image: Juliet Burnett
photographer: Thuy Vy
makeup and hair: Olivia Still
styling: Nadia Barbaro

Dancers Simon Vaughn and Che McMahon promoting The Australian Ballet’s very first Bodytorque season, Women on Men, in 2004. Bodytorque returns to Sydney Theatre this May with the á la mode season, pairing five emerging choreographers with emerging fashion designers.

Photography Greg Barrett

February will be a big month for The Australian Ballet, with the company travelling to Brisbane to open the performance year with Graeme Murphy’s The Silver Rose. It will also be a big month on Behind Ballet, and once again we’ll be giving away a fantastic prize for the best blog comment. Up for grabs? A copy of
Lynette Wills’ Step Inside The Australian Ballet, a beautiful photography book capturing our dancers at work and play. Happy commenting!

Image: Amber Scott and Kevin Jackson. Photography Justin Smith

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“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

Photography Jim McFarlane

Por vos muero returns to the stage alongside Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929 and Alexei Ratmansky’s Scuola di ballo as part of the triple bill Concord. Concord runs in Sydney 11 – 30 November.

Photography Jeff Busby

It’s possible to lose a day poring over old issues of Ballet and Ballet and Opera magazine. With their technicolour covers, articles about ballet’s rich past and dreamy black and white photos that look like they’ve been shot in a smoky haze, these magazines capture a fascinating era of ballet.

From top L-R
Ballet Vol 9 No 2 February 1950 – Margot Fonteyn. Photograph by Felix Fonteyn
Ballet Vol 9 No 3 March 1950 – Kenneth MacMillan. Photograph by Hans Wild
Ballet and Opera Vol 8 No 4 October 1949  – Moira Shearer and Michael Somes. Photograph by Baron
Ballet Vol 9 No 2 February 1950 – Ram Gopal
Ballet Vol 10 No 1 July 1950 – Nicholas Magallanes and Tanaquil Le Clercq. Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Ballet and Opera Vol 8 No 2 August 1949 – Jean Babilee. Photograph by Roger Wood

“The movement is the message”, Wayne McGregor says of his brand-new work for The Australian Ballet. Dyad 1929 unpicks the themes of exploration, discovery and invention with a bold new choreographic language. These rehearsal photos of McGregor with dancers Danielle Rowe and Adam Bull were shot in The Australian Ballet Centre studios by our Concord blogger Teagan Glenane.

Dyad 1929 opens in Melbourne tomorrow night as part of the Concord season, alongside Alexei Ratmansky’s Scuola di ballo and Nacho Duato’s Por vos muero. It then plays in Sydney from 11 – 30 November.

A glimpse inside the studios of The Australian Ballet where Random Dance’s Wayne McGregor is creating a brand-new work on the company, called Dyad 1929.

Video by The Apiary (Lily Coates & Gavin Youngs), with additional sound design and music by Matt Ridgway.
A glimpse inside the studios of The Australian Ballet where Random Dance’s Wayne McGregor is creating a brand-new work on the company, called Dyad 1929. Video by The Apiary (Lily Coates & Gavin Youngs), with additional sound design and music by Matt Ridgway.

The Australian Ballet remembers former Principal Artist David Ashmole, who passed away on Saturday morning after a brief but courageous fight against cancer. David was a principal dancer with The Australian Ballet from 1984 to 1994.

David Ashmole and Christine Walsh in Maina Gielgud’s 1988 production of The Sleeping Beauty. Photography by Anthony Crickmay

In late May, photographer Chloe Ferres sat in on the dress rehearsal for Bodytorque 2.2 and captured a very different side of the company. She shares some of her pictures.

Main image: Danielle Rowe and Luke Ingham in Damien Welch’s Chemical Trigger. Photography Chloe Ferres