Posts by Valerie Lawson

Serge Lifar as Romeo, 1926
Scenery design by Jean Miró

Tantrums and tears, catcalls and goggles, a visit from the police and a pink dressing gown slung on a peg. It could only be a scenario created by Diaghilev, the ringmaster of the Ballets Russes.

In 1926, Diaghilev orchestrated a surrealistic version of Romeo and Juliet in which the lovers elope, departing the stage by plane in leather coats and airmen’s caps, complete with goggles. The scenario may seem Monty Pythonesque, but the months before – and after – the ballet’s premiere were far from funny. Following the first performances in Monte Carlo, the Ballets Russes presented the work in Paris, where the opening night was disrupted by a riot. Diaghilev could not have been happier. He thrived on scandal and outrage. (more…)

5 December 2011

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Stephen Baynes with Adam Bull and Juliet Burnett in rehearsal for Beyond Bach. Photo by James Braund

The height of classicism: Stephen Baynes

By Valerie Lawson

Elegy

[Show as slideshow]

Elegy, a program that brings together two master works by our Resident Choreographer Stephen Baynes, is about to open in Melbourne. Valerie Lawson takes a long view of Stephen’s career and influences.

The Adelaide teachers shook their heads. No, they told his mother, Stephen was far too young to learn the piano at six years old.

It wasn’t Mrs Baynes who pushed the idea, but the boy himself, who was entranced with recordings of Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas and insisted that he learn the piano. At seven, a teacher did accept Stephen as her student. At eight, he was going to the opera and saw Sutherland perform. At 14 he took his place at the barre for his first ballet lesson, luckily with one of the leading teachers of the day Joanne Priest. (more…)

31 May 2011

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Apollo’s Angels: an ex-dancer’s history of ballet

By Valerie Lawson

Books

When dancers trade their ballet shoes for a writing career they have one great advantage. Their muscle memory kicks in as they sit at the computer screen. Dancer-writers can speak from the inside out. (more…)

7 March 2011

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Vicki Attard in Madame Butterfly. Photography Jim McFarlane

Tragic heroines

By Valerie Lawson

Madame Butterfly, Romeo & Juliet

One lives in Verona, the other in Nagasaki. One is cared for by her nurse, the other by her maid, Suzuki. One is still a girl, the other a mother. But Juliet Capulet and Cio-Cio-San, a geisha known as Madame Butterfly, have much in common. Both are in love with the wrong men, and they both die by their own hand.

The two women belong to the sisterhood of tragic ballet heroines who are betrayed, tricked, or jilted, and often chose death rather than life without their lovers.

This year, with The Australian Ballet presenting Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly and Graeme Murphy’s Romeo & Juliet, the company’s ballerinas have a fresh chance to interpret the naive and vulnerable heroines. (more…)

17 January 2011

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Flashback: Olga Spessivtseva

By Valerie Lawson

Flashback

On 25 October 1934 an exceptionally talented but troubled woman stepped onto the platform at Sydney’s Central Railway Station. It was unusually cold that month for a city on the fringe of summer and Olga Spessivtseva felt the chill of a southerly wind bite into her fragile body. The tiny ballerina told the press on her arrival in the city: “I am not much weight, eh?”

She wore a severely cut wool flannel suit and around her shoulders a fox stole, complete with bushy tail, head, and paws. Waiting on the platform was the photographer Sam Hood who was then working for the Labor Daily. He coaxed a small smile from the Russian star.

Spessivtseva was visiting Australia as the principal ballerina of the Dandre-Levitoff Russian Ballet, formed by Victor Dandre (the de facto husband of Anna Pavlova) and the impresario Alexander Levitoff. The two men had assembled a troupe of 36 dancers for a tour of South Africa, followed by performances in South-East Asia, and Australia where they performed in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne before a final season in Perth, January 1935. (more…)

11 June 2010

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