Ty King-Wall finished his ballet career at the top, retiring from The Australian Ballet as a principal artist. By the time he stopped dancing in 2022 he had two young children, one born just…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 11:56PMThomas E.S. Kelly’s SILENCE has been well travelled since its premiere at the Brisbane Festival in 2020. That’s a measure of how well it’s been received, which is excellent, and the …
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 06:23PMIt was a memorable few days for Royal New Zealand Ballet dancers Ana Gallardo Lobaina and Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson. When they made their debuts as Odette/Odile and Siegfried at the May 2…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 08:39PMThere 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, A…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 01:36AMJohan 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 mur…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 09:08PMIn 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 mi…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 03:13AMSpeaking 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 …
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 12:41AMAmber 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 …
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 07:49PMChristopher 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 th…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 05:28PMIn 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…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 09:39PMBy 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, th…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 11:45PMMost 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 han…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 02:36AMThe 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 wi…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 05:39AMLeanne Benjamin has been named Li Cunxin’s successor as artistic director of Brisbane-based Queensland Ballet. She is the sixth AD in the company’s 63-year history and the first woman to…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 11:38PMAt the end of PPY23 Revealed there were huge shouts of joy from the young dancers who had just performed. For about half of them – and there were more than 50 in total – it was a gradu…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 05:25PMUp close is right. It’s likely you’ll never get nearer the spectacular Sydney Dance Company bodies than this. SDC is usually seen in the conventional 900-seat Roslyn Packer Theatre jus…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 05:21PMThe Australian Ballet’s announcement today that Stephanie Lake is to be its new Resident Choreographer from the beginning of next year is very good news indeed. Lake is one of the country�…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 01:26AMTradition reigns in The Australian Ballet’s new Swan Lake, based on a fondly remembered 1977 production by former artistic director Anne Woolliams. Nearly 50 years on it’s still recogni…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 02:23AMIn 2019 Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina, then new in her role, travelled the substantial width of Australia to attend the Perth Festival, as you do. There she met British …
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 04:39AMThere should be much rejoicing in New Zealand dance circles today with the announcement that Ty King-Wall is to be Royal New Zealand Ballet’s next artistic director. It’s a homecoming fo…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 01:12AMA new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon, Oscar, is the centrepiece of David Hallberg’s 2024 program for The Australian Ballet. It is being made on the company in what is Hallberg’s first f…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 04:45AMWubkje Kuindersma’s new echoes of VAN GOGH for West Australian Ballet looks wonderful. The artist’s work is everywhere in Tatyana van Walsum’s designs, almost overwhelmingly so. Inte…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 02:57AMThe Australian Ballet’s recent appearances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden got plenty of attention here and in the UK. Travelling somewhat under the radar was another touring ventur…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 02:37AMSydney Dance Company’s generous outreach to contemporary choreographers, INDance, opened its second season last night with works from two West Australian choreographers. Founded last year,…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 09:10PMWhen choreographers are asked to make new work for Queensland Ballet’s Bespoke the result can be a program of great diversity, as happened last year, or one that inadvertently seems to hav…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 10:50PMAustralasian Dance Collective is a small company that thinks big. Very big indeed when it comes to Lucie in the Sky, a piece for six dancers and five drones. The title has nothing to do wit…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 05:35AMBangarra Dance Theatre lives and breathes stories of the great southern land. Roaming through time and space it offers a different way of looking at history and place. It opens hearts. It ex…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 06:09AMBritish choreographer Cathy Marston has made literary adaptations a cornerstone of her work. My Brilliant Career, the closing work in Queensland Ballet’s latest triple bill, Trilogy, joi…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 04:10AMThe way The Australian Ballet’s calendar works meant Sydney had a unique opportunity to assess the company’s form and direction at the halfway point of its 60th anniversary celebration …
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 05:40PMLi Cunxin first programmed Giselle a decade ago in his first year as artistic director of Queensland Ballet. He had three leading casts – enough, you would think. Then a spate of injurie…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 03:54AMIt should come as a surprise to no one that Melburnians saw the first complete Der Ring des Nibelungen in Australia. The city has always had something of a yen for Wagner. The year was 191…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 12:37AM