Posts by Jessica Thomson

Franz and Swanilda: a trouble-making pair

Coppélia’s Franz and Swanilda are roles traditionally given to ballet stars on the rise. Lana Jones and Daniel Gaudiello are not playing the trouble-making pair together on stage but, as newlyweds, they’ll be sharing notes after hours. Franz is Daniel’s first full-length performance in a classic three-act ballet. And, for Lana, Swanilda is a role most ballerinas only dream of dancing. Jessica Thomson caught up with Lana and Daniel while they were preparing for two of ballet’s most iconic roles.

Q&A with Daniel Gaudiello
Do you feel this is something of a breakthrough role for you – your first full-length lead in one of the classics?
That’s right, it will be. It’ll be a great challenge. And I don’t know if it’ll be too much for me but I should be fine because it’s not as huge as some of the other ballets, I hope! You know, there are some ballets where you’re ‘on’ all the time, but I think this ballet might be a good step – a platform to get to the big stuff.

What are you looking forward to most about playing Franz?
Everything about it: putting myself into a three-act ballet for starters, and carrying the show. I’m looking forward to getting into the character and taking the audience on Franz’ journey. I’m going to enjoy the dancing, because it feels really nice on the body. And I’m going to enjoy the character in the second act; I go to town on the character. I really look forward to the acting. I guess that’s why I dance – to be a new character every day is fun.

Even though you’re not dancing with Lana, what’s it like to share the experience of both being cast in these roles for the first time (well, in a professional sense anyway!)?
It’s great to be in the same boat and, yeah, we can share experiences. It’s nice to dance together, but when we dance apart it’s almost easier because you’re leaving work at work, and when you come home it’s not like, ‘My partner was crap … Oh! You’re my partner!’ (more…)

7 May 2010

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Flashback: Fool on the Hill

By Jessica Thomson

Flashback

Just months after colour television burst onto the scene in 1975, The Australian Ballet joined forces with ABC TV and invited British choreographer Gillian Lynne to create a ballet especially for television. “I’ve been very secretive about this show in England,” Lynne told The Age in 1976, a few weeks before the ballet screened in May. “It is such a good idea, but I didn’t want it to be pinched by some other television company.”

Lynne – now synonymous with juggernauts Cats and The Phantom of the Opera – could hardly have chosen more appropriate subject matter for the new medium. Fool on the Hill wove together the colourful characters and psychedelic landscapes of Beatles songs, which were especially arranged and orchestrated for the ballet by John Lanchbery.  The synopsis (according to the programme for the stage version, which Lynne staged for the company in 1976) was as follows: “The Fool sits on his hill lonely and remote, unable to communicate with life and especially with people. His alter ego materialises to jolt the Fool out of his lethargy and tumbles him off the hill and into a series of adventures.”

The Fool (Kelvin Coe – who at one point even dons tap shoes in rather a Gene Kelly moment) travels from Strawberry Fields to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds via Blue Jay Way, meeting characters including Michelle (Ai-Gul Gaisina), Eleanor Rigby (Marilyn Jones), Lucy (tiny Lucette Aldous, of course) and Sergeant Pepper (Robert Helpmann – a natural fit) along the way. This who’s-who of Australian dance were supported by an ensemble of plasticine porters, rocking horses and a rising sun – to name a few.
* Synopsis from the program from www.australiadancing.org

Jessica Thomson is a performing arts writer and has written for many publications including Dance Australia.

Image: Artists of The Australian Ballet in Fools on a Hill’. Photography by Jeff Busby

27 January 2010

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From the pit

By Jessica Thomson

Music

Principal Flautist Libby Pring has been playing the flute for the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra (the Australian Ballet’s Sydney orchestra) for 20 years. She spoke to Jessica Thompson about how playing music for ballet keeps her on her toes.

How does playing for ballet differ from playing for opera?
With opera we can hear the singers, and so although we do rely on the conductor we also rely on our ears and listen to what the singer’s doing. With ballet we rely very much on the conductor because we can’t actually see the dancers, and we really have to play according to the tempo the dancers want or that they can cope with. You have to trust the conductor and be ready for something like a sudden change of tempo – if a dancer takes off!

So the tempo can vary depending on who’s dancing?
Yes, very much. Nicolette [Fraillon, Music Director and Chief Conductor] always warns us “this is the faster team” or “this is a slower team”. If it’s a bit slower one night then a bit faster the next you just know it’s a different set of dancers.

Do you ever get tired of playing second fiddle, so to speak, to the dancing?
No, not really. We enjoy the ballet repertoire. It’s different from the opera repertoire in that it really is its own music – we’re not accompanying a singer. It’s more similar to the symphonic repertoire in a way.  You should play with some sense of inspiration; I think that’s very important for us and also very important for the dancers – if they hear an orchestra really enjoying what they’re doing I’m sure that helps them feel inspired. (more…)

7 December 2009

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And they’re off!

By Jessica Thomson

Flashback, Peggy

In the twilight years of the Borovansky Ballet, Artistic Director Peggy van Praagh was keen to add a touch of Australiana to the repertoire. Something lighthearted and humorous was what she had in mind, a la Ballets Russes crowdpleasers Le Beau Danube and Gaite Parisienne, so loved by Australian audiences. Australia, Dame Peggy decided, needed a Gaite Parisienne of its own.

The proposed ballet was Melbourne Cup – a comic account of the very first running of the famous horse race, won by ‘Archer’ in 1861, to celebrate its centenary. But Melbourne Cup was not to be a Borovansky ballet; the company dissolved and plans for the bold new project went with it. Van Praagh got her wish soon enough, however, when The Australian Ballet was born in 1962, with Dame Peggy at the helm.

Choreographed by Rex Reid, Melbourne Cup was the fledgling company’s very first commission and took pride of place in its debut season. The colourful one-act ballet premiered not, funnily enough, in Melbourne, but in Sydney on 16 November, 1962. According to Geoffrey Hutton, theatre critic for The Age at the time, the performance “brought the house down”. Melbourne Cup, his review went on, “has style and humor (sic); the decor is lively and so is the music … with a little attention it can be made into a natural finishing ballet.”

As high-spirited and comical as the finished product might have been, efforts to evoke 1860s Melbourne were taken seriously by the ballet’s collaborators. The designer responsible for enlivening the decor was Ann Church. Her designs, in the words of Rex Reid, captured “the rawness and romance of the event” – in three scenes: the bar (naturally) of the Theatre Royal on Cup Eve, the ballroom of a well-to-do Melbourne home (of the period, of course), and last but not least, Flemington Racecourse. (more…)

2 November 2009

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