Innholdsfortegnelse for June-July 2020 i Dance Australia

IN one of the many inventive responses by dance companies to the lockdown, Australian Dance Theatre conceived a project called The World’s Smallest Stage, an online event. Choreographers were matched with composers to create a series of works and given a theme of “brevity”, in both space and time, with each five- to 10-minute work performed in just four square metres. The project brought together ADT with other South Australian-based groups – Kurruru Youth Performing Arts and Restless Dance Theatre – and independent choreographers and composers (selected in partnership with Music SA). Remote rehearsals began on May 18, and ran for three weeks. The works were then to be live-streamed, and eventually performed live, on stage at ADT’s home space, The Odeon, in Adelaide. Similarly, Melbourne’s Chunky Move, in partnership…

AFTER extensive deliberation by a panel of judges, Xanthe Geeves has been chosen as the recipient of this year’s Emerging Female Classical Choreographer initiative. The Emerging Female Classical Choreographer initiative was established last year and is a unique opportunity for an emerging female choreographer to take up an artistic residency at Sydney Opera House and create a work for The Australian Ballet’s bodytorque program. Geeves has a comprehensive career in classical ballet. She trained with Tanya Pearson and Jennifer Ham at Ballet Academy Northside and the Palucca School in Dresden, Germany, before embarking on a 14-year performing career. Much of that time was with the German choreographer Stephan Thoss (now artistic director of Ballet Theatre Mannheim), who was artistic director of the Hannover State Ballet, where Geeves danced from 2001-7,…

Where did you do your dance training? I trained at Joanne Williamson Dance Academy in Sydney from 2007 to 2016 in contemporary, classical ballet, lyrical, jazz and musical theatre. I also trained at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts from 2011 up until my graduation year of 2016. In 2017, I began my full-time dance training with Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year and furthered my training with the program in 2018, receiving a Diploma of Dance (Elite Performance) and Advanced Diploma of Dance (Elite Performance.) Please describe briefly your career to date. In 2019, I received a trainee contract with Sydney Dance Company. I performed in Sydney and nationally, performing works including WOOF (choreographer Melanie Lane), Neon Aether (choreographer Gabrielle Nankivell), 6 Breaths (choreographer Artistic Director of Sydney Dance…

David McAllister Artistic Director, The Australian Ballet March 30. To paraphrase Dickens, it may well be the worst of times, but for the arts, especially the performing arts, the best of times it is definitely not. The sector was the first to suffer following the Federal Government's decision in early March to ban public gatherings of more than 500 people to help slow the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19. At the other end of this crisis, it will probably also be the last industry to recover as venues across the nation slowly reopen. For dance in particular, the sacrifice has been huge, with financial revenue collapsing for many companies and no certainty about when operations may begin in the future. Independent dancers and those relying on the gig economy have…

NSW NEWCASTLE National College of Dance Artistic Director: Brett Morgan. Delivering national accredited courses in Dance Performance – CUA40111 Certificate IV in Dance, CUA50111 Diploma of Dance (Elite Performance) Studio Cnr Young & Lloyd Rd, Lambton NSW 2299 P: 02 4952 9294 E: nc.dance@optusnet.com.au www.mwmdance.com North Shore Dance Academy Principal: Anne Gray, ARAD Teaching Diploma (DIST) RAD ballet, jazz, character, contemporary, pilates and hip-hop. Children from 3 years to advanced and Solo Seal. Studio: St Ives P: 02 9983 0365, PO Box 509, St Ives, 2075 www.northshoredanceacademy.com.au NORTH STRATHFIELD The McDonald College Australia’s Leading Academic and Performing Arts College: The McDonald College is a coeducational, non-denominational school for uniquely talented students from Years 3 – 12. The school specialises in providing a full academic program together with performing arts training…

AROUND the time this issue of Dance Australia is due out, the Paris Opera Ballet (POB) was to be performing in Australia. This company, the pride of France and the quintessence of classical dance, was to make an exclusive visit to Brisbane as part of the Queensland Performing Art Centre’s International Series. The city was to come alive with French culture and chic. Then Covid-19 hit and the tour was stopped dead. “We had just come back from Tokyo,” dancer Hannah O’Neill says of the sudden halt to operations. “Then we got an email saying class was cancelled; then we got another announcing an urgent meeting at the Opera. We were then all told that everything was closed.” O’Neill is a sujet in the Paris Opera Ballet. She is something…

