Directing dance

Dame Peggy van Praagh enlisted film and theatre director George Ogilvie to freshen up her production of Coppélia after realising what her weary dolls needed: the deft theatrical touch of a dramaturge. The Australian Ballet’s Coppélia is now in the company of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Russell Crowe’s first major film The Crossing and countless theatre classics on George Ogilvie’s CV. Helen Elliott chatted to George about how he brought Coppélia to life.

One day in 1979 Peggy van Praagh came to George Ogilvie and asked for his help. She was thinking of remaking the sunniest of 19^th century narrative ballets, Coppélia. George was a theatre director and he had never directed a ballet. “I remember,” George says, “being surprised and a little confused. I wondered what she wanted from me.”

She wanted that elusive thing that all directors crave – the old made thrillingly new.

30 years later, to coincide with the centenary of Dame Peggy’s birth, The Australian Ballet performs the Coppélia that she, George Ogilvie and designer Kristian Fredrikson first presented to delighted audiences in 1979. Once again, in 2010, George was involved in the rehearsal process of this charming ballet.

During the ‘60s and ‘70s George and Kristian worked together on countless theatre and musical productions. Dame Peggy was an early mentor of Kristian’s and through her he developed a particular love of ballet, and a thorough understanding of the rigours of ballet design. But although George had worked with dancers, and was familiar with ballet, his great passion and expertise was, and still is, drama. Coppélia was to be his initiation into an entire ballet production. “I later discovered that using a dramaturge was quite common in Europe, but it had not been done here at all,” George says. “So this was a first time for the company and for me.”

The story of the lonely Dr Coppelius and his obsession with his life-like doll, Coppélia has a long history as an audience favourite. And Leo Delibes’ tender score – which offers some of the most danceable ballet music ever written – is a favourite with performers. “It was,” says George Ogilvie, “an old-fashioned story ballet. So how to approach it as something new?

George remembers how the three of them would sit down at a table and talk, Fredrikson would draw, and they would look at the story again and re-think. Delibes’ score was played day and night in the Melbourne house that George and Kristian shared with another friend.  It was, finally, the music that pulled the ballet together. “I found that the music was my master, totally, and it was the same for the others. Everything was controlled by the music. We just listened and listened to the music until it was embedded in our bones.”

Kristian Fredrikson’s design also played a central role in inspiring George and Dame Peggy. He lovingly made detailed models of every act, including the dolls. Dame Peggy was “ecstatic”, George says. He believes Kristian was the genius behind the entire thing. “His ideas were so tight for this gothic farytale.”

It was Dame Peggy van Praagh’s dedication and practical energy that invigorated the ballet, too. “Peggy’s life was ballet,” George says. “She had a sort of private life but ballet was everything. Coppélia was her opportunity to do something for the ballet that was lasting and she did. It was an amazing success. Her greatest success.”

This is an edited excerpt from Helen Elliott’s article for The Australian Ballet’s Coppélia souvenir programme

Image: Yosvani Ramos and Leanne Stojmenov. Photography Justin Smith