What are you getting up to this festive season? We asked dancers and staff what’s in store for them …

“Laughs, champagne and a dozy nap on that one special day when my family can celebrate being together again”
Dana Stephensen, Coryphée

“There’ll be two days of presents, yummy food and Christmas songs. Christmas is magic and even more special with a two-year-old who adores Santa”
Lucinda Dunn, Principal Artist

“I’ll be in Japan having a winter Christmas with my family! It will be very exciting to be home for the holidays!
Reiko Hombo, Soloist

“I’m going to be in the US with friends and their family. I have always wanted to spend Christmas the ‘American way’. I’m looking forward to all the turkey and great food”
Yosvani Ramos, Principal Artist

“A typical Christmas: putting the star on top of the tree with my brother, accessorising our dog with tinsel, going for a long walk after enjoying my mother’s beautiful Christmas cooking and watching Dad nod off in his favourite chair, still wearing his paper crown from the crackers!”
Amber Scott, Senior Artist

“I’m spending Christmas at home with my family in New Zealand. Christmas is usually a low-key affair for us, but I’m sure I’ll have a couple of beers and play a bit of backyard cricket with my brother”
Ty King-Wall, Soloist

“Christmas day is about the excitement on my two-year-old niece’s face, while Christmas lunch is a medley of both Australian and American traditions (but mum’s pudding is my favourite!)”
Andrew Wright, Coryphée

“There’ll be lunch on my balcony and drop-in drinks with all of my usual ‘Melbourne’ family. I can’t wait to sleep in, read books, watch DVDs and generally chill out before heading westwards to visit my ‘real’ family for New Year’s Eve!”
David McAllister, Artistic Director

“My family will join me in Melbourne, and this will be the first time we haven’t spent the holidays in the icy cold, skiing, sipping hot chocolate and trying to stay warm. We have been emailing each other, speculating on what one does for a summer Christmas!”
Valerie Wilder, Executive Director

From everyone at The Australian Ballet, have a happy holiday and a safe new year!

Image: Daniel Gaudiello and Dana Stephensen in Molto Vivace
Photography Jeff Busby

We’ve made it half way through 2010, and we’re celebrating with another comment of the month giveaway! Comment on blog articles during the month of July for your chance to win a poster featuring Luke Ingham in full flight and Vivienne Wong en pointe wearing adorable sporty shorts.

Comments flooded in during the month of June, but we can’t go past Behind Ballet regular Alice who shared how much she is looking forward to Tim Harbour’s mainstage debut. Congratulations, Alice!

Luke Ingham and Vivienne Wong. Photograph by Jean Francois Campos

Set in Vienna in the early 1900s, Graeme Murphy’s The Silver Rose is a lavishly told story of romantic intrigue. Composer Carl Vine, a long-time collaborator of Murphy’s, revisited his personal orchestral collection to compile the score. The Silver Rose premiered in Munich in 2005 and next year Australian audiences will encounter the passionate work when The Australian Ballet performs it in four capital cities. We chatted to Carl Vine about how you go about creating a score for one of the world’s favourite choreographers.

The Silver Rose is made up of several individual scores. Can you explain the process you went through pulling them all together?

The scores in The Silver Rose were written over a period of 20 years, yet they show many common threads in style and content. Once I had thoroughly familiarised myself with the original scenario it was a matter of scanning through my back catalogue for full movements of works of suitable orchestral scale that had dramatic impact suitable for each section of action. Some transitions between sections didn’t work but others did, which I think was largely due to the convincing logic of the storyline, as well as this inherent stylistic consistency. That still left plenty of exciting juxtapositions and the simple task of choosing the most exciting ones for the final cut.

How did this differ from creating a score from scratch?
A 90-minute orchestral score like this would normally take 12 to 18 months to complete. This compilation took about two days.

