Table of contents for Jan-Feb-Mar 2023 in Dance Australia

WESTERN Australian choreographer Annette Carmichael has brought together a team of 25 artists working across dance, sound and design to create a vast and ambitious dance work called The Stars Descend. The work is performed in five instalments, in five different sites, across a tract of land 1000km in length. It tells a new story about Australia’s climate emergency and the power of interconnected action to halt climate change. Choreographers joining the team include a number of exceptional First Nations artists. Janine Oxenham was most recently choreographer on Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company’s hit show, Panawathi Girl. Simon Stewart is a graduate of NAISDA and lecturer at WA Academy of Performing Arts. Rachael Colmer has performed in a number of Carmichael’s previous works while Torres Strait Islander dance artist Sonya Stephen…

PICTURED (with Oscar Valdes) is the West Australian Ballet’s Kiki Saito, who was recently promoted to the rank of soloist. Saito had the role of Odette created on her in Krzysztof Pastor’s unique version of Swan Lake, which was premiered by the WAB at the end of last year. “This year Kiki brought her artistry and beauty to another level. Throughout the year, her highly technical yet emotive performance wowed audiences and she is very deserving of this special promotion,” says Aurélien Scannella, the company’s artistic director. To dance Odette in this production had a special meaning for Saito, as her mother Noriko was also a professional dancer and performed the role of Odette. The WAB’s new Swan Lake, which is set in Fremantle in WA, is one of the…

THIS building will be here when I and my sons have long passed away, as a monument of pluck and indomitable perseverance.” (Thomas Dixon) What once started as a “minor renovation”, led by Queensland Ballet’s Artistic Director Li Cunxin, has ballooned to a $100 million plus reimagining of QB’s old home: the Thomas Dixon Centre (TDC). Against a backdrop of COVID, El Niño, significant delays, rampant inflation and rising costs, QB’s new home was finally completed in July last year. It is a spectacular new arts hub for Brisbane. After getting the insider’s titbits from QB’s precincts manager, Julia Urbanska, let me take you on a behind-the-scenes tour. One hundred and fourteen years ago – if your maths is good, that’s 1908 – Yorkshire immigrant Thomas Dixon relocated his boot…

BUTTERFLY PLAYHOUSE, ARTS CENTRE MELBOURNE REVIEWED DECEMBER 9 BUTTERFLY, created by Lucas Jervies especially for the Australian Ballet School, really is a very clever creation. It takes the conventions of a traditional classical ballet and gives them a new angle. There is the journey from the human world to the supernatural world, where the "hero" (like a hapless Siegfried or Albrecht) finds himself in an enchanted world of supernatural beings; there are "fairies" – in this case butterflies, the enablers of love, who assist the humans in their quest. There are the set pieces of the classical ballet format: the grand pas de deux, the divertissements, the humorous characters. There is a transforming kiss but (spoiler alert) the transformation is not of a girl into a princess but a gauche…

CHUNKY Move, Melbourne’s contemporary company, has chosen Melanie Lane as its Choreographer in Residence for 2023/24. The Choreographer in Residence initiative invests $120,000 in the recipient’s practice over the two years including a direct contribution of $50,000 in artist fees and $70,000 towards the commission of a major work in the second year of the tenure. The Choreographer in Residence is selected via an open EOI and interview process assessed by a panel, this year comprising senior Chunky Move staff Antony Hamilton, Kristy Ayre and Kristina Arnott and industry peers Katina Olsen, Hellen Sky and Angela Goh. Melanie Lane is an Australian choreographer and performer of Javanese/European cultural heritage. She has been commissioned by Sydney Dance Company, Australasian Dance Collective, Dance North, Chunky Move, Schauspiel Leipzig and West Australian Ballet…

DESPITE his standing among the most celebrated senior choreographers of Europe, Christian Spuck is yet to make an indelible mark on Australian stages. In fact, he could be mistaken for a newcomer by an Australian dance audience. While it is possible Spuck’s comical, crowd-pleasing Grand Pas de Deux (2000) has made its way to a local ballet gala in the past, he cannot be certain. Indeed, the seven-minute-long duet is in all likelihood his most frequently performed work. “I’ve lost control of where that’s performed,” he comments at the outset of this interview, suggesting the work’s shenanigans might bleed into real life. Trained at the renowned John Cranko School, which is closely affiliated with the Stuttgart Ballet, Spuck’s early career involved a departure from classical ballet to work with two…

