It was very cool indeed to receive a media call sheet from fashion bible Harper’s Bazaar in my pigeonhole at the Sydney Opera House one morning. Not knowing what to expect, apart from instruction to bring flesh-coloured pointe shoes, and, for the gents, a jock strap, twelve of us dancers plus Li Cunxin were piled into cars and driven out to Scheyville National Park, about an hour north of the Sydney CBD.

We were to be shot for an exclusive pictorial spread, inspired by Disney fairy tales such as Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. The story we were to help realise was Cinderella (or Sin-derella, as it transpired), in which Li was our Prince Charming, as a prominent Australian was to feature in each fairy tale. A different fashion designer was assigned to create a look for each tale, and Kit Willow dressed the beautiful Danielle Rowe in an ethereal draped wisp of a dress, with outrageous knee-high platform boots covered in red glitter, as her vision of Cinderella. Li was dressed simply in a top and pants by Rick Owens. Us ladies were dressed in our white Suite en blanc tutus, with turbans in the same nude diaphanous fabric used for Danielle’s dress and bare legs, while the gentlemen … well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

I had a little chuckle when I was reading back through my notes about the shoot when writing this blog – frantic scribblings of “Lucifer the dancing black stallion’; ‘precarious red glittered knee-high platform boots’; ‘white tutu smeared with fake tan’; ‘boys in bandages’ – yes, we didn’t know what to expect, but we did not, to quote Monty Python, expect the Spanish Inquisition!

The concept was dreamt up by creative visionary and worldly eccentric Edward Coutts Davidson, who is possibly most famous for being Madonna’s interior designer. He met us with great enthusiasm, and was clearly an avid ballet follower. In his infectious Scottish accent, he entertained us with stories about his ideas for the other shoots for this spread, such as the next day’s shoot where they were dropping a famous Australian actress into the dugong tank at the Sydney Aquarium.  It was in fact a wholly entertaining day, right from our arrival at a random family home on the outskirts of Scheyville National Park, where we were shooting, and finding the whole living room transformed into a buzzing make-up and hair department. It was there that the boys found out that they were being ‘bandaged up’. As us ladies had a ball being made up for a change (it was SO nice not having to do our make-up, which we do each night for the show), while the boys emerged from the ‘bandaging department’ (in reality, a family study) wearing little more than black bandages wrapped artfully around their limbs, and their jock straps. It was a peculiar sight, all of us standing there, the girls in our white tutus and turbans, the boys in their bandages, being fussed over by a make-up army as they hurriedly slathered us in fake tan, radiant spray and of course sunscreen. All in the middle of a suburban family living room!

We piled into cars in our tutus and bandages while trying awkwardly not to get fake tan and radiant spray all over the car seats, and were driven a few minutes to the site. We were met by Edward and another army of helpers (I could not believe how many people were involved in one photo shoot), as well as a gorgeous black Friesian Stallion named Lucifer, and a magnificent original 1860s horse carriage pulled by two horses. Without further ado, Edward ushered Li and the twelve of us into a makeshift horse arena, and we were very lucky to have David McAllister on site to arrange us into balletic poses – otherwise who knows what might have been asked of us, with three horses as potential pas de deux partners! In between shots and while we deliberated over different poses, the make-up army would step into the arena and there would ensue a general fuss of sunscreen, radiant spray and fake tan reapplication and water bottle distribution (it was a rather balmy day and it was 3 o’clock in the afternoon). I ended up being the ‘lifted girl’, and as such I had sunscreen/fake tan/radiant spray all over my white tutu to prove it (apologies to our wonderful wardrobe production department!).

I must say that seeing us all standing around in the living room of that very kind family’s home in our outfits, I found it difficult to imagine how the shoot was going to come together, but once we were placed on the horse carriage on this dry near-barren hill, with a dancing stallion and a smoke machine adding to the theatre of it all, I could see how this creative vision manifested so brilliantly. It’s a testament to a number of people’s passion and committed energy and it was really inspiring for me to work with a group of creatives in a different field to my own. And not only can I tell my grandkiddies one day that Grandma was once in Harper’s Bazaar, I can also tell them that Mr Davidson’s most famous client has the finished photo of us, as it appears in this month’s issue, hanging on her wall.

The April issue of Harper’s Bazaar, featuring The Australian Ballet, is on sale now

Who is your all time favourite choreographer, and why?
All the Australian ones I’ve worked with, of course! I love Cranko and Macmillan’s works. I also love Jiří Kylián’s works because they are so musical; he portrays emotion without narrative perfectly. He is also so clever with comedy, which is always so hard to get right.

