the australian ballet giselle 1 · 2020-06-11 · the australian ballet giselle 11 the spell of...

1 GISELLETHE AUSTRALIAN BALLET

2 2019 SEASONTHE AUSTRALIAN BALLET

2018 Telstra Ballet Dancer Award Winner, Jade Wood | Photographer: Lester Jones

Lifting them higherTelstra is supporting the next generation of rising stars through the Telstra Ballet Dancer Award.

Telstra and The Australian Ballet, partners since 1984.

Principal Partner

Cover: Dimity Azoury. Photography Justin Ridler Above: Ako Kondo. Photography Lynette Wills

Government Partners

Lead Partners

1 – 18 MAY 2019 | SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

2018 Telstra Ballet Dancer Award Winner, Jade Wood | Photographer: Lester Jones

Lifting them higherTelstra is supporting the next generation of rising stars through the Telstra Ballet Dancer Award.

Telstra and The Australian Ballet, partners since 1984.


Richard House, Valerie Tereshchenko and Amber Scott. Photography Lynette Wills


Giselle has a special place in The Australian Ballet’s history, and has been a constant in our repertoire since the company’s earliest years. The superstars Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev danced it with us in 1964, in a production based on the Borovansky Ballet’s. Our founding artistic director, Peggy van Praagh, created her production in 1965; it premiered in Birmingham on the company’s first international tour, and won a Grand Prix for the best production staged in Paris that year. It went on to become one of the most frequently performed ballets in our repertoire. Peggy’s production came to a tragic end when the scenery was consumed by fire on our 1985 regional tour. The artistic director at the time, Maina Gielgud, created her own production a year later.

Maina's Giselle premiered in Adelaide. With its hauntingly beautiful designs by Peter Farmer and magical lighting by William Akers, it quickly became just as popular as Peggy's production. We have danced it across the globe, delighting audiences in New York and London, Japan and China. With its meticulous detail and stylistic authenticity, it is one of the jewels of our repertoire, and has been staged by top ballet companies around the world. Giselle is a lasting, tangible reminder of Maina's 14 extraordinary years as the artistic director of our company and the living legacy of her tenure.

We loved having Maina with us to restage her production last year. For this season, we had the pleasure of welcoming Leanne Benjamin back to Australia, where she grew up. An international star and one of the great Giselles of her generation, Leanne first danced the role in her graduating performance with The Royal Ballet School and returned to it throughout her career. In 2006, she guested with The Australian Ballet in Maina’s production, dancing with Steven Heathcote. It has been such a privilege to have the benefit of her experience and artistry.

Our 2019 season celebrates ballet's power to enchant us, and Maina Gielgud’s Giselle does just that. I hope you love it as much as I do, and that this Sydney-exclusive season allows you either to revisit the joys of the ultimate Romantic ballet, or to fall in love with Giselle for the very first time.

David McAllister AM

NOTE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR


We are so delighted to bring our Sydney audiences this season of Giselle, a very significant production for The Australian Ballet. Maina Gielgud's celebrated staging, with Peter Farmer’s atmospheric designs, is a true classic, much admired by audiences around the world, and a benchmark for our company. In 2018, we had the pleasure of bringing Maina’s Giselle to Western Sydney for our free Ballet Under the Stars event, followed shortly after by performances in Nanjing as part of our China tour. It is fitting that we bring the production back home to the Sydney Opera House in 2019.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who extend essential support, loyalty

and friendship to The Australian Ballet. The company is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and the NSW Government through Create NSW, as well as by our generous corporate partners. This assistance makes it possible for us to develop new talent, showcase our artists and creative collaborators, and perform around Australia and internationally. Our Principal Partner Telstra has supported the company for almost 35 years and is a part of our family in every sense. Our Lead Partner Qantas carries this busy company safely and efficiently wherever we travel. Lead Partner Aqualand, the Australian luxury property company, supports our artistic ambitions. Thank you all for your support of this beautiful ballet.

Libby Christie

NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR


Valerie Tereshchenko and artists of The Australian Ballet. Photography Lynette Wills


G I S E L L E

SYNOPSIS Act 1

The story of Giselle is a romantic tale of innocent love and betrayal; of philandering Count Albrecht and a trusting peasant maid, Giselle. Although she has a weak heart, Giselle loves to dance.

Her beauty has enchanted Albrecht. On the day of the village wine festival, Albrecht, in order to court Giselle, disguises himself as a peasant. Giselle, in her innocence and unaware of his noble birth, resists Albrecht’s advances – only to succumb to his ardour and persistence. He gently induces her to trust his pledge of eternal love. His plans are thwarted by the arrival in the village of a hunting party which includes the Duke of Courland and his beautiful daughter Bathilde, to whom Albrecht is already engaged.

Bathilde is enchanted with Giselle and her youthful innocence. When Giselle tells the princess that she is engaged, Bathilde gives her a necklace, unaware that they are betrothed to the same man.

Hilarion, a gamekeeper in love with Giselle, discovers Albrecht’s disguise. Consumed with jealousy, he reveals his rival’s true identity. Giselle loses her reason, and the first act ends with the famous mad scene, and her death.

Act 2

Giselle has been buried deep in the forest and has now become a wili. The wilis are ghostly apparitions of folklore, girls who have died betrayed by their faithless lovers on the eve of their weddings.

Hilarion is discovered mourning at Giselle’s grave. Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, summons her maidens, who haunt the forest, luring wayfarers to dance with them until they die from exhaustion before the dawn. Hilarion is forced to dance until he dies.

Albrecht, full of remorse, comes to mourn at Giselle’s grave. The Queen commands Giselle to come from her grave and entice Albrecht to join her in dance. Giselle continues dancing with Albrecht through the night. Although she has been betrayed by Albrecht, Giselle still loves him, and helps him to stay alive until the dawn, when the wilis lose their power and will not be able to destroy him.

With the arrival of the dawn, Giselle vanishes back into her grave, and Albrecht is left alone with his sorrow. But his life is saved.

Choreography Marius Petipa, Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot

Production Maina Gielgud

Music Adolphe Adam

Costume and set design Peter Farmer

Original lighting design William Akers

reproduced by Graham Silver

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Giselle

Count Albrecht

Berthe, Giselle’s mother

Hilarion, a forester (gamekeeper)

The Duke of Courland

The Princess Bathilde

Wilfred, attendant on Albrecht

Peasant Pas de deux couple

Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis

Lead Wilis

Giselle’s Friends

Peasants

Huntsmen

Court Ladies

Wilis


Ako Kondo and Ty King-Wall. Photography Jeff Busby


Dimity Azoury. Photography Justin Ridler


T H E S P E L L O F G I S E L L EEACH TIME MAINA GIELGUD STAGES HER GISELLE, SHE MUST CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR MAGIC. SHE TALKS TO DEBORAH JONES ABOUT THE HARD SLOG BEHIND THE ETHEREAL BEAUTY ON STAGE.

In 1985 The Australian Ballet was in Whyalla, South Australia, on a regional tour when a blaze at the Middleback Theatre engulfed the sets for Peggy van Praagh’s production of Giselle. Eerily, the only thing left standing was the large cross from the heroine’s grave. Maina Gielgud, artistic director at the time, was reminded that in Russia Giselle is known as ‘the holy ballet’. It was pleasing to think that was why the cross survived.

The loss was a blow to the company, but an opportunity too. Three years into her long tenure at The Australian Ballet, Gielgud could create her own production of a ballet she has loved passionately all her life. Her Giselle premiered the following year, replacing van Praagh’s decade-old version. For a time it was staged almost annually, and is still programmed regularly.

You could say Gielgud’s Giselle is embedded in The Australian Ballet’s DNA; that it’s as familiar to the company as morning class. Yes: and no. For every person who is an old Giselle hand there are junior members of the corps for whom it’s uncharted territory. Among those who know the ballet, someone who was part of the crowd as a peasant in 2015 – or even back as far as 2008 or 2006, when Giselle was also staged – may now have a featured or leading role. Yet others will be revisiting the central roles, reawakening the choreography in their bodies, rethinking and refining.

No matter where the dancers are on their journey, there’s one shared imperative. Everything must mesh seamlessly on stage – and on time. “I always have to think that the curtain goes up at 7.30pm on a certain day,” Gielgud says.

And when that curtain goes up, audiences want to see Giselles and Albrechts whose story is believable and affecting. They want to see wilis who move as weightlessly as feathers on a breeze. They crave rich drama and soul-stirring poetry. They need to understand why Giselle still has such power more than 170 years after its creation.

Each time the ballet is revived the work has to begin anew. Choreography rehearsed in discrete sections over many months is put in place; corps de ballet and soloists are integrated with principal artists; the set, costumes, props, lighting and orchestra come into play. It’s a hard, painstaking process, yet represents just the nuts and bolts of the ballet: the basic material. Giselle only truly emerges when its less tangible elements are in place. Style, character, musicality, dramatic coherence and emotional impact: they are where the essence of Giselle resides. They give the ballet its divine spark.

Gielgud’s association with Giselle goes back more than 60 years. As a young audience member she saw some of the greatest exponents of the title role; she would later perform the ballet herself. “In the early days I watched many, many performances and would go home and practise in the bathroom mirror what I would do with the mad scene if I ever got the chance of performing it. I danced in countless productions as Queen of

the Wilis, a role people thought I was suited to and which I loved doing. But I desperately wanted to do Giselle. I think I was in my late 20s when Rosella Hightower gave me the chance.”

Thanks to all those experiences, Gielgud knew precisely what she wanted from Giselle. The first half should feel as naturalistic as possible, in strong contrast to the ethereal, supernatural quality that follows. If the audience is inspired to really care about the characters it will be deeply moved by the transcendent second act and its portrayal of eternal, unconditional love and forgiveness.

It’s here that style is inextricable from meaning. The Romantic quality of movement isn’t easy for all dancers to achieve, but achieve it they must. “There is a look of lightness, of floating, of not touching the ground. I want the feeling for the wilis as if they are moved by the wind in the forest,” Gielgud says. She found that contemporary technique could give dancers a way in. “The way of moving is the same. Often dancers think they create an illusion of lightness by trying to feel light. In fact it’s by using their weight in the right way.”

Along with the appearance of moving off balance, there is more use of the head in Romantic ballet and the arms almost always stay below the shoulders. There’s guidance to be found in lithographs of the great Romantic dancers, who display a soft, relaxed, forward-leaning posture that couldn’t be more different from the upright classical technique.

The choreography itself is traditional – “I would never think to depart from it” – but there are as many acting choices to be made as there are aspirants to the roles of Giselle and Albrecht. “I’m open. For me it depends on whom I’ve cast and what suits them best. I’m not going in with any pre-conceived ideas. In the first rehearsal,

no doubt we’ll go from the beginning. As soon as Giselle meets Albrecht I’ll have an idea of where they’re at and if I think they’re working along the right lines for them.”

As well as working with Gielgud, the leads have meticulous coaching sessions with Artistic Associate and Principal Coach Fiona Tonkin (an acclaimed Giselle in her day). The roles may have been danced before but must never be repeated mechanically. The exploration never stops.

Gielgud trusts her sharply honed instincts about what suits an artist, but equally the dancers have to feel it’s possible to find their own path. It’s a tricky balancing act. Dancers need to feel that what they have to offer is valid, and confidence can be inadvertently shattered. “It’s so different with each one, and it’s not even to do with youth or experience.” Whatever has happened in the studio, “I tell dancers, especially getting near a performance, please don’t think I want you to do everything exactly as I’ve suggested. You have to do what is right for you at the moment, and that’s what I’m looking for. Then it becomes your own. That might mean doing something very different. And I don’t mind.”

Former principal artist Lisa Bolte was just one to benefit from Gielgud’s quest for individuality. “She never settled for the ideas already formed but worked tirelessly, stretching us and herself to discover new truths, taking the best of ballet heritage and striving to find even more truth and beauty.” The process was both confronting and fulfilling.

In 1989 Lisa Pavane, now director of The Australian Ballet School, was coached by one of the greatest of the ballet greats, Galina Ulanova. There were intricate demonstrations of body language in

Robyn Hendricks and Maina Gielgud in rehearsals for Giselle. Photography Lynette Wills


which “every moment was a real conversation” and a lengthy concentration on the brief but critical moment in Act I when Bathilde gives Giselle a gift of jewellery. Touchingly, after a gruelling session, Ulanova, then nearly 80, would take a towel and wipe the sweat from Pavane and her partner, Greg Horsman, who were both exhausted.

Bolte didn’t make her debut as Giselle until 1992, but she observed Ulanova coaching, and has her own precious memories. Gielgud smoothed the way for her to have “an incredibly inspiring hour” on the phone with Svetlana Beriosova, a former prima ballerina of The Royal Ballet, when she was having difficulty with the mad scene, and to get insights from Natalia Makarova on dynamics, phrasing, the lift of an elbow, and the articulation of lower legs and feet in the Romantic style. The adjustments may seem minute, but they can make or break an interpretation.

