George Balanchine famously stated: “I don’t want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance”. I was reminded of this quote when I had the privilege of seeing the incomparable Stephen Fry talk at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne. Regaling us with charming and often hilarious tales of discovering and pursuing his passions, at one point he recounted the scene from the cinematic masterpiece The Red Shoes in which our aspiring ballerina Victoria Page first encounters ballet company impresario Boris Lermentov:

Lermentov: Why do you want to dance?
Page: Why do you want to live?
Lermentov: Well I don’t know exactly why, er, but I must.
Page: That’s my answer too.

Fry used this analogy to exemplify the difference between mere desire and inexplicable need. Like involuntary functions as mundane but vital as breathing – for Fry, writing became his lifeblood; essential to his existence. I walked away from Fry’s talk feeling inspired and compelled to introspection. I was fascinated by this notion of want versus need and how pertinent it is in shaping one’s destiny. I also wondered whether, like an involuntary function, its manifestation is so natural, so right, that it is imperceptible, or whether someone has to experience a single defining moment to know that they are fulfilling their true calling. I’m often asked at what point in my life I decided to become a ballet dancer. My answer is always vague, a patchwork of various turning points and epiphanies (the day that my teacher Mrs Jenkins suggested to my parents, when I was ten years old, that I come in for private ballet lessons after school because she recognised talent in me; going to see Sydney Dance Company in Graeme Murphy’s Berlin aged 12; watching Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca perform the ‘Balcony Pas de Deux’ from Romeo and Juliet on video, aged 14; witnessing the pride and enjoyment it endlessly gave my parents and those around me and realising that I shared those feelings in my dancing). Is the fact that I am now eight years into a happy career and have been dancing for a total 21 of my 26 years enough to confirm that dancing was my lifeblood? Do I want to dance or do I need to dance?

Juliet Burnett. Photography Jo Duck

I thought that imagining my life without dancing might be a good way to find out. The thing about pursuing a career in dance is that hours and years of training must be dedicated to it, and because it demands such finely tuned physical and emotional skills, it is by its very nature an all-consuming art form. In other words, it is hard for me to imagine living without dance simply because it has defined my life. But that’s not to say that it is all of my life. I hold many passionate interests outside ballet – the visual arts, music, nature, writing – all of which are intrinsically part of my life and whose influences nurture my approach to dancing. I have the occasional flight of fancy in which I pursue one of these other passions; indeed someone like Fry seems to do quite a good job at writing, speaking, hosting TV shows and acting. He manages to maintain his lifeblood while engaging himself in a multitude of other creative vocations.

Interestingly, the central theme of The Red Shoes is that of the struggle between one’s passions – between romantic love and artistic expression; between real life and life onstage played out in front of an audience. The two passions are depicted as impossible to coexist in harmony in one artistic soul. Oh, the torment! One could easily construe the moral lesson of the film to be as black and white as that (which today seems preposterous, given the number of happily married dancers in The Australian Ballet at the moment), but I would argue that the lesson is that in order to truly and wholly live life, we can’t let ourselves become blinded by our passions to the point where they become obsessions. Being obsessed implies obstinacy and blindness, which would lead to an imbalanced and unhappy life. When you experience an inexplicable urge, when you simply need to or must do something, pursue something – that is not an obsession, it is response to instinct.

And so when I do imagine my life without dancing, it’s not such a bleak picture that flashes before me. At this stage in my life, of all my passions, I have only experienced the inexplicable urge, the need, the instinct to dance. I feel wholly fulfilled by the joy that dancing gives me. Perhaps the magic I experience onstage shows that my need to dance transcends analysis. And I guess that is all the confirmation I could hope for.

Those other passions can remain – if they have been such an enriching part of my life thus far, why would I let them go? And besides, I need to harbour them, for a dancer’s career has a ruthlessly brief timeframe. Inevitably, there will come a day when my body will protest relentlessly after years of push and pull, and no amount of passion and persistence could convince it to continue dancing. Or maybe it is my heart that will, just as imperceptibly as when it had instilled my need to dance, take that very need away. I wonder, then, what adventures the next chapter will hold – in which I immerse myself in one of my other passions and discover I have a new lifeblood? I guess I’m counting on old friend Instinct to kick in, when it’s time.

It was very cool indeed to receive a media call sheet from fashion bible Harper’s Bazaar in my pigeonhole at the Sydney Opera House one morning. Not knowing what to expect, apart from instruction to bring flesh-coloured pointe shoes, and, for the gents, a jock strap, twelve of us dancers plus Li Cunxin were piled into cars and driven out to Scheyville National Park, about an hour north of the Sydney CBD.

