The Australian Ballet’s flawless, breathtaking Prism is a significant coming of age for the company
- Written by The Conversation
When Alicia Alonso was establishing the National Cuban Ballet in the 1950s she was faced with interrogation from the communist regime as to how a European art form could represent and serve the Cuban people.
Historian Lester Tome has written extensively about Alonso. Tome says she argued ballet as an art form must be thought of in the same way as music, painting or sculpture. Cubans should dance Cuban dances but must also have the freedom to engage with international cultural forms and trends. She argued they would make ballet their own and redefine what ballet was on the world stage. And they did.
Similarily, Prism is The Australian Ballet engaging with the contemporary international ballet world, adapting what it finds to its own style and bodies, and offering something back. Prism represents a significant transition and coming of age for the company.
I haven’t seen them do that quite like this before.
Glass Pieces
The program opens with Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces. Robbins, perhaps most famous for his choreography in West Side Story, began working as a ballet dancer with The New York City Ballet and George Balanchine in the late 1930s.
Glass Pieces premiered in 1983 yet still seems contemporary. Danced to three extracts from Phillip Glass scores, it takes on the theme of glass in different ways.
The first scene has a busy pedestrian street with dancers striding in opposite directions across the stage. Couples in pale pastel shiny unitards appear like frosted glass. Like their costume, their movement contrasts with the crowd. They glide and slide and gracefully swoop and scoop.
The second scene is a single pas de deux which seems to be behind or under glass with a backdrop of silhouetted dancers tracking across the back of the stage. The chugging of the dancers in the background contrasts with the intimacy and technical prowess of the pas de deux.
The final scene is different and most iconically Robbins, with its flexed feet and jazzy innuendo. The crowd from earlier is now the main feature. The colours are stained-glass windows, and the mood is upbeat and energetic.
Seven Days
Seven Days is Stephanie Lake’s second work with the company as resident choreographer. It is incredibly dynamic, intimate and well-resolved. It shows a deep connection between the choreographer and the seven dancers and a true collaboration between contemporary dance and ballet.
And the score is ridiculously gorgeous.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations is reimagined by Peter Brikmanis, yet still familiar. The seven parts represent seven days. Each new day is marked by the dancers forming a circle and engaging with each other in the centre of the stage.
The days are different.
The first starts quietly with solo piano and the dancers forming lines and moving in canon and then broken canon. The orchestra joins in for day two which opens with a pas de deux. Some days are light and humorous. Others a bit more combative and trying. There are duets, solos, group dances and a final scene with chairs.
The work has many Lake hallmarks such as breath, vocalisation, quirky facial expression and challenging body angles. But most importantly, much like her other intimate work Manifesto, in Seven Days she has embraced and enhanced what she has seen in the dancers. This gives the work a brilliant vitality.
Blake Works V (The Barre Project)
William Forsythe is perhaps the ballet choreographer of his generation. He has transformed what ballet means. Dancing with the Joffrey and Stuttgart Ballet companies, he moved into choreography and then established his own company in 2015.
Forsythe has been working on The Blake Works since 2016, where he created Blake Works I for the Paris Opera Ballet. Blake Works II (The Barre Project) was developed with the New York City Ballet in 2020 during the COVID pandemic via Zoom. It was a comment on the familiar and intimate relationship ballet dancers have with the barre.
During COVID lockdowns, dancers confined to their homes used chairs, bookcases and kitchen benches as their barre to continue their practice.
Forsythe’s ideas and vocabulary are adapted to the dancers of The Australian Ballet.
Kate Longley/Australian Ballet
Blake Works V (The Barre Project) takes the same Forsythe ideas and vocabulary as the previous iterations. But uniquely and importantly Forsythe has worked with the company to adapt it to the dancers of The Australian Ballet.
Centre backstage is a small wooden barre, framed and lit almost like a piece of film, or a square on Zoom. The costumes are black simple practice wear, and the lighting is low.
The recorded hypnotic James Blake score combines the classical with the contemporary.
Dancers move in groups and individually away from and onto the barre. It is not a traditional ballet class use of the barre but is Forsythe’s deconstructed elements of ballet on the barre.
There is also a short piece of film of hands on barres.
Three breathtaking works
All three works are executed brilliantly by the dancers; all three are flawless, breathtaking. These dancers’ proficiency with the choreography renders the technicalities invisible and allows the works to really live.
In the notes on the website, artistic director David Hallberg states that the Prism program is diverse and challenging and that
Only a company like The Australian Ballet has the range and skill to take on such a wide range of styles in one program.
I was sceptical they could do it.
I was blown away.
Prism is at the Regent Theatre, Melbourne, until October 4, and then Sydney Opera House from November 7 to 15.
