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

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.

Week two of rehearsals …

At the end of a two-hour rehearsal I go home with a strangely swollen left cheek and headache ­– this time not due to a pas de deux injury. The next day: fevers and chills, my other cheek is just as swollen and Odette is looking more chipmunk than swan. My doctor sends me off for a mumps blood test. Great. After a few days of sleeping and feeling anxious about the impending trip to Perth I get the all-clear and I am not mumpish. It must be another virus so I spend most of the week in bed, dreaming of Swan Lake.

Week three of rehearsals …

I am back at work and after a few days of getting my legs to feel more like a ballerina’s than Bambi’s, we do our first full-call in the studio. It goes pretty well and feels nice to be with everyone going through the choreography. The next time we dance this in its complete form we’ll be in Perth!

Saturday 17 October

A gaggle of swans, some Hungarians, one Prince, one Baroness and some lovely administration staff board QF 481 and we chase the sunset west across the Nullarbor. Everyone looks forward to a weekend spent in balmy Perth. On Sunday I end up on Cottesloe Beach with some friends. It’s heavenly to feel sand and the salty water on blistered toes, and sunshine warm up our dancers’ ghost-white skin. The Melburnians are easy to spot on this beach!

Monday 19 October

A group of early-birds head off to WAAPA on the No.19 bus to enter a lovely performing arts complex. The bus passes green parks which continue all the way to WAAPA with its own lawns where young artistic folk sprawl between lectures and rehearsals. Some are doing crazy vocal warm-ups, whereas The Australian Ballet dancers are chatting about what we did on the day off and comparing sunburn (Miss Lana Jones!).

Class, rehearsal and physio all go smoothly as we iron out sore stiff body parts after our four-hour flight. I manage to gouge my eye out with a locker door as I’m getting changed to go home so spend the rest of day wandering around the Hay Street Mall, now with band-aids on my face.

I decide to go to the theatre to see the space and get my bearings. The Burswood Casino area is a short train ride out of the CBD and there are a number of performing arts spaces that have recently shown such as acts as The Black Eyed Peas (woo hoo!) I take all the wrong turns and end up in the auditorium of the theatre instead of the dressing room. Oh well, it’s good to see we have a beautiful big stage that’s wider than deep. The set looks glorious with the extra room. The venue seats over 2000 but they seem fairly close to the stage so they’ll be swept up by the story.

Wednesday 20 October – opening night!

Its here! Rehearsals are over; the final corrections are adjusted; the musical nuances are agreed upon with our conductor Nicolette Fraillon; pointe shoes are stitched; Gatorade cracked open; words of luck from David and the ballet staff are shared; ‘chookas’ gifts and hugs are exchanged; fake-eyelashes glued; make-up applied; eye-wounds covered, and blisters padded … drum roll … Once upon a time, on the eve of her royal wedding, a young girl, pure and fragile as crystal, senses the beginning of a fault in her husband’s loyalty …

The show goes really well and I feel very fortunate to be given the lead on an opening night! It’s my first opening night for a full-length work so, in many ways, tonight is a milestone. My Prince Adam Bull is steady and wonderful throughout, even when I am throwing myself against him in fury over his shenanigans with the Baroness. Baroness Lucinda Dunn is breathtaking and her Act Three is incredible. The whole company does really well and, as always, it feels like a real team effort as we take our curtain calls before a kind and generous Perth audience. These are the moments that would be nice to freeze-frame.

Amber Scott. Photography Liz Ham

Alice Topp, corps de ballet member with The Australian Ballet, has been performing as one of Graeme Murphy’s swans for three years to sell-out crowds across Australia and the globe. She has danced in cities as far flung as Paris and London, and this week she graces the stage in the riverside city of Perth.

Swan Lake is incredibly special to me as a corps dancer: the movements lend themselves to artistic interpretation and expression for every individual on the stage. While we appear as a collective in corps swans, we are still dancing as if we are experiencing the love and pain of the lead swan.

There are these incredible, choreographed moments where we are very protective of Odette – we swoop in to support her and, as the music is so dramatic, it’s hard not to get completely involved in the story and swept up in the emotion of the tragedy.

No matter how many times I perform swans, I never grow sick of it. It’s always a challenge to move as a synchronised flock and I always feel that even though I am but one of many swans, we are all equal contributors to the production – when you realise the beauty of the shapes and patterns we are creating, there’s a real sense of team spirit and unity between us onstage.

Every time I do Swan Lake, and this is my third year performing as a swan, it’s so exciting to see the production grow as dancers take on new challenges in principal roles and new company members share their first Swan Lake experience. It’s definitely one of my favourite productions!

Artists of The Australian Ballet. Photography Jeff Busby

After landing in Perth to prepare for the opening night of Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, David McAllister took time to breathe, see family and blog.

At times, going back to Perth has felt like mission-impossible. We have been trying to return for the last three years, and impediments surface at the most crucial time. But as I boarded the plane on Friday night it sunk in that this time all the stars were aligned. We were travelling west with our most successful production of the new millennium.

It has been a particularly great lead-up to this tour. The ballet centre was alive with Tchaikovsky as we revisited Graeme Murphy’s production of Swan Lake. We prepared the new casts that will be performing at Burswood Theatre alongside Phillip Adams’ creative development for Aviary, which saw three of our men working with BalletLab.

It was great to have BalletLab with us and the showing last Friday was fabulous. Their rehearsals were a closed affair, but the sounds were emanating from the studio – the dancers were singing a variety of Abba and Messiaen! Steve Reich echoed down the hall as we rehearsed Dyad 1929 and Rachmaninov sounded from the studio while Stephen Baynes revisited his wonderful ballet At the edge of night.