On occasion Gielgud has changed a partnership because she felt the chemistry between the Giselle and Albrecht wasn’t right. If she didn’t believe in the couple’s connection, why would an audience? This kind of thinking extends right through the

cast, with the corps being encouraged to create histories for themselves that make them part of a community in Act I. “How friendly are they with Giselle’s mother, with Giselle and with Hilarion? Are they sympathetic to him, for instance?” With dancers who aren’t instinctively musical, and there are some, Gielgud may speak about not dancing to the music, but with music, around music, over the top of the music. “Sometimes I say, here you need to make the music happen. It’s as if you’re the conductor. Other times, it’s a matter of waiting for the music to tell you what to do.”

And on it goes, the big picture of the whole production built from the smallest details and suggestions. All performances will look familiar in broad outline, but each moment should be a revelation. Ultimately, how that comes to be is a mystery, and it’s why we go to Giselle again and again. The hard slog of preparation is transformed into art, made new every time.

Deborah Jones is a Sydney-based arts writer who specialises in dance

Style, character, musicality, dramatic coherence and emotional impact: they are where the essence of Giselle resides. They give the ballet its divine spark.

Galina Ulanova coaching Lisa Pavane and Greg Horsman, 1989. Photography The Australian Ballet Archives


Benedicte Bemet with artists of The Australian Ballet. Photography Kate Longley


Carlotta Grisi as Giselle. Photography DEA/ A. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images


The classical ‘pancake’ tutu, in all its leg-baring, gravity-defying glory, might be the star of ballet costuming, but the Romantic tutu is the stuff dreams are made of. Its layers of gossamer tulle have been used to conjure spirits, sprites and sylphs since 1832, when the Romantic tutu made its debut in La Sylphide. Softer, more ethereal and more, well, romantic than the pancake, this bell-shaped diaphanous skirt has endured for almost two centuries, recurring in endless iterations across ballet, fashion, and popular culture.

From ballet’s earliest days in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century to well into the 19th century, ballet costumes reflected the opulence of court fashion. Men’s costumes evolved in this time to allow greater freedom of movement, but women’s became ever more elaborate. Heavily embroidered tunics and high-heeled boots dominated the 1500s, lavish embellishments like precious jewels and gold thread the 1600s, and towering wigs and headdresses the 1700s. None of this was particularly conducive to jetés or pirouettes. But by 1720 there were hints of things to come with the first appearance on Parisian stages of a pannier (a hooped petticoat), which lifted hems a critical few inches off the ground. In the same period, the dancer and choreographer Marie Sallé abandoned corsets and performed in loose muslin dresses. Her rival, Marie Camargo, a ballerina of the Paris Opera Ballet, pushed both technique and costuming even further. She shortened her ballet skirts to the calf, removed the heels from her ballet slippers and wore close-fitting drawers, a precursor of ballet tights. Once the ballerina’s legs were liberated, there was no going back.

The premiere of La Sylphide at the Paris Opera in 1832 was a watershed moment on many fronts. Its popularity established the Romantic ballet as a cultural phenomenon, and it introduced dancing en pointe as genuine technique rather than a party trick. It was also the dawn of the Romantic tutu’s long reign.

La Sylphide was created by the Italian choreographer Filippo Taglioni to showcase the prodigious talents of his daughter, Marie Taglioni. The story was not revolutionary – a young man is beguiled by a supernatural enchantress, and sacrifices everything in his pursuit of her – but the costuming was. Taglioni's skirt fell halfway between knee and ankle, a scandalously short length engineered to show off her pointe work. Layers of ethereal white tulle over stiffened, sheer muslin conjured the Sylph’s otherworldly aura. Newly invented ‘flying machines’ suspended the dancers with wires, giving them (at least fleetingly) the appearance of floating sprites, but Taglioni was able to conjure this illusion of weightlessness through less hazardous means: a shiver of tulle and the vertiginous elevation of pointe shoes. Tutus and pointes would become ballet’s most powerful talismans, haunting the dreams of would-be dancers to this day.

If La Sylphide was the tutu’s debut, Giselle was its full flowering. The Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi was the original Giselle, dancing the ballet’s premiere in June 1841. In the first act, the Romantic tutu (a vision of pale, buttery yellow in Peter Farmer’s design for The Australian Ballet)

is deployed to signal youth and innocence. It floats behind Giselle, light as her heart in all the exultation of first love. It amplifies her tremulous throes as that heart gives way after her betrayal.

In the second act, the earthly gives way to the supernatural, and the village to the ether. The tutu is pivotal in this transition. The ghostly apparitions of the wilis, seemingly hovering in mid-air, are summoned not with wires or trickery but by the quiver of massed tutus, shadowy under a spectral moon. As the wilis dance, their tutus seem to leave a vapour trail. Human rules don’t apply here, the costumes proclaim: this is no longer the domain of man. Illustrations of Grisi in the role clearly show the Romantic tutu’s ethereal translucency – and the alluring outline of her legs.

The Romantic tutu, shot through with soft gas light, was clearly a potent combination – but also dangerous one. Several ballerinas perished when their tutus brushed against open flames and caught fire, a phenomenon romanticised by the press. “Lovely butterfly of the passing hour, she attracted the gaze of the gay votaries of fashion and pleasure, and like the doomed moth, fluttering in the flame, consumed her ephemeral existence!” mused The Public Ledger after the death of ballerina Clara Webster. Tutus could be fireproofed by being soaked in a chemical solution, but this rendered them dingy and stiff. Dancers often refused the fireproofing, including Emma Livry, who at 21 died from her burns. Countless more ballerinas would die, either by fire, smoke inhalation or toxic gases. And yet, even as the era of the Romantic

Artists of The Australian Ballet. Photography Lynette Wills

T R U E R O M A N C E KATE SCOTT CHARTS THE ROMANTIC TUTU THROUGH THE AGES, FROM THE BALLET STAGE TO THE RUNWAY AND THE SILVER SCREEN.


ballet waned, the Romantic tutu persisted. Edgar Degas’ The Dancing Class, dated 1870, is believed to be the first of his ballet pictures; it immortalised the frothy swish of the tutu. He would paint ballerinas for the rest of the life.

The Australian Ballet’s Head of Costume Workshop, Musette Molyneaux, has overseen the creation of countless Romantic tutus. Construction, she says, hasn’t changed much throughout the company’s history. Giselle’s tutus are typical in that three layers of soft net are stitched to a basque, overlaying a stiffer net base. The layers of tulle are stitched at intervals, so there’s no extra bulk at the hips. “Because the tutus are made from very fine net, you can see all the different layers when they’re lit, which creates this very romantic, wistful, not-quite-present feeling,” she says. Peter Farmer’s white tutus for Giselle are actually hand-painted with grey. “It creates a watercolour look,” says Musette. “It’s very shadowy and otherworldly.”

Once ballerinas’ legs were freed by the pancake tutu, ballet technique evolved apace, and the pancake came to dominate the public imagination. Still, the Romantic tutu would recur in classical repertoire throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Although the Ballets Russes is remembered for its revolutionary approach to costuming, it paid breathtaking homage to the Romantic tutu in 1909 with Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides. Described as a “Romantic reverie”, it presented rows of sylphs in floaty tulle, dreamy in the imagined moonlight. George Balanchine returned to this look in 1951 for

the corps of his Swan Lake, as did Anthony Dowell in his 1987 Swan Lake for The Royal Ballet. And the regal green tutus that Balanchine created with his long-time designer Barbara Karinska for the ‘Emeralds’ section of his 1967 ballet Jewels remain standouts in the genre, so much so that they were reimagined by the French designer Christian Lacroix for Paris Opera Ballet in 2005.

Lacroix’s iconic ‘puffball’ skirt, a favourite of 80s pop stars, owed no small debt to the Romantic tutu. But then, so do many fashion moments. Christian Dior’s New Look, which debuted in 1947, was a radical rejection of the utilitarian women’s fashion that had dominated the lean years of the Depression and wartime rationing. This return to hyper-femininity shared many characteristics with the Romantic silhouette: a strong emphasis on shoulders, an implausibly small waist, and a luxuriously full skirt, falling to mid-calf. In the 1954 film Sabrina, Audrey Hepburn’s dresses recall the costumes of Marie Taglioni: fabric enticingly scarce at the shoulder, and extravagant at the skirt.

The Romantic tutu has always straddled the line between supernatural and sexy, as evidenced by the revealing lithographs of Carlotta Grisi. Marilyn Monroe would move it squarely into the latter category in a series of photographs taken by Milton H. Greene in 1954. The white Romantic tutu ordered from fashion designer Anne Klein didn’t fit, so Monroe held it to her chest instead, alluringly blending innocence and provocation. The television show Sex and the City would conjure

this combination when it premiered in 1998. Carrie Bradshaw wears an abbreviated Romantic tutu in the credits, paired with a semi-transparent tank top. She wore a tutu again for the final episode in 2014 – this time a fuller vintage version in antique green. Veteran costume designer Patricia Field had a clear message here: this was an older Carrie, a wiser Carrie, but forever romantic at heart.

In 2011, the Romantic tutu bloomed again as the star of the French fashion house Chloé’s Spring collection, which boiled the skirt down to its fundamentals: the heavenly rustle of tulle in a monochromatic palette. Closer to home, the Sydney fashion label Lover premiered their A Dance for One collection with a film starring The Australian Ballet’s Amber Scott. Romantic lines abounded, paired with slouchy, 80s- inspired rehearsal wear.

Senior Artist Valerie Tereshchenko describes the Romantic tutu in rapturous terms. “They’re really quite light: you have to be very delicate and smooth because they move so much. If you move quickly across the stage, part of your dress is left behind, which gives the illusion that you’re floating or flying.” If so much movement, so much meaning, and so much feeling can be summoned with just 20 metres of net, the reign of the Romantic tutu will not soon subside.

Kate Scott is the editor of Luminous: celebrating 50 years of The Australian Ballet

Sarah Jessica Parker on the set of Sex and the City, Paris. Photography James Devaney/Wirelmage/Getty Images


Marie Camargo. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library. Photography Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Design by Edith Head for Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. Photography

Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images



C R E AT I V E S

PETER FARMER WILLIAM AKERS LEANNE BENJAMIN OBE AM MAINA GIELGUD AO

Costume and set design Original lighting design Guest CoachChoreographer

After completing a theatrical design course with honours, British-born Peter Farmer became Loudon Sainthill’s assistant, which subsequently led to his first commission: Jack Carter’s Agrionia for the London Dance Theatre in 1964. That production featured Joyce Graeme, who in 1965 asked him to design his first production of Giselle for Ballet Rambert, and it is this particular ballet which has been associated with Peter Farmer since; he has designed 14 productions for leading companies around the world.

Other ballet work includes Swan Lake (Royal Winnipeg Ballet), The Sleeping Beauty (Munich Opera House and The Royal Ballet), The Nutcracker (Rome Opera House), Tales of Hoffmann (The Hong Kong Ballet), Winter Dreams (The Royal Ballet), Manon (Vienna State Opera), Coppélia (Birmingham Royal Ballet) and many modern pieces for London Contemporary Dance Theatre.

His designs for drama include Night of the Iguana, A Woman of No Importance and What Every Woman Knows. His first work for The Australian Ballet was The Dream in 1969. He has since completed the following works for the company: Anna Karenina (1979), The Three Musketeers (1980), Giselle (1986), Manon (1994) and Madame Butterfly (1995), which he worked on again with The National Ballet of Canada in 2000.

In 2002 Peter presented a scope of his work at the USA International Ballet Competition Exhibit. The exhibit included costumes from Swan Lake, The Great Gatsby, The Sleeping Beauty, Anna Karenina, The Three Musketeers and Manon. In December 2010, he designed a new production of The Nutcracker for English National Ballet. He has also designed Swan Lake for English National Ballet and Peer Gynt for Houston Ballet.

Sydney-born William Akers began his career in radio, films and the theatre before becoming stage director for the Borovansky Ballet, touring with it throughout Australia and New Zealand. In intervening periods he stage-directed many plays, revues and musicals for J.C. Williamson Theatres Ltd.

He joined The Australian Ballet for its inaugural season in 1962 as production director and lighting designer. He left in 1975 to become theatre planning co-ordinator for the Victorian Arts Centre Building Committee and was later appointed production director for the Victorian Arts Centre Trust. He resigned from this position in 1983 to take up his appointment as director of productions for The Australian Ballet.

Other assignments have included lighting and staging for every major ballet company in Australia and for productions by Sir Robert Helpmann for The Australian Opera. His work was acclaimed in ballet houses throughout the world, including the Leningrad Kirov; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. In 1987 William Akers received the Green Room Award for Outstanding Achievement and in his 40th year in the theatre was honoured for his services to Lighting, Ballet and the Theatre. In 1992 he became the first recipient of the Green Room’s highest award for lighting in Australian Theatre.

After an illustrious 25-year career with The Australian Ballet, William Akers retired from his position at the end of 1994. He died in 2011.

Leanne Benjamin was born in Rockhampton, Australia. At 16 she joined The Royal Ballet School; while at the School she won the Adeline Genée gold medal and the Prix de Lausanne, as well as dancing the role of Giselle at Covent Garden in The Royal Ballet School’s annual performance.

Leanne joined Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet in 1983, English National Ballet in 1988 and the Deutsche Oper Ballet Berlin in 1990 before joining The Royal Ballet in 1992, at Kenneth MacMillan’s invitation; she was a principal dancer there for 21 years.