The Silver Rose is a ballet of many strong personalities: the lustful Baron, the strong-willed Marschallin, the innocent Sophie – which of these did you identify with the most?
In Graeme Murphy’s reinterpretation of the tale there is a typically lovely twist on an ancient theme – the introduction of the paparazzi – that’s me. I’m never quite in the spotlight but observing close to the action.

You have worked with Graeme Murphy on several occasions. Can you describe the collaborative process?
I first worked with Graeme in 1976. Every time since then that we have collaborated the process has been different – vastly, incalculably different. I actually created a similar ‘compilation’ score in the 1990s for his Beauty and the Beast, but that was as different from The Silver Rose as one could possibly imagine. (Although it did, in fact, use a couple of isolated patches of my Third Symphony that resurfaced, in entirely unrelated contexts, in The Silver Rose.)

What is your favourite piece of music?
Always the one I’ve just finished composing.

Who would you say are your biggest musical influences?
Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky and Elliott Carter. And any other composer who never used two notes when just one would do.

The Australian Ballet performs The Silver Rose in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide in 2010. Subscription packages for The Australian Ballet’s 2010 season are on sale now

Carl Vine interviewed by Philippe Magid

The Australian Ballet’s Artistic Director David McAllister knows the tale of Coppélia all too well. Coppélia has everything: flirtation, feisty lovers and a Frankensteinian mad scientist who brings dolls to life. The title role of Franz, the boy-about-town who adores charming the ladies, was David’s very first leading role. “Oh, I was a baby,” David says, rolling his eyes with a grin. “I was just a small fry – but it was still very exciting. It was just one of those dreams come true.”

Franz was the first principal role David played, and it was one of the last before he retired as a dancer. He performed it every time The Australian Ballet staged the work between 1985 and 2000. The character of Franz was a real coming-of-age role for David. “I really felt like I grew up in the role,” David says. The role of Franz was a perfect fit on David – until he felt it was too familiar. “By 2000 I had done a lot of Franzes and I was still able to call on the boy-about-town character,” he says, “but by then I sort of felt like I was just bunging it on as opposed to when I first did it and that was me.” David is now on the other side of the stage, bringing Coppélia to life and handing the baton of Franz to male dancers of the company.

Personal attachment to the role of Franz isn’t the only reason why Coppélia makes David’s heart patter. It’s the historical significance of the work, and how it reminds him of his entire dance experience. The centre of ballet was shifting away from France – toward Russia – when Coppélia was performed in Paris. Russia was reinventing ballet, and proving what lengths ballet could reach. In Paris, the role of Franz was originally played by a woman, partly because there were few men dancing ballet at the time in France; “it was part of the decline of ballet in France – ballet was becoming just a girly show”.

Peggy van Praagh and theatre director George Ogilvie revamped Coppélia in 1979 by looking back to the German scribe E.T.A Hoffmann and his short horror stories which first inspired the ballet. “The Hoffman story is much darker than the original ballet. George and Peggy brought in elements of that original story and gave it some guts.” For David, Peggy van Praagh’s revived Coppélia became one of the most significant ballets of his career. “We performed it in front of the Princess of Wales in 1992 and then I performed it in Japan in 1996. I did it in 2000 as my last full-length ballet before I retired,” he said. “It was one of those ballets I was in l love with.”

Coppélia shows in Sydney 4 – May and Melbourne 10 – 22 June
Subscription packages for The Australian Ballet’s 2010 season are on sale now

David McAllister in Coppélia 2000. Photography Jeff Busby

Tim’s work has been praised for its lightness, fluidity and poetic undertones. His breathtaking work, Wa, for Bodytorque received particularly glowing praise, with The Australian writing: “the very air quivered with a multitude of meanings … Harbour is a thoughtful and articulate man who can translate ideas and emotions into movement with clarity. He clearly understands music too.”

Halycon will be performed alongside two works by fellow choreographer Stephen Baynes for the triple bill Edge of night. Tim talked to us about taking the path to the mainstage.

