★★★✰✰ Within this potpourri of Graeme Murphy’s works, the highlight was "Grand", a charming and poignant tribute he created in 2005 for his mother, a pianist, who died the previous year.
Tag - Kevin Jackson
★★★★✰ "...the emotional impact of this uniquely Australian Nutcracker remains as powerful as ever."
★★★✰✰ Even after his death, Vaslav Nijinsky suffered from the power and control of others...
★★★✰✰ ...the production lurches between down-to-earth Aussie niceness and the designer’s European conceits...
★★★✰✰ The first thing to say about Symphony in C is that the Australian Ballet's corps and soloists had been rehearsed and coached with technical perfection in mind and there was little to fault with their execution of the steps.
★★★★✰ In music, mood and dynamics the Australian Ballet’s new triple bill, Vitesse, represents three elements, water, fire and air.
With a feast of baroque extravagance that would please the Sun King himself David McAllister’s new Sleeping Beauty for the Australian Ballet is destined for a long life in the company’s repertoire.
After the long famine, Ashton’s ballets made a welcome return this week with the company’s triple bill under the umbrella title, The Dream.
The stars were indeed aligned when American Ballet Theatre’s Gillian Murphy arrived to guest with the Australian Ballet for two performances as the leading lady, Nikiya the temple dancer.
It was a program that harkened back to the big international Galas of previous years, as well as a nice reference to the company’s first years, when artists including Sonia Arova, Erik Bruhn, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev guest-starred.
At the time of its premiere in 1964 The Display shocked its audiences. Highly sexualized, violent and thoroughly modern, the ballet divided audiences and critics. But, seen in the context of Helpman’s life, the choices within the work begin to make sense.
Onegin has been part of the Australian Ballet repertoire since 1976, first introduced at the behest of Anne Woolliams, who worked with Cranko at the Stuttgart Ballet. Woolliams replaced Sir Robert Helpmann as artistic director of the Australian Ballet in 1976, a move that angered Helpmann...
How can a company make good impression with just a few performances of one or two programs? The pieces have to be representative, interesting, and show the company in a the best possible light. It’s not easy, as the recent Lincoln Center performances of Australian Ballet have shown.