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

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 sta

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 Que

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

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 festiv

AFTER a long wait, the Australian Ballet's DanceX, a festival designed to bring together the Australian dance community, has been revived, enlarged and announced for October this year. Originally planned to take place in 2021 before falling victim to

A new show called leap, boasting 10 talented dancers with four virtuoso musicians, is about to jump on the road. Leap is created by Amy Campbell and produced by Neil Gooding, head of New Musicals Australia (which supports the development of original

EAUTIFUL, talented and driven, Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo are definitely an Australian glamour couple. Both principles of the Australian Ballet, where they met in 2010, and now about to have their first child, they have shared a little of their home l

FOR dancers growing up in the information dense landscape of the ever-expanding cyber-space, it can be hard to know where to turn for advice, guidance or connection. However, a burgeoning online community is providing a space for dance students, prof

UDITIONS are a dancers' equivalent of a job interview. They are that, and so much more. They are the doorway through which dancers step through to many different stages of their career, from that first life-changing acceptance into a prestigious scho

MANY companies do not hold open auditions. Aspiring dancers audition individually by simply making an appointment to take part in class. Some companies have a more nuanced and prolonged way to recruit new dancers, especially young, inexperienced danc

Courses: Bachelor of Dance, Associate of Dance Audition date (or by private arrangement): 15/7/22, 26/9/22, 28/11/22 https://www.ampa.edu.au/ Courses: Full Time Classical Ballet Course (Contemporary, Spanish and Jazz included) Auditions by private a

CAREERS in dance take many shapes and forms. Commercial dancers earn their living dancing in commercial projects, including tours, musical theatre, music videos, film and television, cruise ships and advertisements. Commercial dance is the kind of ca

TIKTOK.It’s the social media app taking the world by storm, boasting over 700 million active monthly users and showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, the Chinese-owned platform outstripped Google as the world’s most visited site of 2021, and is c

Hannah Balanay is known online as @thexhan. With 18 million TikTok followers, Hannah is the most followed Australian content creator on the app. She has built a following of millions of users by sharing original choreography, including her viral danc

Bijaya Baniya is a 23-year-old dancer and choreographer who has worked for the past nine years to fulfill the highest expression of himself as an artist. With a staggering 9.7 million followers on his account, the Nepalese-born dancer is Sydney’s Tik

THIS year’s Sydney Festival should have been an inspirational celebration of art and culture. Instead, it was overshadowed by controversy. The cause? A boycott in protest against the $20,000 sponsorship provided by the Israeli Embassy, which was list

IN the classical ballet world, Russia has been a holy grail. But with the invasion of Ukraine, many dancers are now leaving the country in disgust. Alexei Ratmansky was in Moscow at the announcement of the conflict, choreographing a new work for the

HOW much should a dancer be training at any given age? This is a really difficult question to answer, and like all difficult questions, the answer is always: “It depends”. However, hopefully I can give some general guidance about how to make a decisi

This is a perfectly realised work that celebrates the relationship between music and dance. ON my way to the Dunstan Playhouse to see Manifesto, I passed a troupe of Ukrainian folk dancers performing on the new Festival Plaza, their colourful embro

This insightful concept establishes a 21st century sensibility while retaining the soul of Tolstoy’s novel. AFTER several Covid-enforced interruptions, and a short season in Adelaide in July 2021, Yuri Possokhov’s Anna Karenina finally opened in Me

The challenges of the past two years have served as creative fodder for Guerin’s latest creation. LUCY Guerin’s latest show, Flux Job, was created in fits and starts. Sandwiched between Melbourne’s lockdowns and personal tragedies, the work was b

Set on a beach, this performance portrayed a classic, post-apocalyptic wasteland. JUST like Ivan Aivazovsky’s 1850 painting, The Ninth Wave, this production (of the same name), directed by Grayson Millwood and Gavin Webber of The Farm, explores the

This is a stunning production, and an incredibly worthy, if overdue, opener to the 2022 Adelaide Festival. WHEN Pina Bausch’s TanzTheater Wuppertal made its Australian début at the Adelaide Festival in 1982, it showed Pina’s experimental dance thea

Where were you born? Melbourne. What was your first public performance? My first performance would have been in my lounge room! My first professional performance was a production of Coppelia as a seven-year-old student at the National Theatre Ballet