Her wide repertory included most of the classical and neo-classical repertoire. She created new roles for choreographers including Wayne McGregor, Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon and Twyla Tharp, and was one of the last dancers to work with Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan.

In 2004 and 2009, Leanne was recognised as Best Female Dancer in the Critic’s Circle Dance Awards and in 2013 she was given the De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance.

In 2005 Leanne received an OBE in recognition of her services to dance, and in 2014 received an Honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts from Central Queensland University. In 2015 she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.

In 2016 Leanne was appointed a governor of The Royal Ballet Companies.

Leanne is the patron of the Tait Memorial Trust, where an annual award is given in her name to allow young Australian dancers to train in the UK. She is now coaching pre-professional students and works with a number of interna-tional ballet companies as a principal coach.

Trained by the great Russians, including Tamara Karsavina and Lubov Egorova, and later by Rosella Hightower, Maina Gielgud has had an incredibly diverse career, creating works with Maurice Bejart’s XXth Century Ballet, performing all the great classical ballets as a principal with London Festival Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, and being partnered by Rudolf Nureyev in The Sleeping Beauty and Don Quixote with the Ballet de Marseille. She then pursued a career as an international guest artist.

She was artistic director of The Australian Ballet (1983 to 1997) and the Royal Danish Ballet (1997 to 1999).

Freelancing since 1999, she stages works (her own highly acclaimed The Sleeping Beauty and Giselle) for several companies, including The Australian Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Boston Ballet and Ballet du Rhin. She made a comeback as a dancer and actress in Béjart’s L’Heure Exquise, and guest teaches and coaches around the world.

From 2007 to 20012 her principal affiliation was with English National Ballet, where she was a regular guest teacher, principal coach and artistic advisor. Since 2013, she has been artistic advisor to the Hungarian National Ballet.

In 2018 she restaged her Giselle for The Australian Ballet’s Melbourne season, coached Lifar’s Suite en blanc for the graduation performance of the Vaganova Academy in St Petersburg, staged Anton Dolin’s Pas de Quatre for the New National Theatre Ballet Tokyo and choreographed a full-length Cinderella for Goh Ballet with guest artists Venus Villa and Rolando Sarabia.

In 2019, her schedule includes staging a new production of The Sleeping Beauty for Joburg Ballet, Aurora’s Wedding for Ballet Academy East and Act II of La Sylphide for Ellison Ballet in New York. She will also be judging on the YAGP panel in New York, and guest teaching and coaching in Canada and Australia.


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Jasmin Durham. Photography Lynette Wills


TY KING-WALL

Giselle is one of my all-time favourite ballets. I would take any chance I get to dance it – I would dance Giselle in a broom cupboard. It’s a real privilege to get to do it again. To me it’s the perfect ballet. It’s not a particularly long ballet, but so much happens, and everything that happens is so important to the story. It still resonates strongly because its themes are still relevant today. It’s a timeless story.

This will be my fourth season of Giselle, and each time I try to bring a fresh outlook to it. The first time I did it was in my first year with the company. I was standing up the back, in the hunting party, holding the two dogs. It’s actually one of my most memorable moments on stage. I was holding the borzois’ lead in one hand, and supporting a bunch of pheasants on a rack with the other. Borzois have these long, slippery necks, and one of them got a bit antsy and slipped his collar. I had both my hands full so I couldn’t grab him, and I had visions of him running around the stage during this really powerful moment in the ballet. Luckily my fellow dancer Ben Davis saw the whole thing, and he grabbed the dog and quietly ushered him off into the wings.

So that was my first experience of the ballet, and it was great to get a taste of it from the best seat in the house, so to speak. I danced the Act II pas de deux a couple of times, and then in 2015 I danced Albrecht for the first time, with Amber [Scott, now Ty’s wife] as my Giselle. Then I got the chance to do it again on our regional tour, with Dana Stephensen. That was really nice, because you’re performing in smaller theatres, closer to the audience, and the acting felt very natural, you didn’t have to project so far; it felt like you could just be yourself.

In 2018 I was fortunate enough to perform the role again, this time with Ako Kondo, with whom I’ve always enjoyed dancing. Whenever you perform a ballet like Giselle with a new partner, you respond to the individuality they bring to the role. In this way, the story you're telling subtly changes, and it feels completely new once more.

Each time, I take a different tack with the character. In the past I’ve tried to make Albrecht quite sympathetic, to look for his redeeming qualities. But I think this time around, I like the idea of him being more thoughtless, a bit more selfish. He’s quite dismissive of the peasants’ beliefs, he has a sense of superiority. It feels like that will make the transformation and catharsis

of the character in Act II even stronger, as it’s a greater contrast. So I may look at giving him a harder edge.

The 32 entrechat six that Albrecht does in Act II – they’re fun! It’s a good challenge. The audience plays a part in this one. They often start applauding half-way through, and that really does give you a lift. So please, everyone, start clapping as soon as you want! At that point in time, you’ve done the pas de deux, you’ve done the solo – you’ve done a lot of dancing, and then you have to do those 32 entrechat six [jumps in which the dancer crosses his legs six times before landing]. And you do feel like you’re about to expire, just as Albrecht is in the story. When the audience cheers you on, it gets you through, it really helps.

The Romantic style for the male dancer … There’s a softness to the port de bras, there’s a way of holding your head, there’s a gentle undulation to the arms. When you’re partnering, you have to be aware that the girl’s weight is not going to be in the usual place, because the Romantic technique requires her to lean forward. There’s actually a lot of counter-balancing – you push her forward over an arabesque rather than having her on her leg: it’s an elongated, almost horizontal line. There’s a lot of flow, and there’s some beautiful moments when you create that ethereal quality by the way you partner, especially the way you lift the girl. You can let the dress move, you can let her legs drift. It’s easier said than done – it takes a while to get the hang of it, but it’s beautiful when you get it.

AKO KONDO

Giselle was a role that I always wanted to do. In Japan, my ballet teacher always said, “It’s not really for you, you’re too hyperactive.” I was always steered towards Kitri or Gamzatti – jumping, turning roles, strong women; the Queen of the Wilis rather than Giselle. But when Maina [Gielgud] came out to cast the ballet, she could see me doing the role.

I did my first seasons of Giselle with Chen [Principal Artist Chengwu Guo, Ako’s husband], and that was so special, because of our connection. The first time Maina saw us rehearse together, she said, “Oh, the love is really believable!” We laughed and said, “Yes – because it’s real love!”

At the end of my last show in the Sydney season, I was very happy – I had enjoyed my performance, really cherished the moment, and my mum had

flown out from Japan and was in the audience. Then at the end of the show, David [McAllister, the company’s artistic director] pulled a huge surprise and promoted me to principal artist on stage!

When you’re dancing Giselle, there’s a real transformation between Act I and Act II. In Act I you’re human, full of life and joy, a pure, innocent girl. In Act II, you are a ghost – white, weightless; you barely land on the floor. I love watching famous ballerinas dance Giselle because they look like a completely different person in Act II. That’s what attracted me to the role.

Last year I got to do Giselle with [Principal Artist] Ty King-Wall. To dance it with a different partner changes your interpretation. Ty really loves this ballet and has a lot of ideas about it, and we had a great conversation about how we’d play it. He’s a gentle Albrecht, he’s not domineering or princely – he’s pretending to be the pure innocent guy who just met the pure innocent girl. We talked about the musicality, the accents, where we’d breathe together. It really helped us to get in sync.

The mad scene is so special for ballerinas. I love acting, and that’s why I adore this ballet. The first time I did Giselle, I was a bit ‘in my shell’ with the mad scene. I struggled with it. [Principal Coach] Fiona Tonkin, who was a great Giselle, spent a lot of time with me, doing the mad scene in front of the mirror. One time she did it just for me in the studio, and it was amazing – I felt it in my heart, I was in tears. Even when you’re on stage, you don’t see the ballerina that close from the front, you don’t see the details. That opened up a lot of ideas for me.

Maina has Giselle in her heart. She’s really particular about the Romantic style, the angle of your arms and body, leaning the way you want to go. I learnt a lot about how to use my eyes. Sometimes as a dancer you try to act with your face, but she’d say, “Eyes can tell the audience the story.” In Act II, she coached me particularly on the moment when the bell chimes at dawn, and Giselle realises that she’s done it, she’s saved Albrecht. I was trying to hold a nice ballet placement in that moment, but she told me, “Let everything go. The man you loved was going to die, but now he’s going to live. How do you feel?” One night she came back to my dressing room after the performance; she had tears in her eyes, and she said, “You really understood what I said. I felt it.”

G I S E L L E : A D A N C E R ’ S P E R S P E C T I V EPRINCIPAL ARTISTS TY KING-WALL AND AKO KONDO, WHO WILL DANCE ALBRECHT AND GISELLE IN THIS SEASON, TALK ABOUT INTERPRETATIONS, THE ROMANTIC STYLE AND THE PERILS OF JUGGLING DOGS.


Ako Kondo and Ty King-Wall. Photography Lynette Wills


The extraordinary journey of Giselle began in Paris, during the summer of 1841. Choreographed jointly by Jules Perrot and his older colleague Jean Coralli, the ballet was a “transcendent success” from the outset – “all Paris is resounding with it,” raved the French correspondent for London’s Morning Post. The production quickly transferred to London itself, where Perrot and the ballet master Deshayes supervised a somewhat pared down version for the smaller stage of Her Majesty’s Theatre. One French visitor, having seen Giselle in Paris, predicted a “fiasco” on account of cuts and changes. But the local audience loved it, and Giselle has been accumulating revisions through countless revivals ever since.

Maina Gielgud’s production, like most modern stagings, derives from Russian notations of Perrot’s ballet, which made its way to St Petersburg in 1850. The notations, created decades later, reflected the influence of subsequent performances, including stagings overseen by the French choreographer Marius Petipa, who worked in St Petersburg’s Imperial Theatres. Some aspects of the choreographic script are of even more recent vintage. Gielgud’s production pays tribute to a great 20th-century interpreter of the role, the Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtseva, whose willowy figure, fragility and huge kohl-darkened eyes lent a peculiarly spectral aspect to her performance. The ballerina’s brilliant technique is immortalised in the ‘Spessivtseva variation’ of Act I, in which Giselle executes a series of coy, dainty hops en pointe across the stage.

Traces of the 1841 production also survive in Gielgud’s version. Peter Farmer’s costume design for Giselle in Act I – a daffodil-yellow dress worn with a brown bodice and white blouse – directly references the original, worn by the Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi. Other elements hint at surprising features of the original version, now lost. Strange but true is the history behind the dances of Myrtha’s two lead wilis. Many a bemused spectator has wondered why Giselle’s Rhineland village produced such a surfeit of comely maidens jilted before their wedding day. But, in fact, in the ballet’s early scenarios, the Queen of the Wilis originally summoned “her subjects from all quarters of the globe”. Her Germanic minions waltzed alongside Moyna the Oriental Odalisque, Zulme the Indian Bayadére, and two French women, who performed a “bizarre minuet”. The two lead wilis, still sometimes designated Zulma and Moyna, are all that remain of this exotic past – listen carefully to the wilis' melodies, and you might hear snatches of their musical ethnicities.

Foreign wilis would not have surprised the 19th-century spectator. National dances were ubiquitous

in Romantic ballets of Giselle’s era, and reflected the period’s fascination with folk culture. Indeed, from its inception Giselle was a perfect distillation of Romantic ideals and artistic conventions, which had been refined for more than half a century before the ballet’s premiere. The wilis were part of a long line of supernatural characters that appeared on the stage of the Paris Opera, including diaphanous sylphs, ondines and the diabolical ghosts of nuns. Theophile Gautier, the French author and critic who worked on Giselle’s libretto, had initially encountered the wilis in the literary tale De l’Allemagne (1835), by the German poet Heinrich Heine. Gautier immediately perceived the potential of Heine’s nocturnal spectres, “white as snow” and full of bloodlust. Indeed, he had quite a penchant for gothic seductresses. In 1836 he had penned his own ghoulish short story, La Morte Amoureuse, about a beautiful vampire courtesan, Clarimonde, who rose nightly from her tomb to destroy her lovers.

Thanks to Gautier, who openly acknowledged Heine’s tale as the ballet’s inspiration, the legend of wilis has always been passed down intact. But another element of the Giselle story is surrounded by great confusion: the matter of how Giselle dies. Gautier actually wrote two versions of the Giselle story, the libretto (prepared in collaboration with Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges) and a literary telling, published in Les Beautés de l’Opéra (1844). While the libretto described Giselle’s death from heartbreak, the latter detailed Giselle’s death as a suicide, the result of the distraught maid seizing Albrecht’s sword and inflicting “a deep and fatal wound” upon herself. There has been much debate about which version was used at the ballet’s premiere, with many dancers and scholars accepting the readily available 1844 account as the original. American musicologist Marian Smith sought to resolve the matter in 1990 when she noted that “if Giselle had been intended … to stab herself with a sword, [the librettists] would never have given her a heart condition.”

