Posts filed under: Swan Lake

Artists of The Australian Ballet in Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake. Photo Jeff Busby

Your favourite Swan Lake moments

A big thanks to all who entered our competition to win a Black Swan DVD by telling us your favourite Swan Lake moment. We had a ball reading them! There was plenty of love for Matthew Bourne’s all-male swan flock, and frissons for the psychodrama of Graeme Murphy’s version. And of course, plenty of you gave it up for the four cygnets, the traditional Black Swan Pas de Deux and simply the magic of anticipation. But only one of you described the conception of a child! We’ll be in touch soon with the 40 winners. In the meantime, here are ten of our favourite comments. (more…)

2 June 2011

Share | 1 comment

Black Swan DVD giveaway

By Behind Ballet

Swan Lake

Black Swan fever is set to reignite as the year’s biggest ballet movie takes an encore: on 1 June, it will be released on DVD and Blu-ray. We have 40 DVDs to give away. To be in the running, leave a comment on this post telling us your favourite Swan Lake moment. Is it the classic Act II pas de deux? Odette’s ball-room triumph in Graeme Murphy’s version? Or perhaps the flock of faun-legged swans in Matthew Bourne’s all-male production? We’ll choose our favourite 40 comments and be in touch. The competition will run until 1 June.

26 May 2011

Share | 64 comments

photo © Konstantinos Rigos

Can ballet be postmodern?

By Hila Shachar

Swan Lake, The Nutcracker

When Greek choreographer Konstantinos Rigos recently transformed Tchaikovsky’s classic 19th-century ballet The Nutcracker into a radical contemporary tale, he shattered ballet’s idealised popular image. Popular culture tends to represent ballet through pretty images of perfect ballerinas, like the ones found in Edgar Degas’ famous ballet paintings.

Rigos’ recent 2010/2011 Nutcracker ballet is similar to Darren Aronofsky’s psychological reworking of the pristine ballerina heroine in Black Swan (2010) through an exploration of hidden desires. His Nutcracker is a confronting, funny and lewd ballet, expressed through a series of dark and illicit dreams experienced by an adult Clara. Like Black Swan, Rigos’ Nutcracker explores the relationship between innocence and experience, violence and sexuality, reality and fantasy, dreams and nightmares. (more…)

6 April 2011

Share | 6 comments

Oliva Bell in Black Swan pas de deux. Photography Justin Smith

Gallery : The Australian Ballet’s black swans

By Jasmin Tulk

Photo Galleries, Swan Lake

[Show as slideshow]

As the world waits to see whether or not Natalie Portman will score an Oscar for her portrayal of an obsessive ballerina in Black Swan, we celebrate the scintillating black swans of The Australian Ballet in versions of Swan Lake by Dame Peggy van Praagh, Anne Woolliams and Graeme Murphy.

View Photos

28 February 2011

Share | 2 comments

Sparkling swans

By Vicki Car

Costume, Swan Lake

I have discovered that swans use a lot of glitter. And a very particular sort of glitter at that: very, very fine bright white glitter that sticks to everything and can be found in all sorts of interesting places at the end of the day.

We refurbished Swan Lake recently for the Perth season and although the show is in quite good condition, there’s no getting away from the fact that it has been on tour every year since it was made in 2002. The headdresses are very stylised, with two pieces of thermoplastic shaped to represent a wing and a tail. The girls pin them into their hair either side of their French rolls and originally they were painted with white opalescent paint and finished off with glitter at the base of each piece. It was only when we resprayed one did we realise how brown they were! I guess it’s down to the stage lighting that we had no idea; during the performances they looked beautiful. Close up however the poor swans were looking a little worse for wear, not quite as sparkly as they had been and rather like they had been swimming in a murky pond.

Kate my fearless and trusty assistant had no idea what l was letting her in for when we talked about bringing them up to scratch. For days we were lost in a haze of glitter, spray paint and PVA glue like drag queens at the Mardi Gras. But finally they were done, resprayed, reglittered and packed into their boxes for their journey to Perth.

Ready, as Betty Pounder used to say on opening nights, to “Sparkle, Darlings”.

Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake is available to purchase on DVD from The Australian Ballet Shop

6 January 2010

Share | 10 comments

Reflections from the lake

By admin

From the studio, Swan Lake

Amber Scott returned from Perth after performing one of the most iconic roles for the ballet stage, Odette in Swan Lake. For Behind Ballet Amber writes about bumps and bruises, sunshine and beaches, and the thrill of performing on opening night.

Week one of rehearsals …

Here we are again: a room full of dancers faced with the task of taking on complex characters, entering into a world of love, betrayal, longing and redemption. Four acts of love scenes, mad scenes, swan scenes and a lot of lung-bursting dancing. I have missed Odette since the overseas seasons where we performed Swan Lake last year. There is something about this character that endlessly fascinates me. Each year as I begin work on the role of Odette I feel like I’m revisiting an old friend, and layers are peeled away to reveal what has been learned since we last met.

Graeme Murphy has given our company a beautiful Swan Lake. There is fantastic material to share with my partner the Prince (Adam Bull) and the nemesis Baroness (Lucinda Dunn) as the three characters tell their stories. There is also a lot of devilishly difficult dancing, partnered and solo work which, no matter how many years you have danced, requires a great deal of stamina and sweaty hours in the studio. This is the stuff that gives you strength and focus on stage. The rehearsals are a wonderful start to the journey. In saying all that, the first few rehearsals sometimes feel like a battlefield as you work out the various grips and holds for the pas de deuxs and trios.

In week one, there have been knees knocked, faces slapped (accidentally of course!), bodies slammed, fingers trod on, knees grazed and, at one point, I even managed to pull Adam over my head to the floor while I was in the splits! It was spectacularly funny and kept Miss Fiona Tonkin laughing for the rest of that rehearsal. After a few more days of sweating our way through the choreography, and going through boxes of bandaids, serenity returns to our lake. The pas de deuxs cease to flap and we start to glide harmoniously with one another. (more…)

13 November 2009

Share | Be the first to comment