6 replies to this topic

[dirac]

A review of the Australian Balletby Eamonn Kelly in The Australian.

Quote

This anniversary season triple bill focuses on commissions from the company's formative first decades. The Display (1964), Gemini (1973) and Beyond Twelve (1980) helped the company attract international attention, broaden local tastes, and develop a uniquely Australian approach to contemporary ballet that was athletic, expressive and unpretentious.

In The Display, Robert Helpmann depicted a parochial, intolerant, and chauvinistic postwar Australia, seething with ocker vulgarity and latent violence. Culminating in a horrific sexual assault on a female picnicker, the work contrasts the posturing aggression of beer-swilling, footy-kicking, sheila-impressing Aussie blokes with the dazzling beauty of the lyrebird's courtship dance, tail plumage at full stretch to demonstrate mating credentials.

[dirac]

"First Position" will be shown in South Africa for a second time.

Quote

This groundbreaking documentary tells the true-life story of a Sierra Leone war orphan, Michaela DePrince, who is now living her dreams as a ballerina in New York.

Hot on the heels of quite an impressive season in some of the major theatres around America, this will be the second time First Position is screened here in Jozi. It is coming back due to popular demand three months after its successful South African premiere in May.

[dirac]

Katherine Grange of the Royal New Zealand Ballet appears in a fashion film short.  Video clip.

Quote

It was only fitting then that the collection was modelled by a ballet dancer - the sylphlike 23 year-old RNZB member Katherine Grange, whose stunning dance performance has been made into a short film Naive Romance, shot by Stephen Tilley and with music by Bic Runga.

[dirac]

A report on the Australian Dance Awardsceremony by Stephen Bevis in The West Australian.

Quote

The celebratory mood of WA's first contemporary dance festival has been capped off by twin triumphs at the Australian Dance Awards, which were held in Perth for the first time on Saturday night.

The nation's dance stars turned out in style at the State Theatre Centre, where former WA Ballet leading lights Barry Moreland and Darryl Brandwood picked up two of the night's 10 awards for Helix, their independent dance show conceived to highlight Brandwood's solo artistry.

[dirac]

An interview with Darcey Bussell.

Quote

But if it had not been for her pushy mother it looks like the star, who joins the Strictly Come Dancing judging panel this season, might have taken a very different path.

She told the Sunday Mirror: ' I danced from the age of five, but only because my mum sent me - I had knock knees and she wanted to straighten out my legs.

[dirac]

A pair of Margot Fonteyn's shoes will be put up for auction.

Quote

The auction sale date is now set for September 8, 2012 in England at DGS auctions in Hythe, Kent...

The pair of original pointe ballet shoes owned by Dame Margot Fonteyn will be auctioned along with an autograph book with her signature and a letter that was written by her.

[dirac]

A review of the Australian Ballet by Nick Spunde for Australian Stage.

Quote

The show celebrates the company’s fifty year anniversary and features three pieces from different decades. From the sixties comes The Display, probably the first ever distinctly Australian ballet piece, choreographed by Robert Helpmann and featuring designs by Sidney Nolan. With lush backdrops, gauze curtains to create a misty bush dawn effect and a dancer in a magnificent lyrebird costume, it first appears like some kind of airy fantasy. In truth, it is a much more sinister story, detailing a country outing that through alcohol and male rivalry spins into violence. It’s like King Street at 3am, except presented in elegant dance. The tumultuous fight scene where the men circle and the women flutter around the combatants like startled birds is a wonderful combination of grace and ferocity. The figure of the lyrebird is both glamorous and threatening, its dance – which Helpmann based closely on the bird’s actual mating display – symbolic of bravado and sexual aggression.