We were to be shot for an exclusive pictorial spread, inspired by Disney fairy tales such as Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. The story we were to help realise was Cinderella (or Sin-derella, as it transpired), in which Li was our Prince Charming, as a prominent Australian was to feature in each fairy tale. A different fashion designer was assigned to create a look for each tale, and Kit Willow dressed the beautiful Danielle Rowe in an ethereal draped wisp of a dress, with outrageous knee-high platform boots covered in red glitter, as her vision of Cinderella. Li was dressed simply in a top and pants by Rick Owens. Us ladies were dressed in our white Suite en blanc tutus, with turbans in the same nude diaphanous fabric used for Danielle’s dress and bare legs, while the gentlemen … well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

I had a little chuckle when I was reading back through my notes about the shoot when writing this blog – frantic scribblings of “Lucifer the dancing black stallion’; ‘precarious red glittered knee-high platform boots’; ‘white tutu smeared with fake tan’; ‘boys in bandages’ – yes, we didn’t know what to expect, but we did not, to quote Monty Python, expect the Spanish Inquisition!

The concept was dreamt up by creative visionary and worldly eccentric Edward Coutts Davidson, who is possibly most famous for being Madonna’s interior designer. He met us with great enthusiasm, and was clearly an avid ballet follower. In his infectious Scottish accent, he entertained us with stories about his ideas for the other shoots for this spread, such as the next day’s shoot where they were dropping a famous Australian actress into the dugong tank at the Sydney Aquarium.  It was in fact a wholly entertaining day, right from our arrival at a random family home on the outskirts of Scheyville National Park, where we were shooting, and finding the whole living room transformed into a buzzing make-up and hair department. It was there that the boys found out that they were being ‘bandaged up’. As us ladies had a ball being made up for a change (it was SO nice not having to do our make-up, which we do each night for the show), while the boys emerged from the ‘bandaging department’ (in reality, a family study) wearing little more than black bandages wrapped artfully around their limbs, and their jock straps. It was a peculiar sight, all of us standing there, the girls in our white tutus and turbans, the boys in their bandages, being fussed over by a make-up army as they hurriedly slathered us in fake tan, radiant spray and of course sunscreen. All in the middle of a suburban family living room!

We piled into cars in our tutus and bandages while trying awkwardly not to get fake tan and radiant spray all over the car seats, and were driven a few minutes to the site. We were met by Edward and another army of helpers (I could not believe how many people were involved in one photo shoot), as well as a gorgeous black Friesian Stallion named Lucifer, and a magnificent original 1860s horse carriage pulled by two horses. Without further ado, Edward ushered Li and the twelve of us into a makeshift horse arena, and we were very lucky to have David McAllister on site to arrange us into balletic poses – otherwise who knows what might have been asked of us, with three horses as potential pas de deux partners! In between shots and while we deliberated over different poses, the make-up army would step into the arena and there would ensue a general fuss of sunscreen, radiant spray and fake tan reapplication and water bottle distribution (it was a rather balmy day and it was 3 o’clock in the afternoon). I ended up being the ‘lifted girl’, and as such I had sunscreen/fake tan/radiant spray all over my white tutu to prove it (apologies to our wonderful wardrobe production department!).

I must say that seeing us all standing around in the living room of that very kind family’s home in our outfits, I found it difficult to imagine how the shoot was going to come together, but once we were placed on the horse carriage on this dry near-barren hill, with a dancing stallion and a smoke machine adding to the theatre of it all, I could see how this creative vision manifested so brilliantly. It’s a testament to a number of people’s passion and committed energy and it was really inspiring for me to work with a group of creatives in a different field to my own. And not only can I tell my grandkiddies one day that Grandma was once in Harper’s Bazaar, I can also tell them that Mr Davidson’s most famous client has the finished photo of us, as it appears in this month’s issue, hanging on her wall.

The April issue of Harper’s Bazaar, featuring The Australian Ballet, is on sale now

“Do I dare disturb the universe?” T.S. Eliot

Most dictionaries define art as the production, by aesthetic principles, of that which is beautiful. Trust a dictionary to be so curt and clinical. If I were to provide a definition, I would say that art is the expression of the human psyche. Art may express beauty but there will be art that disturbs, or challenges, too. By ‘disturbing’ I don’t mean alarming or upsetting audiences, but confronting and inspiring them with new insights, innovation of form and pushing social parameters. A fundamental element in art – and not just art, but good art – is that it should challenge the viewer.

