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[dirac]

The Australian Ballet celebrates its fiftieth anniversary.

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Australian Ballet celebrates its 50th anniversary next year with a program that sets out to embrace past and future. The 2012 season, announced yesterday, includes a gala performance with international guests; an event featuring more than half a dozen Australian dance companies; an all-new triple bill with works from Graeme Murphy, Stephen Page and Gideon Obarzanek; a new yet traditional Swan Lake and the return to the stage of the company's longest-serving principal, Steven Heathcote, for a special pas de deux.

The Australian

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AB artistic director David McAllister has invited West Australian Ballet, Queensland Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, Adelaide-based Australian Dance Theatre and Queensland's Expressions Dance Company and Dance North to take to the stage in Melbourne in June. Tasdance, which is touring at the time, will appear via film.

Despite its expansive flavour, the multi-company Let's Dance is too complicated a venture to put on the touring schedule, and will be seen in Melbourne only.

Adelaide Now

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Australian Ballet resident choreographer Stephen Baynes also will create a more traditional Swan Lake,  based on the classic Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov version, which opened the company's first season in 1962.

During the year, Sir Robert Helpmann's first work for the fledgeling company, The Display, which premiered at the 1964 Adelaide Festival, will head a triple-bill of pivotal works called Icons.

[dirac]

The company will present a performance free of cost in Canberra.

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Ballet fans in Canberra will be treated to a free outdoor performance when the Australian Ballet returns to the city next March for the first time in seven years.
The Australian Ballet has launched a blockbuster program to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2012 but Canberrans will only get to see the free event Telstra Ballet in the Park which will be held at Stage 88 featuring all the company's principal dancers.

But artistic director David McAllister told The Canberra Times he was in discussion with Robyn Archer about bringing a full ballet to Canberra for the city's 2013 centenary.

[dirac]

A shipment of ballet shoes serves as the hiding place for 150 kilos of cocaine.

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Four Dominicans were arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport last Thursday in the sting, which was set up by the drugs squad officers acting on a tip-off, according to a report in Le Parisien newspaper.

Officers followed two men who picked up the shipment of shoes and took them into eastern Paris and then arrested them along with two others, it said.

[dirac]

Kerry Birkett and Zhanat Atymtayev find true love (with each other) at English National Ballet and they're not the only ones, apparently.

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The ENB's Austrian first soloist Fabian Reimair is married to senior principal Fernanda Oliveira, from Brazil, and the couple had their first baby, Liam, last year.

British dancer James Streeter wed Japanese star Erina Takahashi last month. And colleague Juan Rodriguez, a junior soloist, is engaged to fellow Spaniard Adele Ramirez.

[dirac]

The Eifman Ballet plans another visit to Israel.

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Hailing from the widely accepted home of ballet, Eifman’s company has wowed Israeli audiences time and again with flawless technique and masterful composition. Now, with the summer almost over, TAPAC is gearing up for a new season of dance, which recently kicked off with Forever Tango by Luis Bravo. Following Bravo’s ode to Argentina at TAPAC, Eifman Ballet will return to Israel with two ballets: Onegin and a new interpretation of an old work entitled I, Don Quixote.

[dirac]

An interview with John Henry Reid, who is transitioning from dancing to teaching full time.

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....He said he plans on bringing more contemporary moves into the otherwise strictly classical style taught at the studio, as influenced by what he learned under Complexions Contemporary directors Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson in New York.

“I believe that classical ballet is the foundation for all dance. If you can do classical ballet, then you can do anything. And that’s the truth,” Reid said. “But I believe that you also have to be able to move as well through contemporary. And I found that through me being off-balance and still being able to control myself, it helped so much in my other dance skills, that I incorporate a lot of contemporary with my classes.”

[dirac]

Louisville Ballet performs at a Best Dressed of Louisville event.

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So when Douglas asked Bruce Simpson, the ballet’s artistic director, and Adam Hougland, principal choreographer, to showcase a ballet performance at BD2011, the result was a resounding success.

Both Simpson and Hougland bring decades of ballet experience on the national and international level. The highly technical form of dance performed by skilled artists is typically not showcased outside the arena in which they train. But the level of commitment and pure love of creating something extraordinary proved to be powerful and able to captivate the 600-plus guests at BD2011.