5 March 2010
By Anna Sutton
filed under Flashback
“What are experiments if not the first step into the future?” (O.Schlemmer).
Before the Nazis took control of Weimar Germany and closed down the Bauhaus school forever, artist Oskar Schlemmer was pioneering a new form of abstract dance that remains unique in its vision. Jack Andersen wrote in The New York Times in 1984 that Schlemmer’s dances were “dances only a painter could have choreographed“. Schlemmer applied Nietzsche’s concept of Apollonian and Dionysian elements in art, fusing order and chaos by combining elements of painting with those of theatre. Schlemmer’s was the art of Gesamtkünstwerk: The Art of Total Theatre.
Schlemmer’s Triadisches Ballet (Triadic Ballet) of 1922 was a dance in three parts whose geometrically choreographed participants moved in relation to a trinity of costume, dance and music. Its meaning is rather mysterious, but the following images appeared in my reading: a chaste ballerina in a wedding cake-like tutu pirouetting before a beastly assemblage of puffy geometrical shapes attached to a frowning alien head. An ethereal figure resembling a giant boiled sweet sugar coating a marshmallow pink landscape, and a dancer bobbing around in a costume of shiny balloon-like balls. In part three the costumes are suggestive of the myopic power of science fiction. Black-clad figures, made sinister by impenetrable slits for eyes and silver space helmets, are silently tortured by bright crescent moons. Read the rest of this entry »
25 February 2010
By Jasmin Tulk
filed under Flashback
Dancers Simon Vaughn and Che McMahon promoting The Australian Ballet’s very first Bodytorque season, Women on Men, in 2004. Bodytorque returns to Sydney Theatre this May with the á la mode season, pairing five emerging choreographers with emerging fashion designers.
Photography Greg Barrett
27 January 2010
By Jessica Thomson
filed under Flashback
Just months after colour television burst onto the scene in 1975, The Australian Ballet joined forces with ABC TV and invited British choreographer Gillian Lynne to create a ballet especially for television.
“I’ve been very secretive about this show in England,” Lynne told The Age in 1976, a few weeks before the ballet screened in May. “It is such a good idea, but I didn’t want it to be pinched by some other television company.”
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
25 November 2009
By Kate Scott
filed under Fashion, Flashback
The Australian Ballet recently unearthed a series of photographs taken in its very first year of existence, 1962. The black and white images abound with youth and promise, not just of the dancers but the young company too. This snap of Leonie Leahy perched outside The Australian Ballet’s first home in East Melbourne, a disused ladies college, recalls the easy grace of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Hepburn, who trained as a dancer, was instrumental in popularising the ballet flat, and owned hundreds of pairs of the slipper named in her honour by Italian label Salvatore Ferragamo. Over 50 years since the ‘Audrey’ first debuted, ballet flats remain hugely popular amongst the sartorially discerning, inflicting none of the tortures of high heels – or pointe shoes.
Image & text from The Australian Ballet’s 2010 calendar, à la mode: ballet & fashion, now available from The Australian Ballet Shop
2 November 2009
By Jessica Thomson
filed under Flashback, Peggy
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. Read the rest of this entry »
16 October 2009
By Isabel Dunstan
filed under Flashback, Swan Lake
The broken-hearted Odette finds peace at last as she descends into the depths of the still, cool water. This is the single image choreographer Graeme Murphy wanted to capture for the 2002 photo shoot of his brand-new production of Swan Lake – and the only way it could be achieved was, literally, underwater. Graeme Murphy, David McAllister, former Principal Artist Simone Goldsmith, then Director of Marketing Yvonne Gates and a team of people including, the photographer, make-up artist and lifeguards met at Coogee Beach, south-east of Sydney.
Simone plunged into the water, wearing a specially designed dress by Kristian Fredrikson. She would be treading water for hours. “I can remember how gorgeous David and Graeme were to never let her be alone in the water,” Yvonne remembers. Graeme choreographed underwater movements for Simone – the first of his Odettes – and she sustained flawless technique while absorbed in her on-stage character.
When the images were developed, one of the most painstaking editing challenges for the photographer and designer was to remove the countless fish seen darting around Simone. “I couldn’t believe it – it looked like she was in a fish bowl,” Yvonne says. The 2002 underwater photo shoot of Swan Lake proves how careful planning, hard work and boundless imagination can coalesce to create one, perfect moment.
Swan Lake runs in Perth 21 – 25 October
Simone Goldsmith. Photography by Hugh Hamilton & Keith Lo Bue
12 October 2009
By Jasmin Tulk
filed under Concord, Flashback
Miranda Coney, Steven Heathcote and Rachel Rawlins in the 2001 photo shoot for Nacho Duato’s Por vos muero.
Por vos muero returns to the stage alongside Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929 and Alexei Ratmansky’s Scuola di ballo as part of the triple bill Concord. Concord runs in Sydney 11 – 30 November.
Photography Jeff Busby
2 October 2009
By Jasmin Tulk
filed under Books, Flashback
It’s possible to lose a day poring over old issues of Ballet and Ballet and Opera magazine. With their technicolour covers, articles about ballet’s rich past and dreamy black and white photos that look like they’ve been shot in a smoky haze, these magazines capture a fascinating era of ballet.
From top L-R
Ballet Vol 9 No 2 February 1950 – Margot Fonteyn. Photograph by Felix Fonteyn
Ballet Vol 9 No 3 March 1950 – Kenneth MacMillan. Photograph by Hans Wild
Ballet and Opera Vol 8 No 4 October 1949 – Moira Shearer and Michael Somes. Photograph by Baron
Ballet Vol 9 No 2 February 1950 – Ram Gopal
Ballet Vol 10 No 1 July 1950 – Nicholas Magallanes and Tanaquil Le Clercq. Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Ballet and Opera Vol 8 No 2 August 1949 – Jean Babilee. Photograph by Roger Wood
4 September 2009
By admin
filed under Flashback
Choreographer Stanton Welch and Principal Artist Lucinda Dunn in rehearsals for The Sleeping Beauty, 2005. The Sleeping Beauty returns to the stage in Melbourne from 9 September and Sydney from 4 December.
Photography Branco Gaica
19 June 2009
By Jasmin Tulk
filed under Flashback, Paris Match
Danseur, choreographer and raconteur Serge Lifar (1905 – 1986) made two visits to Australia in his lifetime, first in 1939 as part of the Ballets Russes tours, then later in 1981 to stage Suite en blanc for The Australian Ballet.
Suite en blanc will be performed as part of the Paris Match season in Melbourne 24 June – 4 July.
Serge Lifar pictured in his ballet Icare
Image scanned from an edition of ‘Special Danse’ 1969, signed and given to The Australian Ballet by Serge Lifar in 1981.
