Tag Archive: Callum Linnane

Comforting

18. December 2024

“The Nutcracker”
The Australian Ballet
Sydney Opera House/Joan Sutherland Theatre
Sydney, Australia
December 12, 2024 (live stream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

This year, getting in a happy Christmas mood isn’t easy in my home country, Germany. We’re in troubled waters, and prospects for the new year are dismal. Even our major ballet stages abandoned a festive program. The State Ballet Berlin scheduled Christian Spuck’s Bovary and Swan Lake for the holiday season; the Bavarian State Ballet is presenting a mixed bill (Duato/Skeels/Eyal) and Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet. At least audiences in Stuttgart, Hamburg, and Dresden can attend performances of The Nutcracker, but Stuttgart’s rendering is screwed up, and Dresden’s is saccharine. The bright spot is Hamburg Ballet, which kept Neumeier’s much-lauded version in its repertory.

The Australian Ballet’s live stream of The Nutcracker was therefore a welcome addition, especially as the company presented Peter Wright’s traditional version, which was staged for the Royal Ballet in 1984 and later adapted for Birmingham Royal Ballet. (more…)

Coming Out

27. November 2024

“Oscar©”
The Australian Ballet
Sydney Opera House/Joan Sutherland Theatre
Sydney, Australia
November 19, 2024 (live stream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

One long year has passed since The Australian Ballet’s last live stream, and it was uncertain if the company would dance again for an online audience. But after moving from Melbourne’s State Theatre (which is closed for major renovations) to their temporary home at the nearby Regent Theatre, they are back online. Christopher Wheeldon’s Oscar^© was the first ballet streamed live from the Sydney Opera House. Moreover, it is the first full-length commission by artistic director, David Hallberg, who has been friends with Wheeldon for twenty years. As a choreographer, Wheeldon is “hot property,” Hallberg stated. Oscar^© combines biographical aspects of the well-known, yet divisive, Irish author Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) with two pieces of his oeuvre.

As usual, Hallberg and presenter Catherine Murphy co-hosted the live stream, conducting backstage interviews and chatting about the piece. Hallberg quickly made clear that when approaching Wheeldon, he had a bold, unapologetic story in mind that wouldn’t shy away from telling uncomfortable realities, such as Wilde’s homosexuality for which he was persecuted and sentenced to two years in prison. (more…)

Fissures

10. July 2023

“Jewels”
The Australian Ballet
Arts Centre Melbourne / State Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
July 06, 2023 (livestream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

David Hallberg, artistic director of the Australian Ballet, has a knack for presenting his company in a complimentary light. Of the many troupes which streamed their performances live during the pandemic, only the Australians have maintained and enhanced this practice. The most recent livestream proved their ability to produce a compelling digital program. Livinia Nixon, who gave her debut as presenter alongside the ever-smiling Hallberg, kept me glued to the screen during the intervals, offering a steady flow of interesting interviews and behind-the-scenes clips. Each of them revealed the warmth and camaraderie within the company that has so often been mentioned in previous livestreams.

Celebrating their sixtieth anniversary this season, the company presented a sparkling new acquisition – Balanchine’s “Jewels” (1967) complete with Barbara Karinska’s sumptuous original costumes. One year of painstaking handicraft was spent on the latter’s recreation, requiring many volunteering hands and two months to sew and glue more than 29.500 beads, crystals, and pearls to dresses, tops, and tiaras. (more…)

Cheers!

30. March 2023

“Don Quixote”
The Australian Ballet
Arts Centre Melbourne / State Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
March 24, 2023 (livestream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

Good news from the Australian Ballet: livestreams of performances will be resumed! The first of these – Nureyev’s version of Petipa’s “Don Quixote” – was broadcast this weekend. The company celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this season, and perhaps that is why artistic director David Hallberg chose a special opener – special because this “Don Quixote” harks back to the one that Nureyev, together with Robert Helpmann (then artistic director of the Australian Ballet) adapted for the screen in 1973. It stars the Australian Ballet, with Helpmann in the title role and Nureyev as Basilio. Needless to say, the film became a hit. Hallberg decided to re-adapt the hit film for the theater stage with piercing exactitude, replicating its aesthetic as closely as possible. That’s why Richard Roberts’s set design (including Don Quixote’s knightly home, the port of Barcelona, some windmills in Castilla-La Mancha, Dulcinea’s garden, and a smoke-filled tavern) was based on Barry Kay’s original film set and why Kay’s gorgeous costumes were painstakingly reconstructed. I especially admired the traditional Spanish garb of the corps at the tavern. (more…)