The mad scene’s subtleties underscore the richness of the Giselle text, and its myriad possibilities, even in the brief moment when Giselle spies Albrecht’s sword on the ground. Some dancers grasp the sword’s tip and draw the hilt in a loose arc. Others make a defined circle, foreshadowing the magic

circle drawn by the Queen of the Wilis and Giselle’s transformation into a spirit. In a coaching session, the Lithuanian-born British ballerina Svetlana Berisova told a former principal artist of The Australian Ballet, Lisa Bolte, that Giselle should trace a wavy line with the sword, evoking a snake, which symbolises Giselle’s temptation by the devil to commit the mortal sin of suicide. Other conventions are still more subtle, to the point where they become obscure in certain stagings. In the ballet’s second act, for example, Giselle’s cross is the only point where Christ’s power affords Albrecht protection from the wilis. Unable to move Albrecht from the haven of the cross, where Giselle has urged him to remain, the conniving Myrtha plays a trump card: she compels Giselle to dance, luring Albrecht with her beauty away from safety and back into the magic circle where the wilis hold sway.

Further symbolic richness is found in the use of flowers to intensify the story’s emotional nuances. Giselle’s premiere coincided with a vogue for sentimental flower books (mostly written for young women), which attempted to distil the Christian and mythological associations of flowers into a ‘language’ for everyday use in posies and bouquets. The appeal of this floral symbolism has endured. Although the blooms featured in the ballet vary between productions, they typically evoke some widely-shared associations. The daisy, used in Giselle’s fortune-telling game of ‘he loves me, he loves me not’, is traditionally ascribed ‘innocence’; in Act II, Albrecht’s sheath of lilies denotes purity, overlaid by more contemporary associations of mourning. The white myrtle, wielded sceptre-like by the Queen of the Wilis, often replaces the sprig of rosemary described in the original libretto. The myrtle is a symbol of love and fidelity, often used in wedding bouquets, and the wilis are dressed as the brides they were never able to be.

Strands of tradition, flecked with innovation, individual parts forming a logical whole: it’s what distinguishes the best productions of Giselle. And as Gielgud’s production is revived, the task of unearthing the nuances buried in the ballet’s text continues.

Dr Caitlyn Lehmann is a cultural historian specialising in dance history and 18th-century studies

Many a bemused spectator has wondered why Giselle’s Rhineland village produced such a surfeit of comely maidens jilted before their wedding day. But, in fact, in the ballet’s early scenarios, the Queen of the Wilis originally summoned “her subjects from all quarters of the globe”.

L A Y E R S O F G I S E L L EEVERY MODERN PRODUCTION OF GISELLE CONTAINS TRACES OF THE BALLET’S FORMER VERSIONS. CAITLYN LEHMANN EXCAVATES ITS DEEPER MEANINGS.


Amber Scott. Photography Lynette Wills

Dimity Azoury. Photography Lynette Wills Adam Bull. Photography Lynette Wills


C O N D U C T O R S

NICOLETTE FRAILLON AM

Nicolette Fraillon began her music studies on violin and piano at an early age. At 16 she conducted her first concert with the Victorian Junior Symphony Orchestra. She graduated on viola from Melbourne University in 1982, gaining an equal first place in her year in Performance. From 1984–87 she furthered her instrumental studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna and from 1987–88 in Hannover. During her time in Germany and Austria Nicolette toured with many orchestras, including the Salzburger Chamber Ensemble and the Chamber Orchestra of Bassano, and was a member of the Haydn Quartet, based at the Esterhazy Palace in Eisenstadt.

In 1990 Nicolette moved to the Netherlands, where she became assistant musical director for the 1991–92 season of Les Misérables in Amsterdam and The Hague. In 1992 she was admitted to the Netherlands Broadcasting Association’s International Conductors’ Masterclass, resulting in a performance with the Dutch Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. This led to an invitation to conduct for the Nederlands Dans Theater. She was then invited to become music director and chief conductor of the National Ballet of the Netherlands, working with such renowned choreographers as Hans van Manen, Toer van Schayk, Rudi van Dantzig and Krzysztof Pastor, and conducting numerous world premieres. During the following five years she worked with the North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Sinfonietta Amsterdam, Noord Nederlands Orchestra, the Gelders Orchestra in Arnhem, the Limburg Symphony Orchestra, the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague, the Kanazawa Chamber Orchestra in Japan, and the Finnish Ballet.

In 1998 she took up the position of Director at the School of Music, Australian National University, and continued her conducting work with the West Australian Ballet, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Youth Orchestra and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.

She debuted with The Australian Ballet in 2002, conducting Spartacus, and was then invited by David McAllister to become music director and chief conductor, beginning in January 2003. Since joining the company, Nicolette has conducted all programs for The Australian Ballet, including all of its overseas tours, and has been a guest conductor for San Francisco Ballet. Following The Australian Ballet’s 2005 tour to the UK, Nicolette was, in 2006, invited back to conduct The Sleeping Beauty with Birmingham Royal Ballet. She conducted the ballet again on Birmingham Royal Ballet’s 2018 tour of Japan. In 2007 she guested with New York City Ballet. In 2008 she returned to the Birmingham Royal Ballet for a season of The Nutcracker, then finished the year with a New Year’s Gala in Skopje with the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra. In early 2011 Nicolette guested with San Francisco Ballet, conducting their production of Giselle; in 2014 she guested with New York City Ballet. In 2016 she conducted the opening night of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker, which was also the choreographer’s 90th birthday.

Since 2014, Nicolette has also been artistic director of Orchestra Victoria, establishing new concert series, education programs and two regional music festivals.

Music Director & Chief Conductor

SIMON THEW

Simon Thew has undertaken conducting studies in Sydney, Vienna, Berlin, and Barcelona with mentors including Sebastian Weigle, Nicolette Fraillon, Harry Spence Lyth, Richard Bonynge, and John Hopkins.

In 2007 Simon was awarded the Dame Joan Sutherland/Richard Bonynge Travel Scholarship, which enabled further study in Europe, culminating in his position as musical intern at the Bayreuth Festival in 2008.

In 2010 he was awarded the Hephzibah Tintner Fellowship, which gave him performance and mentoring opportunities with The Australian Ballet, Opera Australia, and the Sydney Symphony. Simon was The Australian Ballet’s Conducting Fellow in 2011, and in the same year was awarded a Churchill Fellowship. This enabled him to undertake professional development opportu-nities with ballet companies, opera houses and orchestras in London, Birmingham, Vienna, Berlin, and New York across 2012.

Simon was an assistant conductor with Opera Australia from 2007 – 2010. In 2010 he conducted Opera Australia’s Oz Opera regional tour, and in the same year made his conducting debut with The Australian Ballet. In 2012 he acted as assistant conductor on the company’s New York tour.

Simon was a regular guest conductor with The Australian Ballet between 2013 and 2016. He conducted performances in most of the company's seasons during that time. In 2017 he accepted an invitation to become The Australian Ballet’s assistant conductor. He has also worked as a guest conductor for English National Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Houston Ballet.

He has an active concert-conducting career and is committed to the education of young conductors and instrumentalists.

Conductor


M U S I C N O T E

Adolphe Adam (1803 – 1856) was a prolific composer and a very enterprising man. Not only was he responsible for a huge catalogue of music, ranging from piano arrangements of popular songs through to sacred music, operas and ballets, he was also a chorus master and a theatre owner. When the latter enterprise failed due to circumstances beyond his control – the 1848 Paris revolution – Adam became a journalist and Professor of Composition at the Paris Conservatoire.

Adam’s father was himself a professor of music at the Conservatoire, although it seems he did little to encourage Adolphe to pursue a career in music. Adam was inspired instead by Ferdinand Hérold, who is known to balletomanes as the composer/arranger of the score for La Fille mal gardée. A career in music theatre beckoned, and by 1830 Adam’s portfolio boasted a clutch of popular songs, an operetta and a three–act opera. The 1830 Paris revolution (yes, they were turbulent times) made life difficult in the theatres of the capital, and it was in London that Adam presented his first ballet, Faust (1833). Adam’s first work for the Paris Opera was the score for the ballet La fille du Danube (1836). The composer’s international reputation was secured with performances of La fille and other works in a season given at St Petersburg in 1840. Giselle received its premiere at the Paris Opéra in June 1841.

Adam once boasted that he found composing ballet scores easier than writing operas and, moreover, that he composed them for his own amusement. If that’s the case he must have enjoyed composing Giselle, which he completed in just three weeks, working at night, as was his usual practice. The score marked a quantum leap in the way music for ballet was regarded by composers, choreographers and audiences. Up to this point, as those who recall the score of La Fille mal gardée would agree, music for ballet tended to be little more than a potpourri of well-known popular tunes and classical favourites. Not only was the score for Giselle composed specifically for the ballet, but the music succeeds in marrying movement with the dramatic narrative – in what was then an innovative, if rudimentary, kind of way.

While Adam’s melodic inventiveness is occasionally a little pedestrian, there can be no denying his craftsmanship. As Tchaikovsky was to do later (albeit with a far greater degree of sophistication), Adam employs leitmotifs, or recurring musical themes. These are linked to specific characters and emotions: Giselle’s theme is in G major; Count Albrecht’s in C major; the principal love scene in A major.

Adam’s approach is not so much to develop or elaborate on his themes, but rather to change the context in which they are heard. So, for example, when the pastorale theme first heard in the first

part of Act I reappears later in the mad scene, it adds a further dimension to the plot. The overall effect of Adam’s score is that of a collection of musical episodes that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Adam’s original score was published initially as a piano version in 1841, and it was not until 1924 that an orchestral score was published. By this stage a number of additions and alterations had been made. The first of these appeared at the premiere performance, when Frederic Burgmüller prudently added the Peasant Pas de deux to the first act in order to placate a wealthy patron, whose mistress was dancing the part of the peasant girl. Ludwig Minkus took it upon himself to add a variation for Giselle to the 1864 St Petersburg season.

Adam’s music was savaged in the first edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, published in 1890; the writer sniffed that “his melodies are frequently trivial to the point of absolute vulgarity.” Trivial they may seem in comparison to Tchaikovsky, whose star was well and truly in the ascendant in 1890. But Adam’s melodies are never vulgar. These days we would call it ‘elegant simplicity’, and Giselle is the richer for a score that has continued to delight audiences for over 150 years.

Dr Mark Carroll is a Professor at The Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide

Brett Chynoweth and Jade Wood. Photography Lynette Wills

ALTHOUGH WRITTEN IN JUST THREE WEEKS, THE SCORE FOR GISELLE IS A TESTAMENT TO THE CRAFTSMANSHIP OF ITS COMPOSER, ADOLPHE ADAM. BY MARK CARROLL


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C L O S E U P : D I M I T Y A Z O U R Y

Photography Daniel Boud

What was your first experience of ballet?

I was three or four years old when I saw my first ballet. I was so young, I can’t remember if the ballet was Giselle, but I have these images in my mind of girls in long white dresses, floating across the stage. It was that Romantic era of ballet that was the reason I started dancing.

Is there a ballerina whose performance of Giselle has really inspired you?

Madeline Eastoe danced her last show ever as Giselle, which was a very special performance. Also Amber Scott, Kirsty Martin and Rachel Rawlins … I could keep going! But those three in particular are beautiful, and they captured different parts of Giselle, which I really admire.

In a previous season of Giselle you danced the role of Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis. What was it like to work with Maina Gielgud during rehearsals for that season?

It was fantastic for me. She was really encouraging. Also, she's so interested in the characterisation, which is a really lovely way to work: the movement is character-driven rather than purely about the steps.

I was also lucky enough to understudy Giselle, and just being at the back of the studio for those rehearsals gave me a little taste of the role.

What is your own approach to the characterisation of Giselle?

When I began rehearsing Giselle, I was actually recovering from an injury to my calf. So I really started the process from the ground up. Giselle just loves to dance, but she's got this weak heart, so she's not allowed to. I felt in a similar position! As I built up my dancing again, I was trying to do it with her in mind, and think of how she might feel, which was quite interesting.

In the second act, I love that she finds a strength and a resolve that she didn’t have in life. She has the strength to be able to forgive Albrecht. So I try to find the fragility of Act I, and then the strength of Act II.

How do you feel about performing the famous mad scene?

The mad scene is what appeals to me most about the role. I love the drama.

The stage is a funny sort of place. You can let go of who you are, and become someone else, and experience something that you might not ever experience otherwise (hopefully I don't ever go mad!) It's a really powerful place.

What are some of the roles you would really like to dance?

Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet, and the most dramatic roles, like Manon. I was lucky enough last year to

SENIOR ARTIST DIMITY AZOURY MADE HER DEBUT AS GISELLE IN 2018. SHE TALKS TO CHLOE GORDON ABOUT HER INSPIRATIONS, GOING MAD ON STAGE AND GETTING OUT OF TOWN.

Dimity Azoury. Photography Daniel Boud

dance Hanna in The Merry Widow, which was on my bucket list.

How do you keep a feeling of balance in your life during especially busy periods?

I do a lot of outdoors stuff like hiking, mountain biking, and walking the dog. We [Dimity is married to Rudy Hawkes, a former dancer of The Australian Ballet] have a wolfhound cross. He's our first rescue dog, and he’s a challenge. He's a sweet boy, but a bit psychotic, for a wolf hound; they are usually very calm.

When things get a bit too intense, we pack up and go camping. Even if it's just for 24 hours, or late at night, like after a show on a Saturday. We'll shove the camping stuff in the car, and drive down the highway somewhere. Waking up in the bush the next day really calms me down.

