Lee Christofis

Lee Christofis reviews 'Fifty: Half a century of Australian dance theatre' by Maggie Tonkin

Online Exclusives • 30 November 2017

Australian Dance Theatre, the nation’s longest continuing modern dance company, was born in 1965, during the so-called Dunstan renaissance of Adelaide. Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, a dancer and teacher influenced by five transformative years in Europe, and Leslie White, a dancer and teacher trained at the Royal Ballet School, were its instigators. Combining ballet techniques with those of American ... (read more)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (The Australian Ballet)

ABR Arts • 15 September 2017

The Australian première of Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, created on the Royal Ballet’s brightest talents, was one of the happiest nights of ballet on record. It boosted The Australian Ballet’s small repertoire of full-length narratives in which all the elements, from the grandest costume to the smallest choreographic detail, come together to create a fresh and u ... (read more)

Woolf Works and The Winter’s Tale (The Royal Ballet)

ABR Arts • 06 July 2017

Britain’s illustrious Royal Ballet has brought extraordinary gifts to QPAC audiences in Brisbane this year: two huge, exciting ballets which, in different ways, are game-changers in the creation of full-length narrative ballets. They are Woolf Works (★★★★) by the company’s resident choreographer, Wayne McGregor, and The Winter’s Tale (★★★★★), by his predecessor and company ... (read more)

Lord of the Flies (New Adventures and Re:Bourne)

ABR Arts • 07 April 2017

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), about a group of British schoolboys marooned on a tropical island during a nuclear war, has been adapted for radio, stage, and screen. Acclaimed theatre director Peter Brook’s austere, 1963 black-and-white film, with a superb cast, is by far the best and only authentic one of three screen adaptations to date. Stage versions by Nigel Williams (1996) a ... (read more)

Faster (The Australian Ballet)

ABR Arts • 20 March 2017

The Australian Ballet opened its first 2017 Melbourne season looking like a new creature – mature, chic, and serious, ready to tackle any challenges choreographers placed in its path. Squander and Glory, a dramatic world première for The Australian Ballet by alumnus and resident choreographer Timothy Harbour, provides the centrepiece of Faster. Two British works book-end the program: Faster (f ... (read more)

Letter from Paris

ABR Arts • 16 February 2017

The idea of visiting Paris in January to see six exhibitions and two repeats in five days may seem excessive to some people, but Paris’s museum offerings this northern winter were so impressive it was impossible to resist. At Frank Gehry’s lofty Fondation Louis Vuitton, hordes lined up, day and night, in temperatures of five below, to see Icons of Modern Art: The Shchukin Collection from Russi ... (read more)

Lee Christofis reviews 'Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian ballet from the rule of the tsars to today' by Simon Morrison

January–February 2017, no. 388 • 20 December 2016

In November 2016, former principal dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko entered the Bolshoi Ballet studios in Moscow to begin retraining for the stage. He had recently been released from prison for instigating an attack on his artistic director, Sergey Filin, in January 2013. Dmitrichenko’s plan went awry when his henchman, Yuri Zarutsky, decided to throw battery acid in Filin’s face, virtually blinding ... (read more)

Anastasia (Royal Ballet)

ABR Arts • 28 October 2016

Kenneth MacMillan’s Anastasia is one of several full-length dramas he created on his return to the Royal Ballet in 1971, after directing the Deutsche Oper Ballet in Berlin. It is a hybrid work, incorporating as its third act a famous one-act Anastasia that MacMillan created in Berlin in 1967. A shy man who suffered debilitating stage fright, MacMillan was an outsider by nature. His empathy for s ... (read more)

Nijinsky (The Australian Ballet)

ABR Arts • 12 September 2016

No twentieth-century male ballet dancer has sparked as much adulation and scholarly investigation as Vaslav Nijinsky. Graduating from the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg at eighteen, this sexually ambiguous, rather remote man, became the darling of Russia's principal ballerinas. By twenty he was the love object and protégé of Sergei Diaghilev, the alchemist who concocted the Ballets Russ ... (read more)

Romeo and Juliet (Houston Ballet)

ABR Arts • 04 July 2016

To open its Melbourne winter season, The Australian Ballet has invited the handsome and talented Houston Ballet to make its Australian début in Romeo and Juliet by Houston's Australian artistic director, Stanton Welch. After reaching leading soloist and resident choreographer status in Australia, Welch joined Houston Ballet in 2003. He will always be remembered here for revolutionising balletic e ... (read more)