Open Minds It is a sign of good health that new initiatives stimulate discussion, debate and re-evaluation of the core values in any sector, but particularly in dance and education. The RBS offering is an affirmation of the same values that the RAD and many others wish teachers to embrace. Although the RAD, as an awarding body, does offer examinations our focus for over 100 years has always been on improving standards of dance teaching. I feel this is a good opportunity to reaffirm that inspiring teaching is, of course, at the heart of happy and successful dancers of all levels. All RAD teachers are independent and, as such, are free to teach how they wish. Our most successful teachers take a student-centered approach, focusing on the student’s personal development,…

FILM THE opera Carmen has inspired many adaptations. Written by the French composer Georges Bizet in 1875, its dramatic story of sexual jealousy, its tempestuous heroine and its gorgeous, singable melodies has made it one of the most popular operas in the repertoire, even today, and a rich subject for reinterpretation. Most recently, it has been made into a new feature film, directed by dancer and choreographer, Benjamin Millepied. Millepied was born in France and Carmen is an opera he grew up with. “There was a lot of music around our house and my father’s side of the family are all musicians,” he says. “Somehow it was a story that resonated with me as a child, and I eventually became interested in other versions of it, such as Carlos Saura’s…

FIFTY years after his tragically early death, a new biography has been published on the choreographer John Cranko (1927-73), whose ballets still enchant audiences today. The book is written by Ashley Killar, whose admiration for the master choreographer was sown when he began his own career at the Stuttgart Ballet, which Cranko directed from 1961 till his death. (Killar went on to become artistic director of the NAPAC Dance Company in South Africa and the Royal New Zealand Ballet.) At 493 pages, the book is a thoroughly researched documentation of Cranko’s life and career, including a catalogue of his complete works, a selection of his letters, synopses and program notes as well as information about the John Cranko School, which still thrives in Stuttgart today. The book is also, as…

MARRUGEKU Dance Company has been awarded a prestigious 2022 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award, one of the richest and most covetted awards in the performing arts in Australia. Marrugeku won the group award of $90,000. Co-directed by Dalisa Pigram and director/dramaturg Rachael Swain, the company is dedicated to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians working together to develop new dance languages that are, in their own words, “restless, transformative and unwavering”. “On behalf of Marrugeku we are thrilled and honoured to receive the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Group Award in acknowledgment of our many years of trans-Indigenous and intercultural performance making,” the pair said in accepting the award. Also announced on the day were the Individual Winner ($60,000) – the actor and theatre-maker Eryn Jean Norvill – and the Facilitator’s Prize ($25,000)…

ARTIST WHEN Frances Rings was appointed as the new artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, it seemed the most predestined of steps. She has been associated with the company almost since it was founded. Outgoing artistic director Stephen Page gave her her first job as a dancer with the company; since then she has been a resident choreographer and, more recently, artistic associate. Furthermore, she was so close to the three Page brothers that she was practically a sister – Stephen Page once referred to her as the “female energy” of the company. She has shared their triumph and their grief – artistic, political and personal – and has been an enduring and charismatic presence. (Who can forget her weeping on camera in the documentary Firestarter over the brothers Russell…

TECHNIQUE AND WELLBEING THEY say the heat of the summer months, combined with the relaxing nature of holidays, makes the end of the year break the best time to work on your flexibility. For students getting back to the studio after holidays, or professionals returning to their work schedule after some well-deserved rest, knowing how best to restore, maintain and improve the elite levels of flexibility needed for dance can be tricky, especially as the demands placed upon the body by differing repertoire and physical conditions can be in a state of constant flux. Keeping abreast of the latest in training and conditioning techniques can help you develop a safe stretching routine that works well for your individual body. When maintaining and improving flexibility in a harm-free way, there are…

SWAN LAKE HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE, PERTH REVIEWED: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18 WHAT a way for the West Australian Ballet to conclude its 70th year! The WA Ballet’s Swan Lake has raised the standards of modernising old, perhaps outdated, storylines. Artistic Director Aurelien Scannella and choreographer Krzysztof Pastor have once again (with the help of Noongar leader and guide, Barry McGuire) created a fresh, detail-oriented work that will, no doubt, be a fan favourite for years to come. Set in Fremantle in the early days of settlement, this work, like many versions of Swan Lake, runs over four acts and includes a prologue. The prologue, however, does not tell the story of how Odette became cursed (as the prologue usually does). Rather, the performance opens with members of the Gya Ngoop Keeninyarra…