What’s your favourite costume to wear on stage?
I like nighties, and they appear in so many ballets. Odette in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake starts in a beautiful one; it’s so flattering and soft. In Graeme’s Nutcracker – The Story of Clara, Clara wears a simple night dress, and the kimono she wears for just a moment in the third act is exquisite. I like to dance in them because I feel comfortable and the fabric floats so elegantly. The costume department has made me so many exceptional costumes – the incredible detail and volume of what is created for the company is completely overwhelming. In The Silver Rose as the Marschallin I wear this dress which is like a shimmering golden Klimt painting. The costumes are so important to how I feel on the stage and I am so lucky that they are all so special.   

What has been your favourite pas de deux during your time with the company?
There have been so many it’s impossible to pick! I think what makes a pas de deux really special is the trust, skill, musicality and relationship that the partners share. A special mention for Kylián’s Forgotten Land, Petit Mort and Return to a Strange land.  Also, the pas de deuxs in Madame Butterfly, Raymonda, Manon, Swan Lake, Giselle and Romeo and Juliet are completely fulfilling and danced with a lot of emotion. In the more classical style, the technical challenge of The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote and The Nutcracker can be very rewarding. I am looking forward to performing the Marschallin in The Silver Rose; the duets in this ballet are so full of passion and drama.

If you could live in any other city in the world, where would it be and why?
There are many cities I would like to visit. Prague (because I’ve always wanted to go) St Petersberg (for obvious ballet history reasons), Rio de Janeiro (because it would be fun), Buenos Aires (because I have a friend there) and there are ones which I would love to go back to: Paris (because it’s so chic), New York (for the buzz), and Rome (because there is so much more to see) but for now I’m really happy living here.

The Australian Ballet performs The Silver Rose in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide

Image: Jacob Sofer, Rachel Rawlins and Matthew Donnelly in rehearsal for The Silver Rose. Photography James Braund

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.

Schlemmer often tested the laws of motion with costumes that responded to dancers’ individual movements. The ballerina suspended in a dazzling frame of wire hoops (a live sculpture) is like a barbed tower springing to life against the vibrations of a metaphysical city.

Schlemmer was interested in mechanics and the potential of puppetry to convey new movement and represent technology; consequently his dancers often appear like marionettes. However, rather than being dehumanised, they embody the principles of human movement. Dances were based on simple forms with a grounding in (often ballet) technique. The footwork itself was far from fancy, but harmonised with costumes and movement to create a sensation of intricate pattern and logic.

While many writers see Schlemmer’s work as being a manifesto for a robot world – a by- product of a communist society – the qualities that prevail in his work are visuals that reel you into a sublime, unfamiliar world that evokes complex moods and startling sensations.

Dear America CT,
If you are not aiming for a career in dance then there is no problem. There is no benefit in learning to dance en pointe at a young age. In fact, the later you start the better because you’ve had time to prepare your body for the demands of pointe work. Having said that – a dancer’s body, legs and feet need to be prepared for pointe work to prevent injury. Only a teacher who is working with you will be able to advise when you are ready. So, go for it. Dance is a lot of fun and if you already look like a ballerina then you are halfway there!
Best wishes,
Colin

Brett Chynoweth, Mitchell Rayner, Sarah Thompson and Noah Gumbert. Photography Jeff Busby

Dear Colin,
I am 73 years old and want to learn ballet. Can you tell me where to go? Please help. I have a good attitude and lots of time now that I am retired.
Bryan

Dear Bryan,
I applaud your attitude, congratulations! The key to a healthy retirement is to maintain your physical fitness and dance is an ideal form of exercise. Although there are many dance studios that offer dance classes for adults, may I suggest that you try social dance rather than ballet? Ballroom dancing, bootscooting, and square dancing are not only fun to do but also a great means of socialising. Meeting new friends and having fun while you maintain your physical fitness; is there a better way of spending your retirement?
All the best,
Colin

You can email your ballet questions to Colin at hello@behindballet.com

Photography Jim McFarlane

Boutique street label Alpha60 have built a cult following with their wry, witty T-shirts. The brother-sister duo mine the 20th century for influences which figure both directly (patron saint Jean-Luc Goddard presides over their growing empire) and indirectly in their collections. Ballet was bound to make a cameo sooner or later.

