Posts by Juliet Burnett

In her last post about travelling to Europe on the Khitercs Hirai Scholarship, Senior Artist Juliet Burnett is coached in the role of Odette/Odile at The Royal Ballet, takes class with the Dutch National Ballet, and reflects on lessons learnt. 

Having been away a few weeks, nearing the end of my stay and feeling a little overwhelmed by the influx of information and inspiration, it became necessary to seek momentary refuge for recollection and reflection. Oddly, I was to find it in the half-hour train ride to Covent Garden (London’s Tube is not generally regarded as conducive to quiet introspection). What do you want to get out of this? I asked myself. What have you already learnt? Have you learnt enough?

I became a master of notes and lists, and quite possibly had enough material for the world’s first ballet dancer memoirs written entirely on the Tube. I just didn’t want to forget anything I had seen, heard or felt. (more…)

Our Senior Artist Juliet Burnett is off broadening her horizons in Europe on the Khitercs Hirai Scholarship. In the third of her posts, she visits the Royal Ballet of Flanders and sees performances there and in London that make her fall in love with ballet all over again.

A source of constant fascination for an Australian visiting London is the city’s proximity to Europe. That you can be in Switzerland in a couple of hours, or just spend a casual day shopping in Paris, is an unending novelty when you’ve grown up in a country where it is a five-hour flight to get from one side to the other. So in planning my trip I wanted to exploit London’s geographical advantage, and of course round out my experience, with a couple of trips to companies in Europe. This weekend my first stop was Antwerp, Belgium, to visit another royal ballet. (more…)

Our Senior Artist Juliet Burnett has jetéd off overseas for a month on the Khitercs Hirai Scholarship. In the second of her posts, she relates how the inspirational experiences of sitting in on rehearsals for McGregor and Ashton ballets and seeing a performance of Jewels have her dancing in the streets.

During the week, I sat in on a rehearsal of Wayne McGregor’s Limen. Wayne is the resident choreographer of The Royal Ballet; I had the privilege of working with him when he choreographed Dyad 1929 on us in 2009, so I was particularly excited to see him creating on dancers with whom he works on a regular basis. Opening night of the Mixed Bill was in a little over a week, so the cast were at the stage of running each movement, but not yet without the odd stop and start. I was grateful for my timing, because I was curious to observe these intermediate stages of producing a work, to see how these dancers operated in a scenario all too familiar to me. (more…)

Our Senior Artist Juliet has jetéd off overseas for a month on the Khitercs Hirai Scholarship. In the first of her posts, she takes class with The Royal Ballet, learns a new technique and takes a peek inside the Royal Opera House dressing rooms.

In the final hours of the long flight to London, I pulled out my UK landing card and started to fill it out in a semi-dazed stupor. At the section asking for the purpose of my trip I almost ticked the box that said ‘Work’, but then a reflex jolted from within, and I withdrew. It wasn’t so much the montage of tales dancing around my head of disasters involving absent working visas and suspicious immigration employees. It was the box next to it, which said ‘Education’. Despite a suitcase full of pointe shoes and practice clothes, and the fact that I had nearly ten years of dancing professionally under my belt, it didn’t take me long to decide which box was more applicable to my pursuits over the next month. I had come here to learn. (more…)