Lee Christofis
Lee Christofis reviews 'Cranko: The man and his choreography' by Ashley Killar
Reading Ashley Killar’s compelling biography, Cranko: The man and his choreography, feels like studying the modernisation of ballet in three countries, the way ballet eats up lives as often as it forms families of peers and lovers, and the unending devotion required for creativity to flourish. It is pleasing to learn how a determined man with an ever-rattling mind, backed by a calm, philosophical manager, could challenge opera house dominance to make the Stuttgart Ballet an independent entity, with its own school supported by a philanthropic institution named after the city’s first ballet master of the 1750s, Jean-Georges Noverre, whom David Garrick called ‘the Shakespeare of the dance’.
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This year’s Adelaide Festival opening night was one for standing ovations, and the revival of Meryl Tankard’s Two Feet, danced by internationally acclaimed Russian ballerina Natalia Osipova, certainly earned one. Commissioned for World Expo 88 by former festival director Anthony Steel, Two Feet ...
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What a luxury it is to have seen the ballet company of La Scala, Milan, on its first visit to Australia. An ensemble of sixty-six dancers, it has become, under the artistic direction of Frédéric Olivieri, a prized instrument of Italian culture. Established in 1788, it engaged with a new wave of contemporary choreographers ...
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An impassioned ovation greeted the exceptional, all-giving dancers of The Australian Ballet and musicians of Orchestra Victoria at the packed première of the company’s new production of Spartacus. The familiarity of the story of oppressed slaves and gladiators fighting the Roman Republic for ...
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Repetitive cycles of alienation, frustration, sorrow, and humiliation in the face of political injustice over decades find powerful expression in Le Dernier Appel (The Last Cry), the latest interrogation by Marrugeku Dance Theatre of the deleterious effects of colonisation on the indigenous peoples of Australia and her neighbours. Commissioned by Carriagewo ...
Last year, Akram Khan, England’s leading Asian dancer–choreographer, stunned the dance world community when he announced he would stop performing in 2018 and that his last show would be Xenos, meaning ‘foreigner’ or ‘stranger’. It premièred at the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, on 21 February, and reached ...
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This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Graeme Murphy’s career as a dancer and choreographer, which began at The Australian Ballet in 1968. He has often returned to create new ballets on the company – during his thirty-one years as artistic director of Sydney Dance Company from 1976 to 2006, and more recently ...
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The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s world première of The Piano: The Ballet, inspired by Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning film The Piano (1993), began the company’s program for 2018. It is the second ballet on the subject by Jiří and Otto Bubeníček, former and highly decorated principal dancers at Hamburg Ballet. Their first ...
... (read more)Milky Way – Ballet at the Quarry (West Australian Ballet) ★★★1/2
Ballet at the Quarry, West Australian Ballet’s summer season, is eagerly anticipated by dance aficionados and the wider public alike, and this year’s program has drawn full houses and standing ovations. The Milky Way of the season’s title represents one of the most significant moves that Aurelian Scannella, the company’s ...
... (read more)Lee Christofis reviews 'Fifty: Half a century of Australian dance theatre' by Maggie Tonkin
Australian Dance Theatre, the nation’s longest continuing modern dance company, was born in 1965, during the so-called Dunstan renaissance of Adelaide. Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, a dancer and teacher influenced by five transformative years in Europe, and Leslie White, a dancer and teacher trained at the Royal Ballet School ...
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