These photographs from Alex and Georgie Cleary’s Fitzroy studio find them hard at work on – what else? – a T-shirt for The Australian Ballet Shop. The limited-edition run of 100 (each with a hand-numbered swing tag) is technically Alex’s second foray into ballet – he worked for the company’s merchandise department in the very early days of Alpha60. “We are really pleased to have been asked to do something for The Australian Ballet,” he says. “We love what the ballet does and we were excited to put an Alpha spin to it.”

The T is classic Alpha60 – monochrome, unisex, irreverent. Four businessmen – staid and  bespectacled – stalk a Parisian avenue, but one sports a tutu and pointe shoes along with his briefcase. “We really wanted to create an image that put the ballet in a different environment,” says Alex. “I love the contrast between the serious suits and the pointe shoes – the expressions on their faces look like they are in on the joke and trying not to show it.”

The Ballet V Alpha60 T-shirt is available exclusively through The Australian Ballet Shop

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

In just four days the curtain will rise on The Silver Rose. With an all-Australian creative team, Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon took this quintessentially European story and tailored it for the ballet stage. We chatted to the master choreographers about how this extraordinarily lavish ballet got off the ground, and found its way home.

Where did the idea for The Silver Rose come from and was it a work you had been thinking about for a while?
Graeme: It’s something that had been in our minds for some time. Der Rosenkavalier was a particular favourite; Janet and I have always loved it musically. We loved the roles, and I have a thing for themes about age, love, loss, moving on and being left.

Ivan Liska, [director of the Bavarian State Ballet] asked us in 2004 to do a work. He wanted something for the family for the Christmas premiere season and The Silver Rose surfaced. Ironically Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier had premiered in the same theatre in Munich. That was something that linked the ballet and the opera.

Janet: It was very short notice. We didn’t think we would be able to do it because we were working on Hua Mulan, Graeme had just finished choreographing Grand, and we’d just taken Swan Lake to London with The Australian Ballet.

What was it about the characters that appealed to you in a ballet context?
Graeme: They’re all large – they all read big. You have the mature, pensive, distraught, self-obsessed, slightly older Marschallin; and by contrast the total innocence of the fresh young flower [Sophie] and the puppy-love of adolescent youth [Octavian], which is really nice for a dance character. Then there’s the Baron who is a sympathetic buffoon, whose love is really based around desire, sex and lust. You just knew the actions for these incredibly intricate relationships could be explored in solos, duos and quartets.

Janet: And underneath those four principals there are the soloists (who are the paparazzi), and the entourage of hair dresser, make-up artist and couturier introduce interesting subplots as well.

How much character direction do you give the dancers?
Graeme: A lot. Janet is fabulous about getting to the essence of the character, always within the realm of staying true to the choreography. Dancers need that, and so rarely get it.

Janet: There are so many layers to being a person in a ballet on stage. It’s very easy to fall back on cliché – ‘this is the gesture you’d do if you’re sad or happy’, but it has to be natural and as though you are doing it for the first time. We throw things at them, give them options, and they find ways within themselves. The ultimate prize is if they give something back. We don’t want a version of what we’ve said; we want them to open up.

Graeme: Much of The Silver Rose verges on slapstick. It’s a great opportunity to introduce comedy, a much-maligned and often unused aspect of dance. Comedy used to be a bigger part of ballet than it is now. And it’s quite nice in a work like this to have the comic-tragic aspect. Janet and I have always had this theory that if the rehearsal room is filled with laughter and hard work you avoid injuries, pitfalls, depression, insecurities. And you get the full range of the performers’ artistry.

Did you approach the Strauss estate about using his music?
Janet: Ivan did approach the estate and they said there was no way we could use the music.
Graeme: We knew the estate would never allow us to use the music in any way. The Strauss family is notoriously protective of their heritage, but I had absolutely no regrets in not using it. The whole work is such a perfect opera that to fiddle with it in any way would have been absolutely wrong. The best thing that ever happened was that I said, “I think Carl Vine could do it” and because all we were keeping was the original scenario from the von Hofmannsthal story it was important to find a score that was totally different, totally refreshing. Carl was so generous; he gave us his complete body of work and said he would help find the narrative within his compositions.

How and when did designer Roger Kirk come on board?
Graeme: That was interesting, because I was bereft of Kristian Fredrikson. We were in Munich when Kristian died (2005). He hadn’t been available because he was doing The Sleeping Beauty. He was doing a lot and he wasn’t that well. But Roger had been doing such beautiful things and I was very aware of him. It was ironic and wonderful because I had a great need to find somebody else to do the grand works, and people with that knowledge are so rare – people who can give you the full design, décor and costume. We’d worked together in the ‘80s then went our separate ways. This was beautiful because it brought us back together. It was like finding an old friend. And I feel at last I have found a soul mate.