As dancers we are extremely privileged to be able to use our bodies like a brush on canvas, if you will, as our creative voice. When you consider that we don’t have the assistance of our voices, we’re challenged to articulate in a strong and coherent manner exactly what it is that we are aiming to convey. I have had the good fortune to dance some roles by choreographers whom I admire for their understanding of the human body and its limitations and expressive potential. These choreographers have dared to reinvent classical technique and their works have challenged their contemporaries – namely George Balanchine and Graeme Murphy. And so I couldn’t believe my luck when Wayne McGregor chose me as one of the dancers he wanted to work with for his piece Dyad 1929.

I watched a whole bunch of Wayne’s choreography on YouTube and loved the way he seemed to push the dancers’ bodies to almost distorted extremes. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition of raw, fleshy, primal with creature-like ethereality. When we stepped into the studio with him on the first day, I was sold from the word … well, his first words were “Hi everyone, I’m Wayne”, so let’s go with that. He shook each of our hands and learned our names, initiating the feeling that this creative process was to be a collaborative one. While Wayne was definitely in charge and demonstrating ideas for movements through his own sinewy, eloquent physique, and vocal cues (from wooooaaahhh to zzyyyuppp and all in between), he still responded to the way in which we interpreted his choreographic language. We would rarely leave the studio without a coat of sweat, and perhaps a little bit of a headache – possibly from dehydration, yes, but more likely because Wayne was challenging our minds.

Of course we have to challenge our minds as dancers – we are in the studio every day fine-tuning our bodies. But we also need to go beyond ballet technique and discover our body’s expressive capabilities, whether we’re preparing for an abstract contemporary piece or a classical story ballet. It is just that Wayne was asking us to explore our mental and physical capacity to the extreme and challenging our cognitive skills at the same time. It was an epiphany of sorts for me. I had discovered, in those weeks we worked with Wayne, muscles I had never been in tune with. I pushed my body to fill negative space like a broad brush painting oil on canvas – or a fine needlepoint etching – or the breath of an acrylic spray-can on a wall. This was the result of challenging my thought process, stepping back and asking my body questions and eking out really surprising answers. I guess, you could say, I was disturbing my body. This, I thought after one rehearsal, is what art is about.

And the discovery won’t end after the last rehearsal. It will continue with each show of Dyad 1929. The work is inspired by the enormously significant work of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes’ as well as the exciting technological innovations of the period between 1909 and 1929. Wayne’s choreographic juxtaposition is consistent with honouring Diaghilev’s tradition of innovation, and presents a challenge not just for the dancers – especially classical dancers, using centuries-old technique to convey totally modern themes – but for a ballet audience as well.

Long may artistic innovators like George Balanchine, like Graeme Murphy, like Wayne McGregor, disturb the universe.

Concord opens this Wednesday 11 November, and runs until Monday 30 November.

Photography Jim McFarlane

This time of year at The Australian Ballet marks the dancers’ annual performance review. Naturally, it’s a time most dancers dread. Not because of what issues might be confronted in our reviews, because, let’s face it, to have made it this far in our careers means we must be doing something right, and dancers, as perennial pursuers of perfection, find discussing one’s career and areas for development really valuable. The cause for this dread, rather, lies in the dancers’ self-appraisal form, where there is a space for us to fill in about our strengths as a dancer.

Allow me to explain. I hear you asking, “Surely that wouldn’t be so hard?” but the talk in the dressing rooms at this time of year always seems to be punctuated with exasperated cries of, “I could fill out the ‘weaknesses’ space ‘til the cows come home, but ’strengths’?”.

There is something about the mentality of the dancer, or perhaps any artist, that makes it very difficult to praise oneself. ‘Give yourself a pat on the back’ comes as a foreign concept.  A dancer will rarely concede satisfaction at the end of a gruelling rehearsal – there is always room for improvement, perhaps a sequence that feels ‘out of body’ that you can only feel on top of if you repeat it over and over; struggling to connect with the music (my personal least-favourite scenario); or struggling with getting into character, or the style of the piece. These are just some of the hurdles we encounter, but the learning curve doesn’t end at the final rehearsal. Even when it’s finally time to step out onstage and perform, we continue to tweak and not just maintain a standard but, ideally, improve each subsequent performance.

This constant tweaking and perfecting of the final product is something unique to live performers. It’s not like a thesis, that, after months or even years of preparation and research, you can edit and print out and hand in a final product, all perfected and to your satisfaction. It’s not like retail, where a budget, all conveniently quantified, is set and hopefully made at the end of a day’s work. Of course, after all the preparation, a dancer will feel more on top of things and well-prepared to perform, but still can’t just step out on stage and blindly go through the moves. Every movement requires focus on the thought processes that you have exercised in the studio, along with 100% commitment and energy for every single show.

