Thursday, March 21, 2024
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 …
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 07:49PMWednesday, February 28, 2024
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 th…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 05:28PMMonday, February 12, 2024
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…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 09:39PMFriday, February 9, 2024
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, th…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 11:45PMSaturday, January 27, 2024
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 han…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 02:36AMFriday, December 22, 2023
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 wi…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 05:39AMTuesday, December 19, 2023
Leanne 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 11:38PMTuesday, December 12, 2023
At 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 05:25PMThursday, November 9, 2023
Up 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 05:21PMThursday, October 26, 2023
The 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 01:26AMSunday, September 24, 2023
Tradition 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 02:23AMFriday, September 15, 2023
In 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 04:39AMWednesday, September 13, 2023
There 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 01:12AMTuesday, September 12, 2023
A 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 04:45AMMonday, September 11, 2023
Wubkje 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 02:57AMMonday, August 21, 2023
The 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 02:37AMThursday, August 17, 2023
Sydney 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 09:10PMFriday, July 28, 2023
When 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 10:50PMMonday, July 17, 2023
Australasian 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 05:35AMWednesday, June 21, 2023
Bangarra 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 06:09AMTuesday, June 20, 2023
British 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 04:10AMFriday, May 26, 2023
The 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 05:40PMMonday, April 17, 2023
Li 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 03:54AMSaturday, April 8, 2023
It 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 12:37AMWednesday, March 1, 2023
Shaun Parker & Company’s work never fails to lodge itself tenaciously in the memory. I think of This Show is About People from 2007, Am I (2016) and Happy as Larry (2013) in part…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 01:57AMSunday, February 19, 2023
Nostalgia currently rules at Sydney’s big three commercial theatres, along with a hefty dose of pragmatism. Old favourites are back in relatively modest productions that have been designed…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 11:00PMThursday, January 19, 2023
Australian Theatre Live, a streaming service that offers films of local performing arts productions for subscribers to view at home, has just added Pinchgut Opera’s delectable comedy The …
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 07:15PMWednesday, December 21, 2022
The return of John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet to The Australian Ballet after nearly 20 years is a reminder of how few narrative ballets surpass it for range and complexity. Cranko’s ver…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 10:50PMTuesday, November 29, 2022
West Australian Ballet celebrates its 70th anniversary this year and at last has the numbers to enable a Swan Lake. The company decided not to go the safe route of staging a production tha…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 11:43PMSaturday, November 12, 2022
Australian audiences know Wayne McGregor from Dyad 1929, made in 2009 as part of The Australian Ballet’s Ballets Russes celebration; Chroma, choreographed in 2006 and brought into the re…
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 12:26AMWednesday, October 26, 2022
Australia’s three leading classical companies have released their 2023 programs, each with a distinctive flavour. The Australian Ballet has a deeply glamorous 60thanniversary season, West …
SOURCE: deborahjones.me at 01:50AM 
