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!’

So we’re in a really good place. And we’re just happy to be doing these roles because they’re our dreams; what we wished we were doing all our lives, and now we’re at that point it’s exciting.

I think I’m going to have to try and keep it feeling easy. If I can go out there, do my best and have a bit of fun with the people on stage and make sure the audience is laughing and having fun, well, then I’ve done my job.

Q&A with Lana Jones
Are you excited about performing this role?
It’s definitely a role you want to do.  You want to be able to say, ‘I’ve done Swanilda in Coppélia’, definitely.

What are you looking forward to most about playing Swanilda?
I think the vivacity of it, and I think she’s going to be a fun character. There’s lots of dancing in it too, which is really nice and always fun and challenging.

Yes, it would be quite a test of stamina I’d imagine.
Yeah, I know! It looks like it’s just all fun and games …

Which former Swanildas have you admired in the role? Has there been a particular interpretation that you’ve really loved?
Well, at the beginning of the year we saw the full company perform Coppélia on DVD, and we watched Lisa Pavane do it and she was absolutely beautiful; definitely a good person to look up to.

Even though you’re not dancing with Daniel, what’s it been like to share the experience of being cast in these roles for the first time?
It’s really exciting for Daniel because it’s a full-length, and even though he’s doing The Silver Rose, which is also a full-length work, it’s his first classic three-act, full-length ballet. It’s really exciting to share that with him. It was so exciting to see him cast with Madeleine Eastoe because she’s a beautiful dancer, and it’s a great privilege for Daniel to be with someone like that, of her calibre. I’m dancing Coppélia with Kevin Jackson, which I’m really looking forward to.

What will you do to prepare for the role?
Go to toyshops!

Coppélia plays in Sydney from 4 – 22 May and Melbourne from 10 – 22 June

Images: Artists of The Australian Ballet in Coppélia. Photography by Gaica Branco.

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

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.

Do you have a favourite ballet to play and/or watch?
I loved doing Firebird this year, and Petrouchka. Playing that program [Firebird and other legends] was fantastic, great for the musicians – it’s difficult music, but it really is ballet music. 
I love the Graeme Murphy ballets. The choreography he’s done with some of the old ballets, the new ideas he’s come up with; it’s very clever.

Tell us about playing Steve Reich’s Double Sextet (the music for Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929) for Concord.
Every piece of music has its own challenges, but the Reich is something just a little bit different with the change of time signature every single bar. It’s fun to have a challenging piece. You’ve really got to be on your toes the whole way through.

How many rehearsals do you have before opening night?
The dress rehearsal and a couple of orchestral rehearsals – so you have to be well prepared. It’s very important that everyone has their parts learnt before those rehearsals, especially for something like The Sleeping Beauty which would probably be one of the hardest things in the repertoire to play – lots and lots of notes to learn. That’s basically what I’m doing at the moment; about three hours’ practice a day. Still not as much as the dancers do, but still quite a bit!

Any funny orchestra pit antics you can divulge?
In ballet music there’s always some funny tuba part, like in the Francaix [the Scuola di ballo score], and last night Nicolette must have said something to the tuba player because he just let it rip and everyone [in the orchestra] was just rolling around laughing. Obviously it was some humorous part of the ballet – the tuba is always some sort of old man or something like that. We listen to each other and often people play some very, very funny things. If someone does something a little bit differently everyone notices – it’s like another language sometimes. You have everyone laughing and a non-musician just wouldn’t understand why.

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

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.

A collage of 19th century tunes popular with Australian audiences, by the likes of Strauss and Auber, helped set the scene, while Church draped the dancers in colours fashionable in 1861 – including the horses. Tory Boy, Twilight, Price, The Moore and Archer – the winning horse – were all played by female dancers. “All wear the authentic colours carried in that first Cup,” Church told The Age in ’62. “The exception is Archer, who carried brown. We wanted something more glamorous, so have taken the liberty of changing this to a lovely gold.” Only fitting, one might say, for the likes of leading lady Kathleen Gorham, who danced the role – according to Hutton – with a ”blend of warmth, precision and sheer sparkle” on opening night.

While the romance between a jackeroo and a debutante provides the ballet’s narrative thread, the high-stepping horses of the final scene steal the show. Church’s exquisitely delicate creations did likewise in the Melbourne Arts Centre’s 2008 exhibition of dance costumes, Seamless. And not a furry animal suit to be seen – she opted for the essence over the obvious. As the curator Margot Anderson wrote: “Church created short, perky tutus, using tulle to great effect in both the skirt and mane-like headdress to create the silhouette of a horse in profile.” Melbourne Cup would prove to be an amusing appertiser to The Display, in which Robert Helpmann plumbed the darker depths of Australian society two years later.

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

Kathleen Geldard backstage in Melbourne Cup costume, The Australian Ballet 1962. Photo Darryl Smythe.