Apart from adjusting to the three-hour time change, a weekend at home in Perth with my family was bliss! I had a chance to spend time with my two budding ballerina nieces who scored the very latest ballet T-shirt. Family time is always at a premium so it was wonderful to just hang out and catch up.

Monday was day one of work and we were lucky enough to have some time at the wonderful West Australia Academy of Performing Arts studios. Thanks to Nanette Hassell, we were made so welcome and spent the morning ironing out the creases after the flight over the Nullarbor. After class Kitty Walker, myself and eight Swans flew the coop for a media call at Lake Monger where the ballet Swans got to mix with some local swans of the feathered variety. I must say the local swans took the adulation in their stride, preening and parading, while our ballerinas took photos on their mobile phones! Not so glamorous were the dancer’s soiled pointe shoes and damp tights from poising by the water*. The webbed-footed swans certainly had the advantage here!

We headed back to WAAPA and because the rehearsals went so smoothly we could give the dancers an early break and allow them a couple of hours to discover the joys of Perth. For me it was time to head home to Dad’s place and change before a cocktail party at the lovely Perth home of our Board Member Peter Smedley and his wife and fantastic supporter, Christine. It was so wonderful to spend the night with a group of ballet lovers who have supported the company over the years, even when we haven’t been able to come to Perth for some time. Looking out over the city of Perth reminded me just how lucky we are to live in this glorious country and how every corner of Australia has so much to offer.

Tuesday was our first day in the theatre. While our technical crew had been there for four days weaving their magic, it was time for the rest of the company to add the final element. It’s a great space and even though it’s a little different to other theatres we have performed in, the dancers quickly adjusted. Despite some initial hiccups, the technical rehearsal ran smoothly. There was more fun and champers with our local supporters before the curtain lifted on the last dress rehearsal and it was also our first chance to hear our orchestra of the season, the W.A. Philharmonic. Our Music Director and Chief Conductor Nicolette Fraillon had been here working with the orchestra and, as always, managed to bring this 70-strong orchestra of musicians up to speed with the Swan Lake score. While we have done this production every year for the past eight there are always new people introduced to the work, both on and off stage. In this rehearsal it was Kevin Jackson and Leanne Stojmenov’s chance to do their first run on stage with all the trimmings as the Prince and Odette. It was so great that our two West Australians will do their debuts in this production in front of their family and friends. No pressure!

So now it’s opening night and all the notes from the final rehearsals have been given, all the ‘chookas’ cards have been written and the opening night flowers and chocolates seem to arrive in ever-increasing abundance. I am sitting here controlling my nerves with this blog! I have no doubt the dancers will be wonderful. I keep thinking of all those young West Australian dancers who will see this production and be bitten by the ballet bug as I was when I saw my first ballet. Well, in my case it was certainly a love-bite and so far it’s been one hell of a ride!

Swan Lake runs until 25 October in Perth

*Please note, no new pointe shoes were harmed during the making of this media call!

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

Where did you begin your training?
Kevin: I started dancing when I was seven at a small studio in Morley in Perth. My teacher Shirley Farrell ran classes from her backyard shed. I trained in tap and Scottish highland dance for the first few months and, over the next couple of years, Shirley and her twin daughters accommodated my passion to learn all styles of dance and taught me for eight years.

Leanne: I had so many wonderful teachers. My very first teacher was Helen McKay and by the time I was twelve I decided that I wanted to be a ballerina! Helen encouraged me to train with Terri Charlesworth and so I started my full-time training at The Graduate College of Dance the next year. I felt so lucky to have the opportunity to complete my secondary studies as well as pursue my dream.

How would you describe your training there?
Kevin: The training I received at the Shirley Farrell Academy of Dance made me a versatile dancer. I would compete in three competitions a year, along with exams in theatrical tap and classical dance. I believe the huge amount of stage-time I gained as a child shaped the artist I am today. Shirley also taught me a lot about the history and theory behind dance as well as music and stage craft.

Leanne: I trained in a number of different styles including tap, jazz and acrobatics. My classical training was based on the Vaganova method. At first, concentrating on the very basics of ballet technique was quite slow, which was so beneficial to get a clear understanding of what is required to be a ballet dancer. The strict training gradually progressed into gruelling hours of physical and artistic lessons. By the time I was in my last year I was performing nearly every week.

What do you love most about Perth?
Kevin: I love Perth’s family and beach culture. I moved to Melbourne by myself ten years ago and from that day, my one regret was leaving my family and missing out on the big dinners and social events that both sides of my family enjoy.

Leanne: My family! Perth is such a beautiful place to live. It has such great weather, people, beaches, food and wine.

How do you feel about returning to Perth to perform Swan Lake?
Kevin: I am so excited about performing Swan Lake in Perth. I have wanted to perform for my home town since joining the company. It will also be very special to share this moment with Leanne who I have loved watching dance and admired since we were kids. Words can’t describe how lucky I feel to receive this opportunity.

Leanne: It’s been so long since I’ve danced at home. I’m really excited and need I say, a little nervous. The combination of performing my premiere as Odette in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, all my family and friends in the audience and dancing with Kevin Jackson – my fellow West Australian – is going to be very special. Kevin and I grew up just around the corner from each other so we have a very strong West Australian connection.

What are you looking forward to most about returning to Perth?
Kevin: I am most looking forward to performing a lead role for my family friends and mentors. In some way it will be thanking them for all the hard work, time and belief they invested in me. I owe so much to these people and I can’t wait to finally show them what they have helped me to achieve.

Leanne: Performing for my mum, dad and brother – and giving my dog lots of cuddles.

The Australian Ballet will perform Swan Lake in Perth 21 – 25 October

Image 01: Artists of The Ausralian Ballet in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake Photography David Kelly
02 Leanne Stojmenov and Kevin Jackson. Photography Branco Gaica