Dance Australia

THE choreographer Marius Petipa was a well-travelled man. He was born in France, moved to Brussels as a young student, travelled to the United States and then to Spain, where he was premier danseur at the Teatro Real in Madrid. He lived there for fou

BANGARRA Dance Theatre’s major new work for the year is “Sandsong: Stories from the Great Sandy Desert”, originally scheduled for 2020 but now premiering this year. “Sandsong” is guided by Elders from the Kimberley and choreographed by Bangarra’s art

THIS portrait is of the legendary ballerina Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) and is by French painter Jacques Émile Blanche. One of a handful of portraits that exist of the Russian dancer, it has been gifted to the Royal Academy of Dance collection in th

THE brilliant English choreographer Liam Scarlett has died at his home in Ipswich, England, on April 16. He was 35 years old. A cause of death has not been given at press time. Scarlett was one of this generation's most sought-after classical choreog

AN exciting new venture has started – the Sydney Choreographic Centre.Co-founded by internationally acclaimed dancer, choreographer and artistic director Francesco Ventriglia and managing director Neil Christopher, the centre opened in March and has

Sue Healey is the recipient of the 2021 Australia Council Award for Dance. Emily Flannery, a Wiradjuri woman from NSW, has joined Bangarra Dance Theatre. A NAISDA graduate, Emily was most recently the 2021 First Nations intern with Lucy Guerin. The

WITH theatres in WA returning to 100% audience capacity, the West Australian Ballet will return to the Crown Theatre stage in Perth in the first time in over a decade with its acclaimed, award-winning masterpiece, Dracula. Premiering in 2018 to sell-

WITH the long hibernation of live performance forced on us by the pandemic, Rising, the new Melbourne’s festival, has taken on a greater significance. The new arts smorgasbord was originally planned to debut in 2020. It replaces the White Nights and

LIKE many events lately, the Irish dance show Eireborne had to be postponed. However the show now has a new schedule and will tour Australia over two months starting in Melbourne on August 20 and finishing on the Gold Coast on October 30. Eireborne

Hailing from the vast rugged plains of the West Australian outback, Imogen Chapman has had a curious trajectory to the bright lights of Melbourne. As a child, she was exposed to dance through a tiny rural ballet school called Eda Dance, one that lack

Karen van Ulzen asks. AST year I was startled to receive an email statement from a Hindu statesman, Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, based in Nevada in the United States. His email was in anticipation of a forthcoming produ

What was your own dance training? I grew up the only boy in a very all-American small town dance school. I started tap and ballet at age three. Hip hop didn’t really exist in the dance school world at that time, but I started with jazz in my teen ye

EARLY in 2020 Sara Ouwendyk did what thousands of dancers before her have done – she set off on an overseas audition tour. She chose the wrong year. Two short months into her trip the pandemic was placing its ugly grip on the world and her plans were

How many dancers in ‘La Traviata’? We have 20 dancers in the cast – 10 male and 10 female. How many auditioned? We had an overwhelming amount of submissions and saw about 200 dancers on audition day. When were the auditions held? Auditions were held

USUALLY in January/February each year, a hundred or so aspiring young dancers come together in Switzerland to compete in the Prix de Lausanne, one of the oldest, prestigious and yet most dynamic ballet competitions in the world. But, like all the big

IN response to concerns over varied and conflicting audition requirements requested of students auditioning upon graduation, the artistic directors of the 21 professional schools formed a committee to explore the possibility of creating standard pre-

IN 2012 readers of Dance Australia were introduced to Karli Dinardo, a 17-year-old music theatre hopeful who shared her plans to relocate to New York after being offered a scholarship to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA). Following her

I WAS 10 years old, the year was 1986, the place was Auckland and, according to British Ballet Organisation examiner, a tough Miss P. Wilson, I displayed, “Excellent breadth of movement and placing” for my Grade 5 Operatic Ballet Educational Section.

THE word “independent” seems so powerful. It suggests agency, self-sufficiency and freedom. We seek to achieve independence in so many ways — personally and financially. Yet the world of the independent dancer often strives toward these ideals withou

Karen van Ulzen. WHEN David McMicken arrived in Darwin for a working holiday 30 years ago, he instantly fell in love with the place. Born and trained in Melbourne, mostly in contemporary technique at Rusden College, he had thought Darwin would be a

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You were born in Japan but moved to France and Spain when you were still young. Why? I grew up in Kanazawa, a very small town in Japan. I had grown up watching the European method of ballet, and had my heart set on moving overseas to learn it. Altho