Chloe Gordon is a freelance copywriter and communications specialist with a zest for the arts. Her website is chloegordon.com.au

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Brett Chynoweth was born in Melbourne. At age five, he began training at a local ballet school. He soon moved to The Australian Ballet School, where he received, among other awards, the Dr HC (Nuggett) Coombes Travelling Scholarship, which enabled him to train in New York and Toronto. He graduated dux from The Australian Ballet School with honours and joined The Australian Ballet at the beginning of 2009; he was promoted to principal artist on stage at the end of the 2018 season in his home town of Melbourne. Since joining The Australian Ballet, Brett has performed a variety of classical and contemporary works by choreographers such as Carlos Acosta, Nacho Duato, Tim Harbour, Jirí Kylián, Wayne McGregor, Graeme Murphy and Alexei Ratmansky, and his principal roles include works by some of the greats - Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Serge Lifar, Kenneth MacMillan, Christopher Wheeldon and Peter Wright.

Repertoire highlights — Prince Désiré in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2018,

2017, 2015— Wayne McGregor’s Infra (2017), Chroma (2014) and Dyad 1929

(2013)— Viktor Gvosky's Grand pas classique 2017, 2016— Franz in Peggy van Praagh's Coppélia 2016— Puck in Frederick Ashton's The Dream 2015— The Prince in Peter Wright's The Nutcracker 2014— Lescaut in Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Manon 2014— Mazurka in Serge Lifar's Suite en blanc 2014

Guest appearances — The Prince in Peter Wright's The Nutcracker, Birmingham

Royal Ballet 2018

Awards — Walter Bourke Scholarship 2013— Telstra Ballet Dancer Award Nominee 2011— Maurice Sullivan Memorial Scholarship 2011/12

You may not know ... Brett's favourite city is London: so much so, he once flew there for 24 hours just to see a show at the Royal Opera House.

Growing up in China, Chengwu Guo began dance classes at the age of eleven. He was accepted into the Beijing Dance Academy where he was able to combine his ballet training with academic studies. Chen’s talent for ballet was soon evident when he received a gold medal at the Tao Li Bei of China Competition, and also at the Beijing International Competition. In 2006 Chen became a prize winner at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne competition in Switzerland, receiving a full scholarship to complete his vocational ballet training. He chose to take up this scholarship at The Australian Ballet School. During his time at the School Chen toured regional Australia with The Dancers Company, and received glowing reviews for his roles in The Sleeping Beauty, Graduation Ball and Coppélia. Chen joined The Australian Ballet in 2008 and was promoted to principal artist in 2013.

Repertoire highlights — Albrecht in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle 2015 — Puck in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream 2015 — Solor in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère 2014 — The Prince in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014 — Basilio in Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Quixote 2013 — Principal Man, Mazurka, in Harald Lander's Études 2012 — Mercutio and Tybalt in Graeme Murphy’s Romeo & Juliet 2011 — First Red Knight in Ninette de Valois’ Checkmate 2011 — Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto 2011 — Graeme Murphy’s Firebird 2009

Guest appearances — The Dancers Company tour 2008

Awards — Green Room Award nomination for Don Quixote and La Sylphide 2013 — Maurice Sullivan Scholarship 2013 — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award and Telstra People’s Choice Award 2011

You may not know ... Chengwu likes to watch Japanese anime in his spare time.

“A very special artist” Arts writer Deborah Jones

“explosive energy”The Age

Adam Bull's principal artist position is generously supported by Lachlan & Sarah Murdoch

Adam Bull was born in 1981 and began training at Dance World 301 with Brian Nolan before joining The Australian Ballet School. In 2000, he represented Australia in the Paris International Ballet Competition, before graduating from The Australian Ballet School with honours in 2001. Adam joined The Australian Ballet in 2002, going on to dance in many leading roles. After just six months as a senior artist, Adam was promoted to principal artist in June 2008, capping off a string of critically acclaimed lead performances. Adam has danced a vast range of the male classical repertoire; he has a fondness for works by George Balanchine, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Graeme Murphy, Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon and Wayne McGregor. Performing in principal lead roles on the company’s tours to Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles and Japan have been career highlights.

Repertoire highlights — Albrecht in Maina Gielgud's Giselle 2015, 2006 — Prince Siegfried in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2008 – 2015 — des Grieux in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon 2014, 2008 — The Prince in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014, 2010, 2007 — James in La Sylphide 2013, 2005 — The Prince in Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella, 2013 — Prince Siegfried in Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake 2013, 2012 — Onegin in John Cranko’s Onegin 2012 — Bedroom Pas de deux from Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon

with American Ballet Theatre’s Julie Kent, The Australian Ballet 50th Anniversary Gala, 2012

— Danilo in Ronald Hynd’s The Merry Widow 2011

Guest appearances — Cinderella Pas de deux, Northern Ballet Sapphire Gala 2015 — Prince Siegfried in Derek Deane’s Swan Lake, Shanghai Ballet 2014 — 1st Chinese International Ballet Gala 2013 — Fall for Dance Festival, New York 2011 — Stuttgart Ballet 50th Anniversary Gala 2011 — The Dancers Company tour 2006

Awards — Green Room Award 'Year’s Work' nomination 2009 — Benois de la Danse Best Male Dancer nomination for Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2009 — Khitercs Hirai Foundation Scholarship 2009 — Green Room Award nomination for Albrecht in Giselle 2006

You may not know ... “I have ticked off a lifelong dream of visiting the Antarctic

continent, doing so in our summer break at the end of 2009. Landing at the same site as the famous Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson was an awe-inspiring and life-changing experience.”

“Tender and self-deprecating … a true danseur noble” The Observer, UK

ADAM BULL BRETT CHYNOWETH CHENGWU GUO

P R I N C I PA L A R T I S T S

Philanthropy Ambassador


“Serene beauty” Arts Writer Deborah Jones

“Flawless technique” The Daily Telegraph

ROBYN HENDRICKSAMY HARRIS

South African-born Robyn Hendricks began ballet classes aged eight after her grandfather observed her dancing on her toes all the time. Growing up in an academic family, Robyn was the first family member to pursue a creative passion. Training in the Cecchetti Syllabus, Robyn travelled to Melbourne in 2001 to participate in the annual Cecchetti International Competition. During the competition, she was approached by The Australian Ballet School and was asked to audition formally for entrance into the prestigious national school. During her time at The Australian Ballet School, Robyn was one of four students selected to participate in a student exchange to Canada, where she studied for four weeks with the National Ballet School in Toronto. She joined The Australian Ballet in 2005; she was promoted to soloist in 2011, to senior artist in 2016, and to principal artist the same year.

Repertoire highlights — Gamzatti in Stanton Welch's La Bayadère 2014 — Wayne McGregor's Chroma 2014 — Jirí Kylián’s Petite Mort 2014, 2005 — Cigarette solo in Serge Lifar’s Suite en blanc 2014 — Second Ballerina in George Balanchine's Ballet Imperial 2014 — Black Swan Pas de deux 2012 — Principal Lady in Paquita 2014 — Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain© 2011 — Wayne McGregor's Dyad 1929 2009 — Nacho Duato's Por vos muero 2009

Guest appearances — Fall for Dance Festival 2014, 2012 — The Dancers Company tour 2014, 2008

Awards — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award nominee 2015, 2011, 2009, 2007

You may not know ... Robyn is interested in the horse-breeding industry

and owns a horse with her husband Charles Thompson, a former member of The Australian Ballet.

Amy Harris was born in Ararat, Victoria and began jazz and tap classes at her local ballet school at the age of three. From the age of ten, Amy trained in the Cecchetti method with the Carole Oliver School of Ballet in Ballarat, and as a Cecchetti scholar she won bronze and silver medals. In 1999, aged 15, Amy successfully auditioned for The Australian Ballet School. She joined The Australian Ballet in 2002 and was promoted to coryphée in 2007, soloist in 2011 and senior artist in 2012. In 2018 she was promoted to principal artist on stage after her performance as Tertulla in the world premiere of Lucas Jervies' Spartacus.

Repertoire highlights — The Queen of Hearts in Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's

Adventures in Wonderland© 2017— Wayne McGregor’s Infra 2017— Aurora and the Lilac Fairy in David McAllister's The Sleeping

Beauty 2017— The Stepmother in Alexei Ratmansky's Cinderella 2016— Baroness von Rothbart in Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake 2016— William Forsythe's In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated 2016— Swanilda in Peggy van Praagh’s Coppélia 2016 — Romola in John Neumeier's Nijinsky 2016— Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room 2015— Hanna in The Merry Widow 2011

Guest appearances — Principal Lady in Paquita and Odile in Swan Lake, The Dancers

Company tour 2013

Awards — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award 2012— Telstra People’s Choice Award 2008, 2010

You may not know ... Amy is married to fellow dancer Jarryd Madden, and they have a daughter, Willow Ava Madden.

Kevin Jackson’s principal artist position is generously supported by Lynnette Harvey

Born in Perth, Kevin commenced his dance training at the age of seven with the Shirley Farrell Academy of Dance. In 2002 he graduated from The Australian Ballet School; he joined The Australian Ballet in 2003 and was promoted to principal artist in 2010. In his time with the company, he has performed many lead roles in both classical and contemporary works by choreographers including John Neumeier, Alexei Ratmansky, Wayne McGregor, Jirí Kylián and Graeme Murphy. Kevin enjoys the technique and artistry demanded by many different works but holds the story ballet closest to his heart.

Repertoire highlights — Vaslav Nijinsky in John Neumeier's Nijinsky 2016 — Prince Désiré in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2015 — Albrecht in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle 2015 — Oberon in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream 2015 — Onegin and Lenksy in John Cranko’s Onegin 2012 — des Grieux in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon 2014, 2008 — Prince Siegfried in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2014, 2013, 2009 — Romeo in Graeme Murphy's Romeo & Juliet 2011 — Jerome Robbins’ A Suite of Dances 2008 — George Balanchine’s Apollo 2007

Guest appearances — The Prince in Stanton Welch's The Nutcracker, Houston Ballet 2016 — des Grieux in Kenneth MacMillan's Manon, American Ballet Theatre (exchange artist) 2014 — Lucas Jervies' Human/Abstract, JACK Productions, 2010

Awards — Nomination for the Benois de la Danse award for

Jack/Knave in Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland©, 2017

— Helpmann Award for Best Male Dancer, Nijinsky, 2017 — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award 2008 — Khitercs Hirai Foundation Scholarship 2007

Choreographic works — Encomium for Bodytorque.Muses 2011 — Enter Closer for Bodytorque.2.2 2009

You may not know ... Kevin holds a Vocational Graduate Diploma in Elite Dance Instruction from The Australian Ballet School, and has a keen interest in teaching the next generation of dancers.

“Jackson is a delightfully impulsive Romeo, all boyish charm and passion” The West Australian

KEVIN JACKSON


P R I N C I PA L A R T I S T S

“Poised and elegant”The Age

“Attains impressive heights”New Zealand Theatre Review

TY KING-WALL AKO KONDO

Born in Waihi, New Zealand, Ty King-Wall started dancing at the age of seven. He received his early ballet training at the Dance Education Centre in Tauranga. A Junior Associate of the New Zealand School of Dance, he left New Zealand at 16 to study full-time at The Australian Ballet School. Upon graduating dux with honours, Ty was accepted into The Australian Ballet in 2006. Since joining the company, Ty has danced numerous principal roles, and had the role of Ceyx created on him in Tim Harbour’s Halcyon. He was promoted to soloist in 2010, to senior artist in 2011, and to principal artist in 2013.

Repertoire highlights — Albrecht in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle 2015 — Solor in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère 2014 — Basilio in Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Quixote 2013 — Principal Man in Harald Lander’s Études 2012 — Prince Siegfried in Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake 2012 — Lensky in John Cranko’s Onegin 2012 — Pinkerton in Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly 2011 — The Prince in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014, 2010 — Franz in Peggy van Praagh’s Coppélia 2010 — Prince Florimund in Stanton Welch’s The Sleeping Beauty 2015

Awards — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award 2010 — Khitercs Hirai Foundation Scholarship 2013 — Lissa Black Scholarship 2011 — Silver Medal, Asia Pacific International Ballet Competition 2005 — PACANZ Young Performer of the Year Award 2002

Guest appearances — Prince Siegfried in Russell Kerr’s Swan Lake with Royal New Zealand Ballet 2013 — Les Sylphides and Aurora’s Wedding, The Dancers Company tour 2008

You may not know ... Ty is an avid follower of cricket, rugby union and AFL.

He is also a long-time fan of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin comics, and wants to start brewing his own beer.

Ako was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1991. At three years old she began her training at the Shiho Kanazawa Ballet Studio. In 2005 Ako won second prize at the Japan Grand Prix, and in 2006 she studied at The Royal Ballet School’s International Summer School. In 2007 she was awarded The Australian Ballet School Tuition Scholarship, which was announced at the Youth America Grand Prix. Ako toured with The Dancers Company in 2008 and in 2010 joined The Australian Ballet. She was promoted to principal artist in April 2015 following her debut as Giselle, becoming The Australian Ballet's first Japanese principal artist.