Did your choreography for The Silver Rose allow for the European style?
Graeme: I don’t think so. I was pretty fresh out of Swan Lake and was still doing work with Sydney Dance Company so it was that Murphy-esque thing of wedding a certain classical technique and with contemporary aspects, which is incredibly hard to do. A dancer has to be slightly schizoid to get both styles sitting comfortably. The Bavarian State Ballet is a big company, with a lot of former Eastern Bloc dancers, so the standard is quite extraordinary. But we are just amazed working here with The Australian Ballet. They’ve done so many Murphy-type works, things other companies and dancers find so difficult, which they’ve just nailed.
Janet: We always said The Australian Ballet would do this work beautifully, and in a way we feel it’s come home.

This is an excerpt from The Silver Rose programme by Jane Albert. Jane Albert was deputy arts editor of The Australian newspaper and is a freelance writer.

The Silver Rose opens on Friday 26 February.

Image: Janet Vernon and Graeme Murphy. Photography Jessica Bialek

“Bodymap,” dancer and choreographer Michael Clark says, “is trying to do the same kind of thing I’m trying to do with classical ballet, but with design – taking very basic design and trying to look at it in a different way.” FOLLOW ME Magazine, August 1987.

Classical ballet was in for a shock when the baby-faced “Nijinsky with a Mohawk” Michael Clark, the enfant terrible of ballet, collaborated with David Holah and Stevie Stewart, designers of Central Saint Martin’s most forward-thinking label Bodymap.

In the 1980s, ballet was gripped at the throat by the anarchic youth culture of sex, fashion and performance art. It wasn’t just the look of the dancers that changed but the feel and sound of ballet as well. Clark enlisted the help of avant-garde performance artist Leigh Bowery and live music by post-punk groups in the London scene:  Wire, The Fall and Laibach.

In Clark’s large-scale production No Fire Escape in Hell (1986) dancers wore hand-printed, buttock-baring unitards with batwing sleeves and strapped-on rubber appendages from sex shops. Leigh Bowery – a magnificent sight in ten-inch heels – wielded a chainsaw.

Ballet once again had influence on the catwalk. Clark regularly performed at Bodymap and Vivienne Westwood fashion shows, and in film clips. In Scritti Politti’s clip for ‘Wood Beez (Pray like Aretha Franklin) 1985’, Clark performs clad head-to-toe in Bodymap. Youth culture penetrated ballet and it never looked so good.

Michael Clark pushes the boundaries of ballet to this day; the collaborators have changed, the music is different, but the spirit of style, design and anarchy live on.

Mia Veur is a freelance womenswear buyer and stylist

The stuffy hot air outside the Arts Centre one January morning is thick with the smell of approaching rain, and Melbourne is a swamp of sweaty businessmen and clammy café workers.  But inside The Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre, a cool and collected Michael Williams, head of the Wardrobe Department, takes me through the hundreds of Coppélia costumes being picked, tucked and stitched. There is barely a moment to waste as the department works frantically on preparing not only Coppélia, but also the equally mammoth The Silver Rose.  It quickly becomes apparent that Gene Kelly and Princess Buttercup are here to keep the smiles coming and frowns at bay.

Fredrikson’s Coppélia costumes were created over 30 years ago in a canvas goods factory off Racecourse Road. Today they are undergoing an extensive restoration process. Layers of silk, lace, tulle and taffeta are flopped over chairs and big worktables. It’s a scene with all the flurry and adornment of a Parisian atelier. Many of the costumes are being remade or restored. Rotting silk on jackets must be replaced then dyed to match the older, harder-wearing silks. Saggy tutu skirts need a lift, and Swanhilda receives a new Act 3 Wedding tutu that looks like it’s been plucked straight from a Christian Lacroix runway show. The ‘Reaper Boys’ trousers require a total remake. With the original fabric no longer stocked, wardrobe has found a remarkable look-alike solution: cotton waffle-weave blankets. There is no waste as each unused costume is pillaged for its healthy trimmings, which are then used on new costumes. The wardrobe department looks like a beautiful and fantastical hospital. Costumes on the brink of death are brought back to life with a lot of  care and a lot of thread.

