashing a computerised vocals in the ‘Fitter, happier, more productive’ vein. Conjuring shifting icebergs, cracking glaciers and, occasionally, oblivion, the music was both beautiful and terrifying, the perfect accompaniment to the shape-shifting videos and the thrusting, seeking movements of the seven dancers from Random Dance.

Images:
In the Spirit of Diaghilev
A Sadler’s Wells Production
Wayne McGregor
Dyad 1909
Photography Hugo Glendinning
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20 November 2009
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“The most daring, absurd thing ever”: Lady Gaga and the Bolshoi Ballet

By Martyn Pedler
Ballet V Fashion, Music

Lady Gaga has been called a “foul-mouthed, pants allergic, electro-loving pop princess” by the lads’ magazine Maxim. She’s also been called “one of the Nijinskys of our epoch” by Milanese artist Francesco Vezzoli. Both these descriptions seemed apt when she performed with the Bolshoi Ballet last Saturday.

Francesco Vezzoli masterminded the benefit event for the 30th anniversary of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. His art has always shown an obsession with fame. His back catalogue, for example, includes a star-studded advertisement for an entirely fictional perfume called ‘Greed’. And, like fame, the MOCA event itself was fleeting – he subtitled the performance as “The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again”.

While photographs bear witness to the night’s share of celebrities, it was more than just a paparazzo’s dream. If Gaga is to be Nijinsky, then Vezzoli is happy to play Diaghilev. “Diaghilev has always been a big hero of mine,” he recently told The Daily Beast. Hence his famous collaborators, drawn from different artistic spheres, took their creative lead from the tradition of the Ballets Russes.

The spirit of the Ballets Russes is evident in every aspect of Lady Gaga’s onstage appearance. Her blue lipsticked pout matched the butterflies added to her piano by enfant terrible of the British art world, Damien Hirst. Her headdress was designed by architect Frank Gehry; the evening’s masks by Australian director Baz Luhrmann and his wife Catherine Martin. Even Gaga’s chosen ballad for the event provided an artistic cameo, with lyrics describing her lover’s “James Dean glossy eyes”.

The Bolshoi dancers, dressed by Prada and Vezzoli, joined Gaga on a raised catwalk. The limited width of this fashion-inspired stage obviously restricted their field of motion. As they swayed and pirouetted, they were reminiscent of the tiny dancers inside a music box, moving sometimes with a mechanical ticking, sometimes with a fluid grace.

Lady Gaga has always been determined her performances be considered performance art. She’s fond of quoting Andy Warhol, saying that art should be meaningful in the most shallow way possible. And like Warhol, she’s impossible to pin down: declaring high art credibility one moment, and winking that she makes “soulless electronic pop” the next. After her performance, she told the Wall Street Journal that “art is life, life is art – the question is what came first?” High art; popular culture; it’s all the same to her. And to her partner in crime, too. Franceso Vezzoli said that he wished to combine Lady Gaga and the Bolshoi Ballet as it was “the most daring, absurd thing ever.”

Absurd? Perhaps – but so was 32 flavours of Campbell Soup hanging on a gallery wall.

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18 November 2009
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