Since joining The Australian Ballet, Ako has performed a variety of classical and contemporary works by choreographers such as Forsythe, McGregor, Murphy, Ratmansky and Wheeldon, and danced principal roles in ballets by choreographers such as Ashton, Balanchine, Lifar, MacMillan and Wright.

Repertoire highlights — Alice in Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017 — Wayne McGregor's Infra 2017 — Aurora in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2017, 2015 — Swanilda in Peggy van Praagh's Coppélia 2016 — Odette/Odile in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016 — William Forsythe's In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated 2016 — Cinderella in Alexei Ratmansky's Cinderella 2015 — Giselle in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle 2015 — Lescaut’s Mistress in Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon 2014 — Kitri in Rudolf Nureyev's Don Quixote 2013

Guest appearances — Odette/Odile in Derek Deane's Swan Lake, Shanghai Ballet 2017 — Yokohama Ballet Festival 2017, 2016 — The Dancers Company tour 2012, 2011

Awards — Helpmann Award for Best Female Dancer for Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2018— Nomination for Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer for Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2018— Nomination for the Benois de la Danse for Alice in Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017— Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Performance by a

Female Dancer in Peggy Peggy van Praagh's Coppélia 2016— Telstra Ballet Dancer Award nominee 2015, 2012— Susan Morgan Scholarship 2013 You may not know ... Ako is currently learning her third language, Chinese,

and plans to learn more languages in the future.

Melbourne-born Andrew Killian, a student of The Australian Ballet School, joined The Australian Ballet in 2000 and was promoted to principal artist in 2011. During his time with The Australian Ballet Andrew has thoroughly enjoyed performing leading roles in the company’s extensive classical repertoire including Lescaut in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, the Prince in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker, Prince Siegfried in Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake and the Cavalier in George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial. Andrew has also been involved in the creation of many new works including Stephen Baynes’ Constant Variants and Tim Harbour’s Wa, and has performed in most of The Australian Ballet’s Bodytorque seasons. He enjoys working closely with choreographers and offers a unique versatility that places him in high demand. Andrew has toured with The Australian Ballet to Auckland, Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris.

Repertoire highlights — Prince Siegfried in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2015, 2014 — Wayne McGregor’s Chroma and Dyad 1929 2014, 2013 — Lescaut in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon 2014, 2008 — Jirí Kylián’s Petite Mort and Bella Figura 2014, 2013 — Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain© 2011, 2007 — The Prince in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2010 — Jerome Robbins’ A Suite of Dances and The Cage 2008 — Stephen Page’s Rites 2008 — Jirí Kylián’s Stepping Stones 2005 and Forgotten Land 2016, 2005

Awards — Green Room Award ‘Year’s Work’ nomination 2012 — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award nominee 2009, 2006

Guest appearances — Fool’s Paradise with Morphoses 2009 — The Nutcracker with Houston Ballet 2007

You may not know ... Andrew is still struggling to learn how to cook and cried like a baby at his best friend’s wedding.

“Immaculate and debonair”Dance Australia

ANDREW KILLIAN


“Alluring calmness and superb artistry”Fjord Review

AMBER SCOTT

Amber Scott’s principal artist position is generously supported by Barbara Duhig

Amber Scott joined The Australian Ballet School at age eleven. After graduating as dux, she joined The Australian Ballet in 2001. In 2003 she spent four months on a dancer exchange at the Royal Danish Ballet, giving her the opportunity to learn the Bournonville technique firsthand. Amber was promoted to principal artist in 2011 after performing the Second Movement from Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto. Career highlights include working with Wayne McGregor on Dyad 1929 and Chroma; dancing with Robert Tewsley during the 2008 Manon season, Damian Smith in Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain© Pas de deux in 2012 and David Hallberg in Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella in 2013.

Repertoire highlights — Swanilda in Peggy van Praagh’s Coppélia (with David Hallberg of American Ballet Theatre) 2016 — Aurora and the Lilac Fairy in David McAllister’s The Sleeping Beauty 2015 — Giselle in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle 2015 — Nikiya in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère 2014 — The Sugar Plum Fairy in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014, 2010 — Odette/Odile in Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake 2013, 2012 — Odette in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2004 – 2015 — Manon in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon 2014, 2008 — Tatiana in John Cranko's Onegin 2012 — Hanna in Ronald Hynd's The Merry Widow 2011

Awards — Helpmann Award nomination for Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake 2013 — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award and Telstra People's Choice Award 2004 — First Place Junior Asian Pacific Competition, Tokyo 1999 — Adeline Genée Awards, bronze medal 1998

Guest appearances — Odette/Odile in Derek Deane’s Swan Lake with the Shanghai Ballet 2014 — National Ballet of China International Gala 2013 — Odette/Odile in Russell Kerr's Swan Lake with Royal New Zealand Ballet 2013 — Fall for Dance Festival, New York City (Glen Tetley's Gemini) 2011 — The Stuttgart Ballet's 50th Anniversary Gala (Molto Vivace Pas de deux) 2011

You may not know ... Amber first danced with David Hallberg, principal dancer

of American Ballet Theatre, in The Australian Ballet’s 2013 Sydney season of Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella. In 2016, she again partnered David in the company’s Sydney season of Coppélia, his first performances after a two-and-a-half-year break recovering from injury.

NSW/QLDHayley BaillieMrs Barbara BedwellMrs Susan Chisholm Mrs Bar CohenMrs Shanny CrouchMrs Gordon Douglass AMMrs Jane FreudensteinBozena GawartMrs Lynnette HarveyRoland HowlettMrs Frances InghamSarah Ingham Mrs Loraine McLarenMrs Helen O'NeilMrs Roslyn Packer ACDr Valmai Pidgeon AMMrs Nancy Reardon-FonsecaMrs Kelly Wyborn

VICMrs Mary BarlowMrs Di BertalliLisa BolteMs Natasha BownessMs Robin CampbellAngie CarterMrs Maureen CrawfordMrs Annette DavisAlane FinemanPrue Gillies AMMs Val HardingMs Linda HerdRosie LewMs Jodie MaunderLady Potter AC CMRILinton Soderholm

PRINCIPAL ARTISTS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY LES ÉTOILES


DIMITY AZOURY

Dimity Azoury began dancing at the age of four in her home town of Queanbeyan, NSW. She studied for eleven years at the Kim Harvey School of Dance in Canberra before moving to The Australian Ballet School in 2005. She was accepted into The Australian Ballet in 2008, where she had the opportunity to travel to Paris, London, New York, Japan, San Francisco and Los Angeles. She has loved working with many choreog-raphers including Nicolo Fonte, Graeme Murphy, Tim Harbour, Stephen Page and Stephen Baynes. Dimity was promoted to soloist in 2015 following her debut as Baroness von Rothbart in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, and to senior artist in 2017.

Repertoire highlights — Alice in Christopher

Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017

— Aurora in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2017

— Clara in Graeme Murphy's Nutcracker – The Story of Clara 2017

— Wayne McGregor's Infra 2017

— Swanilda in Peggy van Praagh's Coppélia 2016

— Baroness von Rothbart in Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake 2016, 2015

— Tim Harbour's Filigree and Shadow 2015

— Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room 2015

— Myrtha in Maina Gielgud's Giselle 2015

— Jirí Kylián's Bella Figura 2013

Awards — Telstra Ballet Dancer

Award, 2014— Telstra Ballet Dancer

Award nominee 2012

— Susan Morgan Scholarship 2012

You may not know ... Dimity loves animals, especially wombats, giant anteaters and draft horses.

S E N I O R A R T I S T S

“deliciously precise”

Simon Parris: Man in Chair

“Superb”

The Daily Telegraph

“sweetness, buoyancy and freedom”

Arts writer Deborah Jones

“fresh and alluring”

Bachtrack

“fleet-footed precision”

Sydney Morning Herald

“a true delight”

Bachtrack

JARRYD MADDEN

Encouraged by his dance teacher mother, Jarryd Madden started dancing at the age of three at his local dance school in Wauchope, NSW. He remained there until 2005 when, age 16, he joined Melbourne’s National Theatre Ballet School. After a guest stint with The Australian Ballet during the 2007 season of Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker, Jarryd officially joined the company at the beginning of 2008; he was promoted to coryphée in 2011, to soloist in 2015 and to senior artist in 2017. A versatile artist, Jarryd has performed in every Bodytorque season since joining the company.

Repertoire highlights— Jack/Knave of Hearts, Mad

Hatter and Caterpillar in Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017

— Doctor/Beloved Officer in Graeme Murphy's Nutcracker – The Story of Clara 2017


— Franz in Peggy van Praagh's Coppélia 2016

— William Forsythe's In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated 2016


— Jir í Kylián’s Bella Figura 2013

— Wayne McGregor's Dyad 1929 2013, 2009

— Nacho Duato's Por vos muero 2009

— Nicolo Fonte’s Possibility Space 2008

Awards — Telstra People's Choice

Award 2016— Telstra Ballet Dancer

Award nominee 2012

You may not know ... Jarryd is an avid comic book collector, movie buff and music lover. He is a first-time parent to beautiful daughter Willow with fellow dancer Amy Harris.

BENEDICTE BEMET

Benedicte Bemet was born in Mackay in 1994, and started ballet at the age of three. She grew up on the Gold Coast and began her training at the Ransley's Ballet Centre. When she was ten her family relocated to Hong Kong, where she continued her ballet training at the Jean M. Wong School of Ballet. She was accepted into The Australian Ballet School at age 14. In her time at the school she received the Award for Excellence in Level 6; in 2009 she was sent to New York and Canada to represent the school in the student exchange program. Benedicte toured with The Dancers Company in 2010 and 2011. She joined The Australian Ballet in 2012; she was promoted to coryphée in 2013, to soloist in 2016 and to senior artist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Swanilda in Peggy van

Praagh's Coppélia 2016— William Forsythe's In the

Middle, Somewhat Elevated 2016

— Viktor Gvosky's Grand pas classique 2016

— Second Region Pas de deux in Christopher Wheeldon's DGV©: Danse à grande vitesse 2016

— Third Movement Principal in George Balanchine's Symphony in C 2016

— Aurora and Princess Florine in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2015

— Peasant Pas de deux in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle 2015

— Clara in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014

— Sérénade Variation in Serge Lifar’s Suite en blanc 2014

— Soloist in Paquita 2013

Guest appearances — Paquita and Swan Lake Act

III, The Dancers Company tour 2015


Award 2015— Khitercs Hirai Foundation

Scholarship 2014 — Green Room Award

nomination for Clara in The Nutcracker 2014

— Telstra People’s Choice Award 2013

You may not know ... Benedicte loves baking and cooking anything involving chocolate!

DANA STEPHENSEN

At the age of three Dana Stephensen began her training in ballet, jazz, tap and singing with Davidia Lind in her hometown of Brisbane. She later trained with Mary Heath and Sandra Ashley. In 2001 she obtained her Royal Academy of Dance Solo Seal from the Queensland Dance School of Excellence. Dana joined The Australian Ballet School in 2002. In her graduating year she was seconded to The Australian Ballet to perform in various seasons before joining the company full-time in 2005. She has since enjoyed interna-tional tours to Los Angeles, New York, UK, Auckland, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Paris. Her Khitercs Hirai Scholarship enabled her to gain invaluable experience training with numerous ballet companies in Europe. Dana was promoted to coryphée in 2010 and later that year won the Telstra Ballet Dancer Award. Dana was promoted to soloist in 2012 and to senior artist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Stepmother in Alexei

Ratmansky’s Cinderella 2018, 2013

— Tertulla in Lucas Jervies' Spartacus 2018


— Valencienne in Ronald Hynd's The Merry Widow 2018

— Princess Florine and the Fairy of Temperament in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2018, 2017

— Dawn in Peggy van Praagh's Coppélia 2016

— Giselle in Giselle (The Australian Ballet's Regional Tour 2016)

— Lescaut's Mistress in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon 2014

— Rose Fairy in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014

— Wayne McGregor’s Infra (2017), Chroma (2014) and Dyad 1929 (2013, 2009)

Guest appearances — Kitri in Don Quixote, The

Dancers Company tour 2010 Awards — Telstra Ballet Dancer

Award 2010— Khitercs Hirai Foundation

Scholarship 2008

You may not know ... Dana has a young son called Jasper who is the light of her life. She writes when she can on her blog The Balance Point(e) (thebalancepointe.com)

CRISTIANO MARTINO

Cristiano Martino began ballet in his hometown of Adelaide at The Barbara Jayne Dance Centre. He moved to Melbourne in 2009 to join The Australian Ballet School, where he trained for four years before graduating as dux. He joined The Australian Ballet in 2013; he was promoted to coryphée in 2015, to soloist in 2017 and to senior artist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Spartacus in Lucas Jervies'

Spartacus 2018— The Prince in Alexei

Ratmansky's Cinderella 2018

— Prince Désiré and the Bluebird in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2017


— The Golden Slave/Faun in John Neumeier's Nijinsky 2016

— Benno in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016


— Oberon in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream 2015

— Frederick Ashton’s Symphonic Variations 2015

— Jir í Kylián’s Petite Mort 2014


Award nominee 2014

You may not know ... Cristiano is still best friends with his first dancing partner, whom he’s known from the age of ten; she often comes to see him dance.