Galvanizing

26. October 2022

“Romeo and Juliet”
The Australian Ballet
Arts Centre Melbourne / State Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
October 18, 2022 (livestream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2022 by Ilona Landgraf

Each of the three livestreams I’ve watched from the Australian Ballet so far have proven that the company’s standards are high. The most recent – John Cranko’s “Romeo and Juliet” – left me flabbergasted. I’ve seen Cranko’s 1962 version a few times, since Stuttgart Ballet (where the largest part of his oeuvre was created) regularly revives the star-crossed lovers’ tragedy. It’s a pillar of their repertoire. But compared to the work that the Australian Ballet delivered in Melbourne, Stuttgart’s performances pale. From the first moment that the first maid set foot in Verona’s marketplace, it was clear that the Australian Ballet was performing on an entirely different level.

Artistic director David Hallberg, who co-hosted the livestream together with Catherine Murphy, was correct in noting that “we look good on screens all over the world tonight”. Dance, set, costumes, lighting – everything was perfect. (more…)

“The Cherry on a Sundae”

28. June 2022

“Harlequinade”
The Australian Ballet
Arts Center Melbourne / State Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
June 24, 2022 (livestream)

“The cherry on a sundae” – that’s what the Australian Ballet’s artistic director David Hallberg called “Harlequinade”, the latest (and this season’s last) addition to the company’s repertoire. “Harlequinade” – a popular Petipa-ballet in imperial Russia – premiered in 1900 in St. Petersburg, and was last performed in its original form at the end of the 1920s. Working from the notations and numerous other documents archived in the Nikolai Sergeyev collection at Harvard University, Alexei Ratmansky and his wife Tatiana reconstructed the choreography just as he has done with previous Petipa classics. American Ballet Theatre (ABT) and the Australian Ballet collaborated on the revival. Four years after its premiere at Costa Mesa, California, the two-act commedia dell’arte romp finally hit Melbourne’s stage. I saw the livestream presented on June 24th by Catherine Murphy and Hallberg. (more…)

An Asset

18. June 2022

“Kunstkamer”
The Australian Ballet
Arts Center Melbourne / State Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
June 10, 2022 (livestream)

Australian audiences aren’t particularly familiar with the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT). Australian Ballet artistic director David Hallberg scored a coup by adding to their repertory “Kunstkamer” – a dance theater piece created in 2019 on the occasion of NDT’s 60^th anniversary and as yet never danced by another company. (The Australian Ballet celebrates its 60^th anniversary this year.) And Hallberg was not only able to import a collaboration between four of NDT’s defining choreographers (Paul Lightfoot and Sol León – until 2020 the company’s figureheads – as well as associate choreographers Crystal Pite and Marco Goecke), but also used this as a chance to interrupt his retirement from the stage and participate in the piece himself. Putting aside the director’s scepter to take on a role that was weird rather than flattering required courage – which Hallberg mustered. To me, it seems there was no better way to deepen his connection to the dancers. (more…)

Brilliant!

14. March 2022

“Anna Karenina”
The Australian Ballet
Arts Center Melbourne / State Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
March 08, 2022 (livestream)

While western cancel culture appears to be targeting all things Russian, the Australian Ballet points the way towards cooperation. This February, a ballet about an icon of Russian culture – Tolstoy’s epic novel “Anna Karenina” – premiered in Melbourne. Co-produced with the Joffrey Ballet and decorated with the 2021 Prix Benois for best choreography, it was a prime example of the uniting power of the arts. Its US-based choreographer Yuri Possokhov was born in Luhansk / Ukraine; the composer Ilya Demutsky, a frequent collaborator of Possokhov, is Russian. Valeriy Pecheykin, an Uzbeg working at Moscow’s Gogol Center, wrote the libretto. Set and costumes are by the British designer Tom Pye. Finn Ross, also a Brit, oversaw the video projections, and US-born David Finn created the lighting. (more…)