Valerie Lawson on an important series, by WildBear Entertainment, excavating Australian Ballet's past and what's happening now for the company, with all the complications of Covid-19.
Tag - Australian Ballet
★★★★✰ The 2021 Royal Ballet School Summer Show, on the Royal Opera House Main Stage, was a different affair to normal with many of the White Lodge Junior School students physically absent because of Covid restrictions. But there was much to celebrate and lots of new work on display too...
★★★★✰ After nearly a year away from dancing for live audiences Australian Ballet are back with a gala - Summertime at the Ballet - and at an unusual location, the Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne.
"I thought it would be interesting to make this Swan Lake very specific for Finland. They are proud of their Nordic heritage and traditions; that whole idea of winter and the purity of nature is very dear to them."
David McAllister, about to step down as the artistic director of Australian Ballet, has just released his memoir and it proves enlightening and candid reading about both the company and the man himself...
This programme celebrated Annette Page's career with the Royal Ballet and supported the Motor Neurone Disease Association. She died at the age of 84 of MND, a cruel disease for a former dancer and an articulate, witty woman...
★★★★✰ Nicoletta Manni’s performances in Don Quixote and Giselle on the last three days of Teatro alla Scala ballet company’s season in Australia was extraordinary, not just for her stamina and resilience, but her acting skills.
★★★★✰ The Merry Widow is Robert Helpmann’s great gift to the Australian Ballet. It premiered in November 1975 and has been staged more than 400 times since.
★★★✰✰ 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.
★★★✰✰ Wheeldon and his scenarist, Nicholas Wright, have made theatrical sense of a nonsensical children’s classic. This Alice, though, is a modern pantomime, not a classic ballet.
★★★★✰ "...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...
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★✰✰ Australian Ballet (AB) must surely be the only significant ballet company in the world with two Swan Lakes in their active repertoire. Strangely, the one we've seen before in Britain we have just been seeing again...
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
★★★★★ This R&J gives the audience so much to admire, so much to be immersed in, and so much to delight in and even laugh over.
★★★✰✰ 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.