MARCUS MORELLI

Marcus Morelli was born in Melbourne and started dance classes at the age of ten. He studied at the Jane Moore Academy of Ballet and The Australian Ballet School, and toured with The Dancers Company in 2013. He joined The Australian Ballet in 2014; he was promoted to coryphée in 2015, and to soloist in 2017, after dancing the Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty. He was promoted to senior artist after the 2018 season of Spartacus.

Repertoire highlights — Stanislav Nijinsky in John

Neumeier's Nijinsky 2016— Actéon in Diana and

Actéon Pas de deux 2016— The Bluebird in David

McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2015

— Puck in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream 2015


— Earl’s Equerry in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2015

— Trepak in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014

— Agni the Fire God and Fakir in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère 2014

— Pas de cinq in Serge Lifar’s Suite en blanc 2014

Awards — Telstra People’s Choice

Award 2015

You may not know ... Marcus enjoys playing video games, watching TV, and skateboarding in his spare time.


Chengwu Guo. Photography Lynette Wills

“Magnificent”

The Border Mail

“Graceful strength”

Dance Australia

VALERIE TERESHCHENKO

JADE WOOD

Jade Wood was born in Cairns, Queensland, and started dancing at the age of three at the Jillanne Reynolds School of Dance. After moving with her family to Portugal for a year when she was ten, she returned to Cairns and joined The Australian Ballet School’s Interstate Junior Programme, traveling to Melbourne a few times per year. In 2004, Jade relocated to Melbourne to attend The Australian Ballet School. She toured with The Dancers Company in 2009 and 2010 and joined The Australian Ballet in 2011. She has toured internationally with the company to New York, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Beijing, Shanghai and London. She was promoted to coryphée in 2015, to soloist in 2017 and to senior artist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights— Cinderella in Alexei


— Princess Florine and the Fairy of Musicality in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2018, 2017, 2015

— Alice in Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017

— Giselle in The Australian Ballet's Regional Tour of Giselle, 2017


— Firebird in Graeme Murphy's Firebird 2018


— 4th Movement Principal in George Balanchine's Symphony in C 2017

— Agrippina Vaganova's Diana and Actéon Pas de deux 2016

— ‘Bomb Squad’ Ballerina in Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room 2015


Award and People's Choice Award 2018

— Telstra Ballet Dancer Award nominee 2016, 2014

You may not know ... Jade and her fiancé are proud owners of two long-haired miniature dachshunds named Bentley and Winter.

Valerie Tereshchenko was born in Kiev, Ukraine. She immigrated to Australia with her family when she was six years old and a year later took her first ballet class. Valerie's talent for movement was nurtured at a number of Melbourne-based dance schools, including West Point Ballet Academy, Ballet Theatre of Victoria, and the Australian Interna-tional School of Coaching. Valerie later joined The Australian Ballet School. In 2008 she participated in a school exchange in North America and that same year performed with The Dancers Company tour for the second time. In 2009 she joined The Australian Ballet; she was promoted to coryphée in 2015, to soloist in 2017 and to senior artist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — The Lilac Fairy in David

McAllister’s The Sleeping Beauty 2017, 2015

— Wayne McGregor’s Infra 2017

— Lead Swan in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016



— Russian Dancer in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016, 2012

— Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle 2015

— Guardian Swan in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2015

— Stepmother in Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella 2014 – 2016


Award 2017 — Telstra Ballet Dancer

Award nominee 2013



You may not know ... Valerie speaks fluent Russian.


NATASHA KUSEN CALLUM LINNANE

Born in Sydney, Natasha Kusen began dancing at the age of four. She trained with Nicholina Kuner’s Academy Ballet in Randwick. In 2001 Natasha won a scholarship at the Prix de Lausanne to study at The Royal Ballet School in London. While still a student, she toured with The Royal Ballet to Australia in 2002 and Russia in 2003. Upon graduation in 2003, Natasha came home to Australia to join The Australian Ballet. In 2006 she was the recipient of the George Garratt Scholarship, which enabled her to gain valuable experience visiting European ballet companies. Natasha was promoted to soloist in 2013.

Repertoire highlights — Frederick Ashton’s

Monotones II and The Dream 2015

— Jirí Kylián's Petite Mort, Sechs Tänze, Bella Figura and Stepping Stones 2014, 2013, 2005

— Third Shade variation and Ajah in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère 2014

— Snow Fairy and Arabe in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014

— Lead Swan in Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake 2012

— Suzuki in Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly 2011

— Prayer in Peggy van Praagh’s Coppélia 2010

— Nacho Duato’s Por vos muero 2009

— Calliope in George Balanchine’s Apollo 2009

— Christopher Wheeldon’s Continuum© 2004


Award nominee 2013, 2010— George Garrett Scholarship

2006

You may not know ... Natasha curates her own style blog, Studio to Street (studiotostreet.com.au), an additional creative outlet where she combines her two passions, dance and fashion, through creative writing and photography.

Callum Linnane grew up in Ballarat, Victoria, where he began tap-dancing classes at the age of seven. He started ballet classes when he was eleven. He trained with Lauren Young before being accepted into The Australian Ballet School in 2008. Callum toured with The Dancers Company in 2013 and 2014; he joined The Australian Ballet in 2015. He was promoted to coryphée in 2017 and to soloist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Jack/Knave of Hearts in

Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017

— Second Movement Principal in George Balanchine's Symphony in C 2017

— Vaslav Nijinsky in John Neumeier's Nijinsky 2016


— First Movement Principal in George Balanchine's Symphony in C 2016

— Stomper in Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room 2015


Awards — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award

2016

You may not know ... Callum is related to Lieutenant-Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel, AO, MBE, ARRC, ED,

FNM, an Australian Army nurse during the Second World War and the sole surviving nurse of the Bangka Island Massacre, which took place on 16 February 1942. Vivian was an Australian hero.

S O L O I S T S

NICOLA CURRY INGRID GOWIMOGEN CHAPMAN BRODIE JAMES

Nicola Curry grew up inColorado Springs, USA. Atthe age of 14, she moved toToronto to train at Canada’sNational Ballet School, whereshe received the Erik Bruhn Memorial Award for Excellence in Ballet. At theage of 18, Nicola movedto New York City to joinAmerican Ballet Theatre,where she danced for tenyears. While at ABT, sheperformed featured rolessuch as Hermia in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, a Big Swan in Kevin McKenzie’s Swan Lake, Her Stepsister in James Kudelka’s Cinderella, Lady Capulet in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, and Tall Pas d’Action in Natalia Makarova’s La Bayadère, along with a variety of other featured roles in ballets by George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp, John Neumeier and Alexei Ratmansky. She has toured with American Ballet Theatre to Moscow, Muscat, Oman, Abu Dhabi, London, Paris, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Taipei and numerous US cities. Nicola joined The Australian Ballet in 2015.

Repertoire highlights — Bronislava Nijinska in John

Neumeier's Nijinsky 2016— Lead Swan and Spanish

Dancer in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016


— The Lilac Fairy and Fairy of Grace in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2015

— ‘Stomper’ in Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room 2015

Guest appearances — Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis

in Giselle, The Australian Ballet Regional Tour 2016


Award nominee 2016

You may not know ... Nicola is a qualified Pilates instructor. She can also be seen performing in the ballet class scenes in the 2010 Oscar Award-winning film Black Swan.

Ingrid Gow was born in Randwick, Sydney in 1987. She knew from the age of four that she wanted to grow up to be a ballerina. Her training began at Academy Ballet in Sydney and continued at the New Zealand School of Dance. In 2007 Ingrid successfully auditioned for Royal New Zealand Ballet, where she danced for three years. Ingrid joined The Australian Ballet in 2010; she was promoted to coryphée in 2013 and to soloist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Princess Royal in Graeme

Murphy’s Swan Lake 2015— Richard House’s Control

and Finding the Calm for Bodytorque 2014, 2013

— Frederick Ashton’s Symphonic Variations 2015

— Jiří Kylián's Petite Mort 2014

— Jiří Kylián's Bella Figura 2013

— Skinny Stepsister in Alexei Ratmansky's Cinderella 2016, 2015, 2013

— Garry Stewart's Monument 2013

— Lady Capulet in Graeme Murphy's Romeo & Juliet 2011

— Grand Matriarch in Ronald Hynd's The Merry Widow 2011


Award nominee 2014

You may not know ... Ingrid loves reading and adding to her high-heel collection.

Imogen was born in Perth, Western Australia. She began ballet at the age of three, and at the age of eleven moved to Melbourne to continue her training at The Australian Ballet School. In 2007 she moved to London to accept a place at The Royal Ballet School, graduating in 2010. During her time at The Royal Ballet School, she performed with The Royal Ballet in productions including La Bayadère, Giselle and Cinderella, toured to Japan with the School, and was chosen (in her second year of training) to tour with Carlos Acosta, performing Apollo in Valencia. After her graduation she joined the Scottish Ballet before joining The Australian Ballet in 2011. She was promoted to coryphée in 2016 and to soloist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Prayer in Peggy van

Praagh's Coppélia 2016— Guardian Swan in Graeme

Murphy’s Swan Lake 2016, 2015

— Lead Swan in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016


— Venus in Alexei Ratmansky's Cinderella 2016, 2015

— Fairy of Joy in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2015




People’s Choice Award 2014

You may not know ... Imogen is very fond of animals, the bush, live music and spending time at her family home in Perth's hills.

Brodie James was born in Perth and began his dance training with jazz and acrobatics at the Jody Marshall Dance Company in 2001. He trained at The Graduate College of Dance from 2005 under the direction of Dawn Weller. He was offered a scholarship to attend The Australian Ballet School in 2008; while there he spent time studying at Canada’s National Ballet School as an exchange student. He toured with The Dancers Company in 2011 and joined The Australian Ballet in 2012. In 2014 he participated in a dancer exchange, performing with the Royal Ballet of Flanders in Antwerp. He was promoted to coryphée in 2017, and to soloist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — The Prince in Alexei



— The Caterpillar in Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017

— Viktor Gsovsky's Grand pas classique 2017, 2016

— 1st Movement Soloist in George Balanchine's Symphony in C 2017

— Albrecht in Giselle (Regional Tour) 2016

— 'White Couple' in Jiří Kylián's Forgotten Land 2016

— Frederick Ashton’s Monotones II 2015

— Garuda the Dream God in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère 2014



Awards— Telstra Ballet Dancer

Award nominee 2018, 2016

You may not know ... Brodie is currently studying a bachelor of media and communications online.


CHRISTOPHER RODGERS-WILSON

Christopher Rodgers-Wilson was born in England but grew up in Melbourne, starting ballet classes at the age of six. He trained at the Camberwell District Ballet School before moving to London to study at The Royal Ballet School, where he won the Charles Wall scholarship and the Kenneth MacMillan Trust Scholarship, and toured to Germany and Dubai. Chris joined the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2007. Career highlights included the pas de quatre in Peter Wright’s The Sleeping Beauty, the pas de six in Swan Lake, Rose Fairy Cavalier in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker, First Seminarian in David Bintley’s Carmina Burana, the Mandolin Dance in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, Grosse Fugue by Hans van Manen and In the Upper Room by Twyla Tharp. He toured with the BRB to Japan, China and the USA. He joined The Australian Ballet in 2011; he was promoted to coryphée in 2013 and soloist in 2016.

Repertoire highlights — Camille in Ronald Hynd's

The Merry Widow 2018— Jack/Knave in

Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017

— Franz in Peggy van Praagh's Coppélia 2016

— The Bluebird in David McAllister’s The Sleeping Beauty 2015


— Earl in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2015

— Frederick Ashton’s Symphonic Variations and The Dream 2015

— Wayne McGregor's Chroma 2014

— Jirí Kylián’s Petite Mort 2014

— The Adolescent in Graeme Murphy's Beyond Twelve 2012


Award 2013

Guest appearances — Swan Lake Act III and

Paquita, The Dancers Company tour 2014, 2013

You may not know ... In addition to dancing and his family and friends, Chris has a passion for all kinds of breakfast foods.

JILL OGAIRINA NEMOTO KAREN NANASCAJAKE MANGAKAHIA

Jill Ogai was born in Sydney in 1993, and grew up on Bondi Beach. At the age of four she and her twin brother, after watching a ballet video, surprised their parents by asking if they could start ballet classes. She began at The Ballet Class Rose Bay. When her family moved to Adelaide she continued training with Sheila Laing and Elayne Cherry before moving to Melbourne at age 14 to begin full-time studies at The Australian Ballet School. Jill toured with The Dancers Company in 2010 and 2011 and joined The Australian Ballet in 2012. She was promoted to soloist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Fairy of Temperament and

Princess Florine in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2017, 2015

— Tim Harbour's Squander and Glory 2017

— Diana and Actéon Pas de deux 2017, 2016

— The Duchess in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016


— Tim Harbour’s Filigree and Shadow 2015

— Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room 2015

— Dumpy Stepsister in Alexei Ratmansky’s Cinderella 2015, 2014

— Moth in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream 2015

— First Shade variation in Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère 2014

Guest appearances — Expressions Dance

Company Solo Festival of Dance, Tim Harbour’s Extro 2

Awards— Telstra Ballet Dancer

Award nominee 2016

You may not know ... Jill paints, draws and makes her own clothing.

