There is a great deal of joy in Liam Scarlett’s deliciously funny, sensual A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And – always – a great deal of sadness that his life was so short. Yesterday, April 16, was the third anniversary of his death. He was just 35 and the maker of many one-act works for major companies along with important full-length ballets including Frankenstein (for the Royal Ballet and San Francisco Ballet), Swan Lake (a huge hit for the Royal Ballet) and Dangerous Liaisons (QB and Texas Ballet Theatre). Scarlett’s attraction to dark themes was evident in m ..read more

Johan Inger sees Carmen as a nightmare, which it is. In his darker-than-dark version of a story that just won’t go away, the Swedish choreographer gets inside the head of the woman’s murderer, Don Jose, and chillingly finds nothing there. Well, there’s a writhing, stuttering collection of destructive impulses but otherwise Inger’s Don Jose is an abject nobody who can’t have what he wants so destroys it.  The gulf between the woman and her pursuer could not be wider and the disconnect gave The Australian Ballet’s staging of this 2015 work its knockout punch on opening night. With Carmen’s ..read more

In 2018 Greg Horsman choreographed a version of La Bayadère for a trio of commissioners, Queensland Ballet, West Australian Ballet and Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet. His setting was mid-19th century India at the time of the British East India Company, set up as a trading entity but in effect a coloniser. The idea had merit. Petipa’s oriental fantasy was to give way to a more authentic, nuanced picture of Indian culture and its people while keeping the storyline intact.  Things did not go well. The story was told in crude, broad-brush strokes in Brisbane in 2018 and in the ..read more

Speaking in 1985 at a symposium about the creation of West Side Story, Jerome Robbins said he had wanted to see how far he, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents could go in bringing their “crafts and talents”, as he put it, to a musical. “Why did we have to do it separately and elsewhere? Why did Lenny have to write an opera, Arthur a play, me a ballet? Why couldn’t we, in aspiration, try to bring our deepest talents together to the commercial theatre in this work? That was the true gesture of the show.” Joining Robbins, Bernstein and Laurents at the symposium was Stephen Sondheim, who w ..read more

Amber McCartney’s solo dance work Tiny Infinite Deaths was a big success when it premiered in 2022 in an artist development program called Pieces, presented by Melbourne’s Lucy Guerin Inc and The Substation. It was the kind of leg-up independent artists need if they are to be seen and Tiny Infinite Deaths was indeed seen by many influential people, including Amy Hollingsworth, artistic director of Brisbane-based Australasian Dance Collective. Which is how it came to be included in ADC’s third iteration of its annual triple bill THREE. Tiny Infinite Deaths was something ..read more

Christopher Wheeldon is a ballet choreographer who doesn’t stay in his lane. Neither did George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille or Jerome Robbins. Ditto Twyla Tharp, still making new work at the age of 82. In the younger generation, New York City Ballet’s Justin Peck has been tapped to make dance for Broadway and film (Carousel, Spielberg’s West Side Story, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro). Crystal Pite is equally at home making pieces for her contemporary outfit Kidd Pivot and for ballet companies with bold-face names. It’s hard to over-estimate how much traditional classical ballet has benefit ..read more

In Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) the law of the jungle is the furthest thing from anarchy. Social structures built by the animals are adhered to without fail. They give an often violent world some kind of order.  Akram Khan’s reimagining and updating is rooted in chaos. We are in a future – 2029 – just around the corner. Cities are drowning, systems collapsing, food is scarce, refugees flee to higher ground and extinction looms.  A young girl is tossed upon the seas, separated from her mother and home. She is Mowgli, the modern-day version of Kipling’s wolf-raised boy, her ..read more

By start time of 8pm Perth’s temperature had dropped a little from its high of 41°C to something, well, not much below that. But the sky was clear and humidity low – a perfect night, then, for West Australian Ballet’s annual open-air season at Quarry Amphitheatre. The program was mostly chosen by former WAB artistic director Aurélien Scannella – gracefully mentioned by guest artistic director for 2024, David McAllister, in his post-show speech – with a small addition from McAllister.  McAllister’s decision was wise. The title of Gakuro Matsui’s In 3 min 40 describes its brevity ..read more

Most of Australia’s well-established contemporary dance companies are based in the country’s capital cities for obvious reasons. That’s where audiences and resources are closest to hand. Adelaide is home to Australian Dance Theatre and Restless Dance Theatre, Brisbane is where you find Australasian Dance Collective, Co3 caters to the Perth audience and so on. Dancenorth and Marrugeku are the outliers, the first based in Townsville, about 1350km north of Queensland’s capital Brisbane, and the second settled in Broome, more than 2000km from Perth in Western Australia. The best chance of seeing t ..read more

The Australian Ballet’s 60th anniversary celebrations came to a close in Sydney with Swan Lake and with promotions for 14 dancers – about 20 per cent of the company. TAB ended 2023 with 67 dancers although that number will increase to 81 when three new soloists and 11 new corps de ballet members join next year. Swan Lake was a lucky ballet for many of those promoted, as well as imposing a heavy workload. It was the main event in artistic director David Hallberg’s programming for the company’s milestone and was seen in four cities: Melbourne, where it opened on September 19 ..read more