Thursday, March 30

[dirac]

A review of the Australian Ballet by Ilona Landgraf in her blog, "Landgraf on Dance."

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Good news from the Australian Ballet: livestreams of performances will be resumed! The first of these – Nureyev’s version of Petipa’s “Don Quixote” – was broadcast this weekend. The company celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this season, and perhaps that is why artistic director David Hallberg chose a special opener – special because this “Don Quixote” harks back to the one that Nureyev, together with Robert Helpmann (then artistic director of the Australian Ballet) adapted for the screen in 1973. It stars the Australian Ballet, with Helpmann in the title role and Nureyev as Basilio. Needless to say, the film became a hit. Hallberg decided to re-adapt the hit film for the theater stage with piercing exactitude, replicating its aesthetic as closely as possible. That’s why Richard Roberts’s set design (including Don Quixote’s knightly home, the port of Barcelona, some windmills in Castilla-La Mancha, Dulcinea’s garden, and a smoke-filled tavern) was based on Barry Kay’s original film set and why Kay’s gorgeous costumes were painstakingly reconstructed. I especially admired the traditional Spanish garb of the corps at the tavern.