It’s not just decaying and torn fabrics that need a touch up. The variation in size between company members compared to the dancers of the late 70s has warranted, in some cases, total remakes. This is time-consuming work, especially when replicating Fredrikson’s designs. The simplest-looking of his garments can have up to four layers, each with its own detail and specificity. Sitting in a room next to Michael’s office is a model set of Act 3 Coppélia, which Fredrikson created and painted. It is extremely intricate – painted with a two-hair squirrel artist’s brush. It is a testament to Fredrikson’s eye for detail. For Coppélia, Fredrikson turned to close friend and milliner Marjorie Head to create a number of the headdresses. Williams shows me two of particular beauty. The ‘School Mistress’ hat, covered in dozens of handmade orange and brown pom-poms, and the ‘Dawn’ headdress, a tiara adorned in fine wiring and feathers that, from afar, resembles a tropical sunrise and perfectly mirrors the delicate backdrop.

Lynn Munro, in charge of the restoration of the Coppélia costumes, is busy in the dyeing room. Amongst the big cauldrons of dye are piles of unfinished ‘Hours’ tutus. Fabrics of voluptuous aquamarine and husky midnight blues are strewn over the table as she fingers through the ‘recipe’ book for each dye formula. For the wardrobe staff, the legacy of this ballet elicits tender care and respect for every fold of fabric.  Within the pages of the Coppélia design book, Fredrikson’s delicate drawings are in shades of ripe apricot and mellow olive green – a palette of autumnal and tawny hues. The most impressive thing about Fredrikson’s distinctive drawings is the way each is traced with theatricality. Not only are the costumes rendered with enchanting detail, each character is drawn with personality and movement.  Michael Williams tells me that this was typical of the astute Fredrikson. His vision of the complete character was always very clear in his mind.

As Williams walks me through the many racks of costumes, my eye is drawn to Dr. Coppelius’s cloak, which he dons when practising the occult in Act 2. The cloak is covered in painted eyes that seem to follow you, each one bleeding deep crimson, trickling blood down the folds of the cape. It is fitting, as Coppélia was originally titled The Girl With the Enamel Eyes. Close by are the equally harrowing ‘dolls’. Aside from the mandatory Spanish, Chinese and Scottish dolls, Fredrikson designed dolls he might have desired as a young boy; a headless monster, an unfinished ragdoll, a disembodied clown which assists Dr. Coppelius in creating his deadly concoctions. Act 2, the dark chocolate centre of the ballet, raises moral and spiritual issues that are often overlooked amidst the mayhem and mischief of Act 1 and the Harvest and Wedding dances of Act 3.

Kristian Fredrikson, Michael tells me smiling, was ‘The Sara-Lee designer’, a reference to the iconic Australian layered ice cream cake. Peel back the top and one finds layer upon layer of unassuming brilliance.

Coppélia plays in Sydney from 4 – 22 May and Melbourne from 10 – 22 June
Sydney tickets are now on sale; Melbourne tickets on sale from 11 March

Sylvie Guillem recently starred in a production called Eonnagata for Sadler’s Wells, dressed entirely by Alexander McQueen. Teaming up with the renegade ballerina was something new for the maverick designer. He was, of course, no stranger to histrionic design, but had never developed costumes for the theatre. McQueen’s creations for Eonnagata were true to his aesthetic; all billowing tulle, structured bustles, and oversized crimson fans – in short, a diaphanous visual feast.

McQueen studied fashion at the iconic Central St. Martins in London, then the art of tailoring through apprenticeships on Saville Row, where he whittled his pattern-cutting technique down to perfection; all this to abandon fashion’s rules and limitations. In throwing off the conventions he created some of the most sensational clothes of the early 21st century. Much like Madame Guillem herself, who studied the purest of classical ballet techniques in order to relinquish them, McQueen’s fantastical and rebellious imagination flourished precisely because he understood the beauty of a flawless cut.

McQueen defied numerous fashion luminaries to earn himself the title l’enfant terrible. His runway shows were escapist spectacles. He would often hold performances in abandoned London locations in the middle of cold winter nights. His most recent production, his last, unveiled those shoes. Dubbed the ‘Armadillos’, the alien hoof-like constructions were made famous by one prancing and dancing Lady Gaga in the Bad Romance film clip.

As the Alexander McQueen online store sells out of his most famed creations, a ring adorned in delicate enamel flowers and a single dark skull evokes his aesthetic better than any other piece – a testament of his struggle to acknowledge beauty yet defy it.