309 stories from deborahjones.me
Teac Damsa, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, August 30. Michael Keegan-Dolan's Swan Lake is unsparingly black in so many ways, starting with its indelible image of a near-naked, bleating m…
The question had to be asked. Is Patricia Barker at Royal New Zealand Ballet for the long haul? Her predecessor but one as artistic director, fellow American Ethan Stiefel, saw out his three…
St James Theatre, Wellington, August 16. Francesco Ventriglia was artistic director of Royal New Zealand Ballet when he proposed making a new Romeo and Juliet to replace Christopher Hampson'…
Anyone expecting a conventional crossover disc from mezzo Jacqueline Dark hasn't been paying attention. In recent years Dark's career has ranged far and wide. Few singers, one ventures, woul…
A Dee & Cornelius/Milke Production. Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney, July 20 Patricia Cornelius gets right to the point, as the titles of recent plays attest. Savages (2013) is …
Lyric Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, July 5. The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's wondrously strange, knotty late works. The pitfalls are many but so are the rewa…
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, July 1. In Mathinna (2008) and Patyegarang (2014), Bangarra Dance Theatre's artistic director, Stephen Page, shone a light on individual First Nations stor…
Lyric Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, June 29. Wayne McGregor's Woolf Works is a monumental act of artistic daring, claiming for dance the right, and the ability, to br…
Royal New Zealand Ballet has appointed American Patricia Barker as its new artistic director. She leaves Michigan's Grand Rapids Ballet to take up the position and starts in Wellington later…
His Majesty's Theatre, Perth, May 11 and 12. Don Quixote is all fluff and high spirits. Based glancingly on the Cervantes novel, the ballet foregrounds the romance between Kitri, an innkeepe…
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, May 5. Queensland Ballet's Swan Lake had a 42nd Street quality on opening night as junior company member Joel Woellner was chosen to dance Prince Siegfried…
The Australian Ballet, Sydney Opera House, May 2. Many decades ago, when I was visiting Canada, a young woman asked me whether Christmas was in June in Australia. She knew winter in the sout…
Full Moon, choreographed by Cheng Tsung-lung, Ocho, choreographed by Rafael Bonachela. Sydney Dance Company, Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, May 1. At first glance the two works in Sydney D…
Sydney Opera House, April 12 The key work in The Australian Ballet's Faster triple bill was supposed to be Wayne McGregor's new Multiverse, which premiered at the Royal Ballet in November to…
Works by Liam Scarlett, Greg Horsman and Christopher Bruce. Queensland Ballet, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, March 17. Death comes to us all eventually but does it have to com…
Concourse Theatre, Sydney, March 12 Melbourne Ballet Company's new triple bill Being & Time has lofty aspirations. It takes its title from Martin Heidegger and its themes from existentia…
One Eyed Man Productions in association with Neglected Musicals and Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, March 10. The high-falutin' way to describe director Richard Carroll's Calamity Jane is to say i…
Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, who have signed on as joint artistic directors for three Adelaide festivals (this year, 2018 and 2019), set the bar high on their first opening weekend and fl…
The Australian Ballet, Brisbane, February 25 When David Hallberg returned to the ballet stage in Sydney in November last year, in Coppélia with The Australian Ballet, he was coming out of a…
Brisbane Powerhouse, February 10. Bespoke is a new-choreography program that shows Queensland Ballet moving up yet another gear and broadening its horizons. So far in Li Cunxin's artistic di…
A wrap of dance seen at the 2017 Sydney Festival … Spectra, Dancenorth, Seymour Centre, Sydney, January 11 The flick of a long rope sends energy snaking through it. It passes a man sta…
For the Sydney Festival, Seymour Centre, Sydney, January 11. The flick of a long rope sends energy snaking through it. It passes a man standing uneasily in the centre of the stage and his he…
Just before Christmas David Hallberg made his debut as Franz in Coppélia with The Australian Ballet at the Sydney Opera House. It marked his return to the stage after a two-and-a-half year …
Sydney Dance Company in association with the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, January 7. There are a few housekeeping rules to absorb before going downstairs to view the dance work Nude Live amon…
Last year I decided to institute my personal Artist of the Year award. There's no money attached, of course, and I think we'd have to say it confers only a modest amount of fame. I was rathe…