And the most maddening thing about live performance? There is no pause and rewind button! You get one chance in each show and that’s it, which makes for a cruel path to perfection. Even a dancer at the top of their game will struggle to recount a ‘perfect show’ – yes, there are sublime moments one experiences onstage where your body feels in blissful harmony with the music and the audience vibe is electric – but to expect this every show, with 120-150 shows per year, would be an impossible feat. There’s bound to be at least a handful of shows in which you’re disappointed.

It’s no wonder then that the profession of ballet breeds such harsh critics. And as the old adage goes, we’re all our own worst critics. This isn’t to say of course that we’re standing around all day bashing our heads against the wall in frustration. We don’t dwell on the prospect of failure so much that we lose perspective, nor forget the very reason we perform – to share this wonderful art form with our audiences. And hell, we are being paid to do what we love! How many people are in that privileged circumstance?

It’s times like these that we dancers need to step back from all the arduous grit and remember this privilege and acknowledge our achievements and – oh how it pains me to say it – our strengths. I came to this section on my self-appraisal form, and after all the self-scrutiny of the last two pages (which I had no trouble filling out), I experienced a sort of writer’s block with that dreaded ‘strengths’ box. Half an A4 page’s worth of blank paper seemed to magnify itself the longer I stared at it.  Then I remembered something I learned in media training, which I undertook as part of my Telstra Ballet Dancer Award nomination along with my fellow nominees. After observing that we were all “too modest” and “downplaying the significance of our achievements”, the course leader gave us some advice: “think more like your Mum”. I imagined myself in my next TV interview rabbiting on about how wonderful and how proud of myself I am and, after baulking at the idea of this vulgar display, realised that actually this was sage advice indeed.  I thought back over the past year particularly in my career and, instead of falling into my usual habit of self-deprecation and obsessing over the buts and what-ifs, thought like Mum and saw some incredible milestones achieved. Fears conquered. Ambitions realised. I had to admit to myself, I was even feeling just a little bit satisfied about everything.
And so I took to that ’strengths’ box with gusto. But not without adding at the end: “but there’s always room for improvement”.

Soloist Juliet Burnett remembers her late, great mentor, Valrene Tweedie

As The Australian Ballet revels in the pinnacle of a four-year long celebration of the Ballets Russes, having just closed the final curtain on the Firebird and other legends programme and reopening it for Graeme Murphy’s Nutcracker: The Story of Clara, I have fortunately been busied with some challenging work in both programmes, but also with thoughts and memories of the lady who instilled in me the passion for the provenance of these works, Valrene Tweedie.

Throughout my ballet training with Valerie Jenkins, Miss Tweedie was an omnipresent figure, forever a bounteous fount of wisdom and fierce wit. I held her on a pedestal, and wouldn’t ever cease to do so, as I was awed by stories of her joining Colonel de Basil’s Ballets Russes on their 1936-1940 tour, and dancing all over the world under the stage name of Irina Lavrova. Her matter-of-fact, call-a-spade-a-spade demeanour was something very important in reigning in my acute case of stars-in-the-eyes syndrome as a young student. I used to pore over countless dance magazines and books and closely watch the more senior girls in eisteddfods, then go to great lengths to emulate their shapes and movements.

It was at the height of this obsessive period that Miss Tweedie was coaching me in Aurora’s Act III variation from The Sleeping Beauty, and the first time I danced it for her, she stopped the music when I was not even halfway through the famous diagonal petit developpe step (ballet jargon for a step where the dancer twists her wrists around while travelling on a diagonal en pointe). Her tiny frame approached me, her eyes insistent, and she took me firmly by the forearms, and said, quietly and without reproach, “My dear, the music is so delicate and simple, and so what is this flapping about and carrying on with the arms?” She made me listen to the music and asked me to respond to it, not to a preconceived idea of the aesthetic of the movement. She persisted in simplifying all of the affectations I had acquired from all these fanciful images I had floating around in my head.

Her favourite, all-encompassing phrase was “simplicity and sincerity”. It is this teaching that has guided my approach to my dancing from the day it was first uttered to me. She loathed superfluous affectations and very much admired naturalness and femininity in a female dancer. She always stressed the importance of being a human onstage, not a dancer pretending to be a human. This also extended to having the hair soft and natural around the face. One famous story Mrs Jenkins told me was about one time Miss Tweedie was adjudicating a girl’s classical solo section in an eisteddfod. She got up onstage to announce the winners, but not before commenting, “all the dancers were lovely, but it’s such a pity that they all looked like eggheads”. I still always think of her as I’m preparing my hair for a show – one too many reaches for the can of hairspray could spell a disaster of egghead proportions.

