309 stories from deborahjones.me
Leanne Benjamin has been named Li Cunxin's successor as artistic director of Brisbane-based Queensland Ballet. She is the sixth AD in the company's 63-year history and the first woman to be …
At the end of PPY23 Revealed there were huge shouts of joy from the young dancers who had just performed. For about half of them " and there were more than 50 in total " it was a gradu…
Up close is right. It's likely you'll never get nearer the spectacular Sydney Dance Company bodies than this. SDC is usually seen in the conventional 900-seat Roslyn Packer Theatre just …
The Australian Ballet's announcement today that Stephanie Lake is to be its new Resident Choreographer from the beginning of next year is very good news indeed. Lake is one of the country's …
Tradition reigns in The Australian Ballet's new Swan Lake, based on a fondly remembered 1977 production by former artistic director Anne Woolliams. Nearly 50 years on it's still recognisa…
In 2019 Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina, then new in her role, travelled the substantial width of Australia to attend the Perth Festival, as you do. There she met British …
There should be much rejoicing in New Zealand dance circles today with the announcement that Ty King-Wall is to be Royal New Zealand Ballet's next artistic director. It's a homecoming for Ki…
A new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon, Oscar, is the centrepiece of David Hallberg's 2024 program for The Australian Ballet. It is being made on the company in what is Hallberg's first ful…
Wubkje Kuindersma's new echoes of VAN GOGH for West Australian Ballet looks wonderful. The artist's work is everywhere in Tatyana van Walsum's designs, almost overwhelmingly so. Intens…
The Australian Ballet's recent appearances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden got plenty of attention here and in the UK. Travelling somewhat under the radar was another touring venture,…
Sydney Dance Company's generous outreach to contemporary choreographers, INDance, opened its second season last night with works from two West Australian choreographers. Founded last year, t…
When choreographers are asked to make new work for Queensland Ballet's Bespoke the result can be a program of great diversity, as happened last year, or one that inadvertently seems to have …
Australasian Dance Collective is a small company that thinks big. Very big indeed when it comes to Lucie in the Sky, a piece for six dancers and five drones. The title has nothing to do w…
Bangarra Dance Theatre lives and breathes stories of the great southern land. Roaming through time and space it offers a different way of looking at history and place. It opens hearts. It ex…
British choreographer Cathy Marston has made literary adaptations a cornerstone of her work. My Brilliant Career, the closing work in Queensland Ballet's latest triple bill, Trilogy, j…
The way The Australian Ballet's calendar works meant Sydney had a unique opportunity to assess the company's form and direction at the halfway point of its 60th anniversary celebration ye…
Li Cunxin first programmed Giselle a decade ago in his first year as artistic director of Queensland Ballet. He had three leading casts " enough, you would think. Then a spate of injur…
It should come as a surprise to no one that Melburnians saw the first complete Der Ring des Nibelungen in Australia. The city has always had something of a yen for Wagner. The year was…
Shaun Parker & Company's work never fails to lodge itself tenaciously in the memory. I think of This Show is About People from 2007, Am I (2016) and Happy as Larry (201…
Nostalgia currently rules at Sydney's big three commercial theatres, along with a hefty dose of pragmatism. Old favourites are back in relatively modest productions that have been designed t…
Australian Theatre Live, a streaming service that offers films of local performing arts productions for subscribers to view at home, has just added Pinchgut Opera's delectable comedy The …
The return of John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet to The Australian Ballet after nearly 20 years is a reminder of how few narrative ballets surpass it for range and complexity. Cranko's ver…
West Australian Ballet celebrates its 70th anniversary this year and at last has the numbers to enable a Swan Lake. The company decided not to go the safe route of staging a production…
Australian audiences know Wayne McGregor from Dyad 1929, made in 2009 as part of The Australian Ballet's Ballets Russes celebration; Chroma, choreographed in 2006 and brought into the …
Australia's three leading classical companies have released their 2023 programs, each with a distinctive flavour. The Australian Ballet has a deeply glamorous 60thanniversary season, West Au…