Dance Australia

THIS issue has a focus on auditions. Auditioning is a happy topic, full of optimism and hope. Unfortunately, for me it is also a topic that reminds of the limited number of jobs. In some areas, job prospects have improved lately. The commercial dance sector is burgeoning. Our three major classical ballet companies have actually expanded, albeit incrementally. But the contemporary dance sector is a different matter. Take a look at each of the main contemporary companies in the major cities. Australian Dance Theatre, despite its grand name, has just five dancers. Australasian Dance Collective has six. Co3 in Perth has 10; Dance North in Townsville six. Chunky Move in Melbourne – hard to tell, as it hires per project. Bangarra Dance Theatre is slightly better off, with fifteen. Even Sydney Dance Company,…

AFTER a rambunctious, award-winning Australian premiere season in 2019, the West Australian Ballet is taking another trip down the rabbit hole and bringing Septime Webre’s ALICE (in wonderland) back to the stage. The family-friendly ballet, which stays true to Lewis Carroll’s classic book, is a behemoth production, with 214 bedazzling costumes designed by Cirque du Soleil costume designer Liz Vandal, 166 props used every show and a giant Jabberwocky puppet. “The elation seen on the more than 20,000 audience members in 2019 shows the happiness the arts bring, and ALICE is an amazing production that we had to bring back,” says the WA Ballet's artistic director, Aurélien Scannella. “Our dancers will fly, both in their jumps and metres in the air with the Flying by Foy system. This is more than a ballet.” The…

Principal artist with the Australian Ballet, Ty King-Wall, has retired, after a glittering 16 year with the Australian Ballet. He joined the company in 2006 and was the youngest principal artist when he was promoted in 2013. Callum Linnane has been promoted from Senior Artist to Principal Artist. – The Adelaide Festival has appointed a new artistic director, Ruth Mackenzie, CBE, who will take the reins from 2024-26. The present co-directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy will "step back" and support the transition to a new leadership before the 2023 festival. Mackenzie is currently a consultant artistic director for the Mayor of London working on a large-scale cultural program, Let’s Do London, and for Comme des Garçons in Paris to open a new arts centre aimed at under 30-year-olds. She was director of…

BRISBANE'S Australasian Dance Collective is thrilled to be embarking on a tour through autumn and winter. The company is taking its highly-praised program, “THREE: Lister / Lane / Shechter” – the same program that premiered to rave reviews at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in 2021. The program comprises Still Life, by Jack Lister, Alterum, by Melanie Lane, and Cult, by Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter. The tour begins in Toowoomba on May 10 and finishes up at Redlands on July via Ipswich, Maryborough, Bundaberg, Cairns, Shoalhaven, Wyong and Canberra. The tour of “THREE” coincides with the appointment of choreographer and ADC company dancer Jack Lister as ADC’s Creative Associate.…

DANIEL Riley, the newly appointed artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre, has announced his plans for 2022. His first program starts with “Outside Within”, described as “a triptych of stories and legacies” created by both Riley and ADT’s 2021 Associate Artist, Adrianne Semmens. The triptych includes The Third, created by Riley with the ADT dancers. This work takes as its staring point mulunma – Inside Within, which was originally conceived and directed by Riley with Cass Mortimer Eipper for a commission for last year's Rising festival in Melbourne. The third part of the triptych is Immerse, by Semmens (with the dancers), which compares “the freshwater of her heritage with the saltwater country she now calls home”. “Outside Within” will be performed in Adelaide from May 10-13 before an expansive tour throughout South Australia. September will…

IT'S a case of third time lucky – Melbourne's new Rising Festival, cancelled two years in a row, is scheduled to “rise” at last this year. Co-directed by former dancer/choreographer/ artistic director Gideon Obarzanek alongside Hannah Fox, the festival replaces the former Melbourne Festival. It will open on the first night of winter and run for 12 nights. This year sees 225 events – including 22 commissions and 14 world premieres – featuring 801 local and international artists, all embracing the idea of darkness and winter. Dance highlights are Reward for the Tribe, a collaboration between Restless Dance Theatre and Chunky Move (of which Obarzanek was founding director). It is described as “five dancers with and without disabilities responding to the divine geometry of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man as they bend, crumple…