“... more importantly, I got back up and kept going.” I BEGAN my training at the ripe old age of three at the prestigious ED5 International school in Sydney, and continued on there to complete my Advanced Diploma of Performing Arts in 2017. With the finest training in my back pocket, I went out into the real world, attending countless auditions and facing countless rejections. As any dancer will tell you, the audition process is one of tenacity and stamina, and since auditions in Sydney are far and few in between, every dancer is hungry to book that gig. While training at a full-time school can prepare you for a variety of situations in auditions and jobs, the real learning is done in the audition room in front of the…

Academy of Music and Performing Arts (AMPA) Two locations, one campus in Alexandria and the other in Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW. Course name/s: Bachelor of Dance, Associate Degree of Dance and Bachelor of Music (Music Theatre). The admissions process is audition based and currently only accepting video auditions. We will return to in-person auditions and these are organised directly through our head of Dance. https://www.ampa.edu.au Alegria Dance Studios Woolloomooloo, Sydney, NSW Course name/s: Full Time Classical Dance Course. Audition by appointment or by dvd by October, 2020. Email: alegriadance@bigpond.com www.alegria.com.au Amanda Bollinger Dance Academy Gold Coast, Queensland Course name/s: Part-Time and Full-Time Training Programs including Certificates II/III/IV in Dance in partnership with Empowerdance Pty Ltd. Auditions throughout the year by private arrangement. Please email info@vaganova.com.au for further details. www.vaganova.com.au Annette Roselli…

INTERVIEWING Lloyd Newson requires a willingness to take a walk on the dark side. Our phone interview covered topics ranging from gang grooming, gang violence, misogyny, rape, homophobia, racism and most of all, male violence. It was all to the purpose of explaining the motivation for his 1995 work, Enter Achilles, which was presented at the Adelaide Festival from March 13 to 15 by England’s Rambert Dance Company. Newson has never been afraid to tackle difficult subjects. Since forming his company, DV8, in London in 1985, this Australian-born choreographer has developed a repertoire that has delved into AIDS ( My Sex; Our Dance (1986); necrophilia (Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men, 1988) and homophobia, intolerance and religion (To be Straight With You (2007-9), to mention a few. He does not go…

HOW would you describe your relationship with your appetite? If you were to rate it on a scale of one to 10, with one being “terrible!” to 10 being “fantastic!” where might you sit? Maybe it changes from day to day, or even hour to hour, as we navigate the complexities of how hunger and fullness shows up for us. Let’s reverse the bus a little to ask ourselves “what is appetite?” and how can we understand it better in ways we can use to our advantage. The truth is that I talk about appetite a lot with dancers, mainly because it’s very often seen as something confusing, something to “overcome” or something with which we battle. One of the most common ways we can understand appetite is as the…

A biography of the late, great theatre designer, Kristian Fredrikson, will be released in July. New Zealand-born Fredrikson (1940-2005), was a designer for a small, amateur operetta company in Wellington before heading to Australia to establish a career as a designer for dance, opera, theatre, film and TV that spanned five decades. Fredrikson met the then-emerging choreographer Graeme Murphy in the 1970s, and made his first work for Murphy’s Sydney Dance Company, Shéhérazade, in 1979. It was during the 1970s that he began working with The Australian Ballet, an association that lasted until the year of his death. During the 1980s he was enticed back to NZ to design works for the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Fredrikson was the recipient of many prestigious design awards over the course of his…

AUSTRALIAN dance culture has been dealt a blow with four dance/physical theatre companies losing their four-year funding from the Australia Council (AC) in the latest round announced on April 3. Across the disciplines, 49 organisations lost their AC funding. Even with 28 organisations funded for the first time, the number of organisations receiving four-year funding dropped from 128 (2017-2020) to 95 (2021-2024). Australasian Dance Collective, Branch Nebula, Restless Dance Theatre, Shaun Parker & Company, Tasdance and Tracks were among the 49 to lose out. These companies will instead receive an additional 12 months funding at a reduced level (approximately 70%) aimed at helping them “recalibrate… and make plans for the future.” Australian Dance Theatre, BlakDance, Chunky Move, Dancenorth, Dancehouse, Force Majeure, Lucy Guerin Inc. and Marrugeku were successful. Additionally, other…