I recall Miss Tweedie as a bit of a character of contradictions. She was a finely built lady, with a tender tone to her voice. Outsiders would comment on how sweet and meek she was … and I would agree that yes, she was very sweet, but meek, no! She had fire inside her and a razor-sharp wit. She had not just an opinion but an impassioned argument about many things, something I only really learnt as I became closer to her later after I joined The Australian Ballet. I never dared to venture a challenge on these things, for fear of having my head bitten off for a start, but also because who was I to question the voice of experience? I had learnt so much from this remarkable woman; she helped instill in me a passion for this most perfect of art forms, and the importance of maintaining one’s integrity in such a crazy industry. Right up until her last days, I was amazed by her tenacity of spirit despite her ailing body.

On the opening night of Firebird and other legends in Melbourne, I felt honoured to be performing the Valse ballerina in Les Sylphides. This ballet to me epitomises the perfect marriage of music and dance – every note and breath of the music is manifested in the movements of the sylphs onstage. Fokine’s masterful choreography makes it feel just sublime to dance onstage, even the notoriously difficult solo I was performing. Miss Tweedie loved this ballet and performed it endlessly with Colonel de Basil’s company – one of their ‘bread and butter ballets’, as she put it. It was during the Sylphides rehearsal period that I began to ache with sadness at losing my mentor last year. I thought of the things she had taught me, I lamented the questions I wished I had asked her. It wasn’t until just before curtain-up on opening night that I felt resolve: a torrent of nervous energy had hit me suddenly, so I took myself to a quiet corner and forced myself to calm down. As I closed my eyes and took in breath, an inner voice awakened in me, and it sounded very familiar. It was a tender voice, eerily comforting, but its message was blunt. “My dear, only you can make it happen for yourself.”

And so I did.

Photography by Lynette Wills from Step Inside The Australian Ballet

You might call it a Coronation by Fire – Soloist Juliet writes about her transformation from understudy to princess in Graeme Murphy’s Firebird.

It’s always useful to have a mantra. I have several hidden up my sleeve, from those verging on the monosyllabic and mundane to profound but succinct adages, all to drive me over the odd hurdle here and there. One of my mantras: “never say never”, rung true more than ever last week.

It began last Monday when, sitting in the dancers’ common room after class and unassumingly wolfing down a quick vegemite sanger, fellow dancer Daniel Gaudiello asks me if I would like to do a quick rehearsal of the prince and princess in Graeme Murphy’s Firebird … turns out his partner had just learnt that an injury would keep her from dancing for a couple of weeks, and they were supposed to be on that night … “Maybe we could dance it tonight?”. Hardly pausing for thought, I found myself saying “Yeah, sure, see you in the studio in ten.” Well, a thought probably did pass through my head –“As if!” – closely followed by “Well, give it a go. Why not?”, and then, a gentle but insistent reminder: “Never say never”.

After going through the two pas de deux without too much of a hitch, we deemed it a vague possibility – but the infamous red pen of the nightly casting blackout sheet had already decided that night’s fate: the first cast was stepping in. Momentary relief set in and I went about the rest of my day as planned – dancing the fiendishly difficult waltz solo in Les Sylphides that evening was enough on my plate for that day. My close ally mantra, however, urged me to be prepared and so I paid extra attention to the ins and outs of the princess role as I watched side stage the following night with eagle eyes, in between entrances and exits for my ‘usual’ role as one of the seven princesses.

It wasn’t until Wednesday morning that, as I was getting ready for class, our ballet mistress Fiona Tonkin came into the dressing room and informed me that David McAllister wanted me to have a go at the princess, with the original Monday night cast, for Friday night. Suddenly “never say never” took on a somewhat smug “I told you so” tone.

And so down to business. Enough dreaming. Daniel and I stayed back the next two afternoons after the scheduled rehearsals and went through the ballet under Fiona’s watchful eye. I think we were all pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it came together, aided by the fact that Daniel is a very talented partner, and by that old friend, the mantra, which was by my side and nudging me through every Firebird rehearsal earlier that year during the creation process, as I paid close attention to the role I was understudying. I wouldn’t have presumed back then that I was to perform my first show after three quick rehearsals.

And yet, at around 9.40pm on that Friday night, there I was, standing onstage inside the cage of intertwined vines, catching glimpses from inside my mystical prison of the girls performing the seven princesses’ dance – my ‘usual’ role – and about to step into a role unusual indeed for me. I realised then what had eventuated of abiding by a simple mantra. Thanks, old friend, and the other ones up my sleeve. My artillery is ready for the next attack.

Firebird and other legends is playing in Sydney until 22 April. (And yes, Juliet will be dancing the Princess in selected performances)