Lee Christofis
Episode #13 Peter Rose in conversation with Lee Christofis
Tuesday, 28 February 2017Peter Rose interviews ABR contributor Lee Christofis, who recently attended a number of exhibitions in Paris showcasing works by Léon Bakst, Cy Twombly, and Arnold Schoenberg among others. His visit coincided with the fortieth birthday of the Pompidou Centre. Lee's 'Letter from P ...
Lee Christofis reviews 'Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian ballet from the rule of the tsars to today' by Simon Morrison
In November 2016, former principal dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko entered the Bolshoi Ballet studios in Moscow to begin retraining for the stage. He had recently been ...
... (read more)To highlight Australian Book Review’s arts coverage and to celebrate some of the year’s memorable concerts, operas, films, ballets, plays, and art exhibitions, we invited a group of critics and arts professionals to nominate some favourites.
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To open its Melbourne winter season, The Australian Ballet has invited the handsome and talented Houston Ballet to make its Australian début in Romeo and Juliet by Houston's Australian artistic director, Stanton Welch. After reaching leading soloist and resident choreographer status in ...
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How appropriate that Queensland Ballet is playing A Midsummer Night's Dream in the 400th anniversary year of William Shakespeare's death. This is not the Royal Ballet's production by Frederick Ashton for London's 1964 celebrations of the Bard's birth but a co-production with the Royal ...
... (read more)To highlight Australian Book Review's arts coverage and to celebrate some of the year's memorable concerts, operas, films, ballets, plays, and exhibitions, we invited a group of critics and arts professionals to nominate their favourites – and to nominate one production they are looking forward to in 2016. (We indicate which works were reviewed in Arts Up ...
Lee Christofis reviews 'The Sleeping Beauty' (Australian Ballet)
When Sergei Diaghilev staged The Sleeping Princess at the Alhambra Theatre, London, in 1921, he hoped to prove that classical ballet could be as popular as the outrageously glamorous West End hit, Chu Chin Chow, which ran for five years. Diaghilev invited the brilliant colourist Leon Bakst to design sets and costumes equal to those of the orig ...
Lee Christofis reviews the new art biography 'Fantasy Modern'
Reading Andrew Montana’s new biography of Loudon Sainthill leaves one imagining how much the artist would have achieved without his lover, amanuensis, and entrepreneur, Harry Tatlock Miller. Lovers for some thirty-four years, they seem destined to achieve remarkable things together. Well into his project Montana realised that he could not tell Sainthill’s story without Miller’s, and so Fantasy Modern became a dual biography, a ‘portrait of a marriage’ of two gay men and of the work that bound them. It is also an encyclopedic trip through rapid aesthetic change, a social-family history of rare individuals, and urban culture shaped by art and design, not just coffee, magazines, and booze.
... (read more)Lee Christofis reviews 'Robert Helpmann: A rare sense of the theatre' by Kathrine Sorley Walker
Last year marked the centenary of Robert Helpmann’s birth. Apart from a tribute at the Helpmann Awards ceremony – the ‘Bobbies’ – in July 2009, no Australian performing arts company celebrated the anniversary of this polymorphous artist and early advocate for a national artistic life created by Australians, not by northern-hemisphere exporters. Two new books and a vibrant touring exhibition went part of the way towards providing a fitting tribute.
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