OVER the past 10 years or so, a regional ballet company in Canada has been conducting its own radical transformation. On the verge of bankruptcy in 2008/9, BalletBC is now a leader in innovative and courageous contemporary ballet. The person responsible for this transformation is artistic director Emily Molnar, a native Canadian who took up the challenge of turning the company’s fortunes around. Molnar had an impressive career as both a dancer and choreographer before taking up her present role. She is a graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School and a former member of the National Ballet of Canada. She was a soloist with the Ballett Frankfurt under director William Forsythe and a principal dancer with Ballet BC. She is also a choreographer, and has worked extensively around the world,…

How many auditions have you done? Since entering into the professional realm, I would have applied for approximately 30 auditions. Of those that were open or invitation only, I would have attended/been invited to around 20-25, 12 of which were successful or resulted in work offered later down the track. Please describe a significant audition where you didn't get the job. I recently auditioned for Australasian Dance Collective, formerly known as Expressions Dance Company, based in Brisbane. This audition was a short process for me. We started out with a ballet class taught by former company dancer and the current Youth Ensemble Director, Rhiannon McLean. This class really focused on just moving our bodies and less so much on the “accuracy of ballet”. There wasn’t a cut after this round…

Where did you train? I trained for 13 years with my mother at the Annette Roselli Dance Academy before completing my final two years of training with the Queensland Ballet Academy. Please describe briefly your career to date. Upon completing my training, I joined Queensland Ballet’s Pre-Professional Program (PPP) for two years. PPP provided me with valuable company experience and gave me the opportunity to perform with the Qld Ballet in productions such as Strictly Gershwin, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. I then joined the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in the Czech Republic in August, 2018, as a corps de ballet member with soloist obligations. After that I joined Ballet Ireland for the company’s national tour of Swan Lake before accepting a contract with the English National Ballet, again for a…

RUDOLF) Nureyev’s got a calcium spur on his right heel that cuts into his flesh regularly enough to make a lesser dancer quit immediately, but Nureyev, who is not Russian but Tartar, makes a joke of it – christening the wound ‘my omelet’; his remedy is a complicated bandage he calls a ‘sandwich’, which, when successful, makes a kind of cavity between flesh and bone.” (New York Times, 1981) Rudolf Nureyev was tough. We all know the story: born a Tartar to a military father, he came to formal training late at seventeen. Under the tutelage of Alexander Pushkin, he then joined the Kirov, defected, inspired a generation of dancers in the West with his charisma and athleticism … and lived a controversial after-hours life. Like the movie title, White…

If you’re finding it difficult to tune in to your appetite, here are my top tips: • 1. Do one thing at a time Aim to eat without too much distraction, such as TV, phone, while driving. • 2. Slow down Enjoy the pleasure of tasting your food by eating more slowly. Savour the flavours and textures of your meal, and take the time to enjoy it! • 3. Tune in Get curious, and learn about what your own unique body signals feel like. When you’re getting hungry, how do you know? What is it that you’re feeling in your body that tells you that you’re needing fuel?…

• Invest in a quality wireless microphone to maximise voice quality over the music being shared. (Winbank) • Reach out to colleagues and peers for support and assistance. (Zink) • Test classes on-line to iron out the kinks. “Think about why your students come to you and brainstorm different ways you can still offer this in an on-line environment”. (Washington) • Reframe your expectations. Delivering on-line classes is very different to face-to-face classes. “I found it helpful to ground myself in what feels most important at this point in time and, for me this is a sense of community that a dance class creates.” (Zink) • Don’t underestimate the amount of support and enthusiasm your communities will provide for your efforts. (Harrison)…

The 2021 Guide to Full-Time Dance Courses • Considering taking up dance studies full time? • It’s time to choose! • It’s time to prepare! Our next issue contains our annual list of schools and courses, including teaching faculty, subjects, expected outcomes, and more. Read first hand accounts from graduates about their learning experience and tips and advice on making the best of your training. Don’t miss out! Look out for our next issue at your favourite retailer or subscribe at greatmagazines.com.au. Advertise your course in our Guide! Contact: carolroselli@yaffa.com.au…