Will your work lean toward classical ballet, or will it have a contemporary edge?
This is always hard to define because ‘classical’ or ‘contemporary’ are relative terms. To me most of what I do feels quite classical. I’d like to think that I stay open to using whatever physicality is going to appear most expressive but to qualify that movement with the form and structures often associated with classical ballet.

How did Bodytorque equip you with the confidence and inspiration to become the choreographer you are today?
Bodytorque was tremendous both because it had limitations and luxury; limitations in terms of the short rehearsals, and no budget for a design component. All expression and atmosphere had to be conjured purely via steps. And luxurious because you are choreographing on some of the best dancers in the country.

How did your work for The Dancer’s Company Songs of Light represent your style?
I hope that every piece I make has a few beautiful poetic moments and I think Songs of Light was successful in this way. I don’t always achieve this but it’s not for lack of trying!

Edge of night plays in Melbourne from 26 August – 4 September and Sydney from 11- 29 November
Subscription packages for The Australian Ballet’s 2010 season are on sale now

Artists of The Dancers Company in Tim Harbour’s  Songs of Light. Photography Jess Bialek

With cane in hand, and a fiercely stubborn air, Dame Peggy van Praagh perfectly fit the dance teacher cliché. Peggy was The Australian Ballet’s founding Artistic Director, not only bringing success to the company, but invigorating Australian ballet, bringing the country’s dance up to an international standard. If you were a young dancer who caught Peggy’s eye there were great things in store for you. David McAllister, current Artistic Director, and Colin Peasley, the longest-serving employee at The Australian Ballet, were two boys – dancing decades apart – whom Peggy gave a real chance.

Peggy van Praagh was retired by the time David McAllister joined the company, but she returned to coach classes for the 1982 staging of Giselle for the regional touring arm, The Dancers Company. With little hesitation Peggy selected the wide-eyed David to play the peasant pas de deux. He was only in his second year. Two years later, David had reached grand new heights and was performing Franz in her interpretation of Coppélia. Peggy once pulled David aside and asked, “Do you know the dancer Graeme Murphy?” David replied that he had. “You remind me of him.” David was thrilled to be compared to the performer. Popping David’s quickly inflating ego Peggy declared: “You poke your neck forward like he does”. David continued to rise, and rise, throughout the company and now looks back on his experiences with Peggy fondly. He knows it was her doggedness and attention to detail that set the high standards of The Australian Ballet in the early days.  “She was controversial in some ways but she really spoke her mind. She told you exactly what she thought,” David remembers. “She tended to call a spade a spade.”

Colin Peasley’s encounters with the headstrong Peggy came years earlier. They met in 1959 when she came out to Australia to be the director of the Borovansky Ballet. Having seen Colin in rehearsals she asked him and another boy why they hadn’t auditioned for the Borovansky Ballet. Colin told her that they thought they shouldn’t be seen by an examiner before the exam. Peggy replied, “Oh, hogwash! Come back in my lunch hour and I’ll audition you myself!” At the end of the audition Peggy told the two boys she had one contract for a soloist and, given both were young students, neither of them were up to soloist standard. However, Peggy offered them free dance classes and the opportunity to audition for The Australian Ballet as soon as the company formed. Eighteen months later, in 1962, Colin auditioned for The Australian Ballet and was offered a contract. Under Peggy’s reign, Colin performed all over the world with the brand-new Australian company – including Berlin where he, and others from the company, supported Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev to a thunderous audience who demanded 60 curtain calls. A Guiness World Record. “Yes, we were there.”

Peggy van Praagh not only founded and developed the company, but set a precedent for artistic directors to come. “None of the artistic directors after her have really departed from her ideals,” David said “They really stuck after her.”

“Dame Peggy was a supremely capable woman” says Colin, “who, with focus and determination, was able to make her vision for the company a reality”.

The Australian Ballet celebrates Peggy van Praagh with the Peggy! season in Melbourne in 2010.
Subscription packages for The Australian Ballet’s 2010 season are on sale now