Rina Nemoto was born in Tokyo, Japan, and began dancing at the age of three. At the age of 15, she travelled to Paris for two years of classical ballet training with Daini Kudo and Dominique Khalfouni. In 2009, Rina was awarded a Prix de Lausanne scholarship and joined The Royal Ballet as an apprentice dancer. She joined The Australian Ballet in 2011; she was promoted to coryphée in 2016 and to soloist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Alice in Christopher

Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland© 2017

— Fairy of Grace and Fairy of Generosity in David McAllister's The Sleeping Beauty 2017, 2015

— Pas de trois from Stephen Baynes' Imaginary Masque 2017

— Pas de deux from Stephen Baynes' Molto Vivace (Ballet Under the Stars 2017)

— La Sieste in Serge Lifar's Suite en blanc (Adelaide Gala Spectacular 2017)

— 2nd Movement Soloist in George Balanchine's Symphony in C 2017

— Dawn in Peggy van Praagh's Coppélia 2017

— Countess, Lead Swan and Russian Dancer in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016


Award nominee 2018, 2014

You may not know ... Rina is interested in pottery, and would like to explore it when she has more time.

Karen Nanasca was born in Auckland, New Zealand. Hailing from an athletic family, she followed in their footsteps by studying ballet from the age of seven. Her natural talent was immediately noticed and nurtured by her teachers at the Mt Eden Ballet Academy. She won the New Zealand National Ballet Award in 2004, followed by a placing in the semi-finals of the Prix de Lausanne in 2005. In 2006 she was the recipient of the Elizabeth McDonald Scholarship, allowing her to cross the Tasman and join The Australian Ballet School. Karen became a member of The Australian Ballet's corps de ballet in 2009 and was promoted to coryphée in 2012; she was promoted to soloist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights — Giselle in Giselle (The

Australian Ballet's Regional Tour) 2017, 2016

— Fairy of Temperament in David McAllister’s The Sleeping Beauty 2017, 2015

— Diana and Actéon Pas de deux 2017

— 3rd movement Soloist in George Balanchine's Symphony in C 2017


— Red Pas de deux in Jirí Kylián’s Forgotten Land 2016

— ‘Stomper’ in Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room 2015

— Cygnet in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake 2012 - 2015

— Clara in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker 2014

— Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929 2013, 2009


Award nominee 2011

You may not know ... In 2015 Karen participated in an exchange with the Royal Swedish Ballet and performed in Rudolf Nureyev's production of Don Quixote.

Jake was born on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. As soon as his parents discovered that their baby was bopping his little head to any music he heard, they put him into dance classes. At the age of ten Jake successfully auditioned for The Australian Ballet School. At the age of 18 he joined The Australian Ballet. He was promoted to coryphée in 2017 and to soloist in 2018.

Repertoire highlights— Tim Harbour's Squander

and Glory 2017— Vaslav Nijinsky in John

Neumeier's Nijinsky 2016— Stephen Page's Waramuk -

in the dark night 2012— Graham Murphy's Beyond

Twelve 2012— Gary Stewart's Monument

2011

Awards — Telstra People's Choice

Award 2017, 2012

You may not know ... In 2014 Jake made the decision to take a two-year sabbatical and fulfil a life-long dream to serve as a Christian missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day-Saints. He served in the Toronto mission and returned to The Australian Ballet in 2016.

SHARNI SPENCER

Sharni Spencer was born in Lismore NSW and grew up in Tamworth and Newcastle. She began dance classes when she was three years old and studied at Sally Kefts School of Dance and Marie Walton Mahon Dance Academy before joining New Zealand School of Dance. Sharni joined The Australian Ballet at the beginning of 2008 and was promoted to coryphée in 2012 and to soloist in 2017. She was the recipient of the Khitercs Hirai Foundation Scholarship in 2012, and used it to spend three months rehearsing and performing Giselle with Dutch National Ballet.

Repertoire highlights — Cinderella in Alexei



— The Fairy of Generosity in David McAllister’s The Sleeping Beauty 2017, 2015

— The Countess in Stephen Baynes' Swan Lake 2016

— 'White Couple' in Jirí Kylián's Forgotten Land 2016

— Fourth Movement Soloist in George Balanchine's Symphony in C 2016

— Lead Wili in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle 2015

— Cygnet in Graeme Murphy’s and Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake 2012 - 2015

— Soloist in Paquita 2013— Stephen Baynes' Requiem

2011 Awards — Telstra Ballet Dancer Award

nominee 2017, 2013— Khitercs Hirai Foundation

Scholarship 2012

You may not know ... Sharni has swum with manta rays in Hawaii.


C O R Y P H É E S

JACQUELINE CLARK

COREY HERBERT

DREW HEDDITCH

LUKE MARCHANT

NATHAN BROOK

SHAUN ANDREWS

AMANDA McGUIGAN

FRANÇOIS-ELOI LAVIGNAC

ALICE TOPP

YUUMI YAMADA

AYA WATANABE

YICHUAN WANG

JESSICA WOOD

LUCIEN XU

SARA ANDRLON

MATTHEW BRADWELL

DANIEL BRYNE

TIMOTHY COLEMAN

JASMIN DURHAM

LISA CRAIG

KATHERINE SONNEKUS

SARANJA CROWE

ISOBELLE DASHWOOD*

JACOB DE GROOT

EVIE FERRIS

ROHAN FURNELL

SERENA GRAHAM

EMMA KOPPELMAN

DANIEL IDASZAK

CAMERON HOLMES

SEAN KILEY

MASON LOVEGROVE^

ELLA HAVELKA**

KELSEY STOKES

SOPHIE MORGAN

COCO MATHIESON

ANNALIESE MACDONALD

ALEXANDRA MOORE

THOMAS MCCLINTOCK

MONTANA RUBIN

RICCARDO RODIGHIERO

TYSON POWELL

GEORGE-MURRAY NIGHTINGALE

EDWARD SMITH

JOSEPH ROMANCEWICZ

C O R P S D E B A L L E T

^Philanthropy Ambassador **Corps de Ballet position supported by The Susan and Sam Chisholm Fund

^Corps de ballet position supported by The Ross Trust Mason Lovegrove is the 2018 recipient of the Walter Bourke Award


PROUDLY SUPPORTING AUSTRALIA’S INSPIRATIONAL ARTISTS AND CREATORS

Callum Linnane and Isobelle Dashwood. Photography Taylor-Ferné Morris


FIONA TONKIN STEVEN HEATHCOTE AM

MEGAN CONNELLY

A R T I S T I C S TA F F

PAUL KNOBLOCHELIZABETH TOOHEY

Artistic Associate & Principal Coach

Ballet Master & Regional Touring Associate

Ballet Mistress & Rehabilitation Specialist

Ballet Master Ballet Mistress & Repetiteur

Fiona Tonkin began her career at the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 1979. At the invitation of Marilyn Jones, Fiona joined The Australian Ballet in 1980. By 1987 she had become a principal artist, renowned for her interpre-tative artistry, classicism and technical versatility.

Career highlights include dancing Aurora at the Royal Opera House London, Juliet at the Kirov Theatre St Petersburg, Flavia and Giselle at the Metropolitan Opera House New York, and opening the company’s 1992 London season as Giselle. She appeared as a guest artist with the Kirov Ballet in Swan Lake and on the Rudolf Nureyev Farewell Tour, and danced the title roles in the ABC Television broadcasts of La Fille mal gardée and Romeo and Juliet. Fiona received Green Room Awards in 1988 and 1989.

During her 14 years with the company Fiona performed in over 70 ballets including all the major classics as well as ballets such as Onegin, Song of the Earth, Monotones, Suite en blanc, Serenade, Symphony in C, Ballet Imperial, Four Temperaments, The Concert, Return to the Strange Land, Forgotten Land and Pillar of Fire.

Fiona graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1998 while guest-teaching in New Zealand and Australia. In 1999 she completed The Australian Ballet School’s Teachers Course and was awarded the Australian Multicultural Foundation Scholarship.

In 2000 Artistic Director Matz Skoog appointed her Rehearsal Director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. She continued to work with Skoog in London as assistant artistic director of the English National Ballet in 2002. Fiona returned to The Australian Ballet in 2003 at the invitation of David McAllister, and celebrated 25 years with the company in 2013.

Born in Western Australia, Steven Heathcote took up ballet lessons at the age of ten. He was accepted into The Australian Ballet School at the age of 16 and was offered a contract with The Australian Ballet in 1983.

Steven experienced a rapid rise to the rank of principal artist, a position he sustained for 20 years. He was invited to perform as guest artist with some of the world’s major ballet companies, including American Ballet Theatre, Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet and the Mariinsky Ballet.

After retiring from the dance stage in 2007 as The Australian Ballet’s longest serving principal artist, Steven appeared in the 2009 feature film Mao’s Last Dancer and has been actively engaged in specialised coaching for dancers, public speaking, presenting and acting.

In 2010 Steven conceived and directed a new production of Handel’s Julius Caesar, for Victorian Opera. In 2012 he returned to opera as choreographer and assistant director to John Bell for the Victorian Opera’s new production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.

In 2013, Steven performed the title role of Don Quixote in The Australian Ballet’s production of the ballet, and was assistant director to John Bell for Opera Australia's new production of Tosca.

Steven lives in Melbourne with his wife Kathy; they have two adult children.

In 2014, at the invitation of David McAllister, Steven returned to The Australian Ballet as a ballet master and regional touring associate.

Megan Connelly joined The Australian Ballet in 1991 under the direction of Maina Gielgud, and performed in many works including The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Widow, La Fille mal gardée, The Taming of the Shrew and Symphony in C. She was appointed assistant to the ballet staff before taking up the position of principal teacher at the Christine Walsh Dance Centre. In 1999 she was appointed ballet mistress on the Year 2000 project for the Sansouci Music Festival, Berlin. She has performed with Victoria State Opera and Opera Australia; her choreographic works include Between Space for the 2000 Australian Dance Awards, and Voices, accompanied by Melbourne Bulgarian Women’s Choir. She has been a guest teacher at Sydney Dance Company, Queensland Ballet, Victorian College of the Arts, Ballet Philippines, Royal Flemish Opera Ballet School, Staatheatre St Gallen, Michael Clark Company and Cecchetti Society.

At the invitation of David McAllister, Megan returned to The Australian Ballet in 2001 as assistant to the artistic director, and soon after added the work of ballet coach to the role. During this time, Megan co-authored Bodywise for ABC books and qualified as an APMA Pilates Instructor.

In 2009 Megan was appointed ballet technique & rehabilitation specialist for The Australian Ballet and returned to the stage as the Mother in Alexei Ratmansky’s Scuola di ballo. In 2010 she joined the teaching staff of The Australian Ballet School, in addition to her work with the company, and in 2012 completed a Vocational Graduate Certificate in Elite Dance Instruction. In 2014 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship.

Paul Knobloch was born in Canberra and began his dance training at the Canberra Dance Development Centre before graduating from The Australian Ballet School with honours in 1997.

Paul joined The Australian Ballet in 2002 and rose to the rank of soloist before embarking on an international career. In 2009 he took up the invitation to join Béjart Ballet Lausanne as a premiere danseur and has performed all over the world as a member of distinguished companies including English National Ballet, West Australian Ballet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet USA and Sydney Dance Company.

Paul has danced many principal and soloist roles in the works of celebrated choreographers and has performed on the most illustrious stages in the world including Palais Garnier, London Coliseum and Tokyo Bunka Kaikan.

He has built a strong identity as both a leading artist and choreographer and has a string of accolades to his name. Paul has caught the eye of many renowned choreographers and has had numerous roles created on him as a dancer; he has also forged his own choreographic voice, creating works for The Australian Ballet, Ballet Victoria and leading schools and institutions across Australia, Canada and the USA.

He has had professional teaching appointments at companies including Sydney Dance Company, Bangarra Dance Theatre, and Hong Kong Ballet.

Elizabeth Toohey was born in Newcastle and joined The Australian Ballet after graduating from The Australian Ballet School in 1979. She remained with the company until 1990. In 1985 she and David McAllister entered the 5th International Ballet Competition in Moscow. Following this, they were invited to perform Don Quixote with the Bolshoi Ballet in 1986 and the Kirov Ballet in 1988. They performed Walter Bourke’s Grand Tarantella in galas around the former Soviet Union, cementing an enduring partnership.

Elizabeth’s performance highlights include Kitri in Don Quixote, Lise in La Fille mal gardée, Swanilda in Coppélia, Olga in Onegin and Kate in The Taming of the Shrew; she also danced featured roles in contemporary works by choreographers such as Sir Kenneth MacMillan and Jirí Kylián, and created the role of Rose in Robert Ray’s The Sentimental Bloke. She has been a guest artist with Norwegian National Ballet and a resident guest principal with English National Ballet. Career highlights include dancing the Peasant Pas de deux in Maina Gielgud’s Giselle at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House and the Bluebird Pas de deux in Maina Gielgud’s The Sleeping Beauty at London’s Covent Garden before the Queen, both with David McAllister.

Following her retirement, Elizabeth completed an Arts Administration apprenticeship with English National Ballet; she is also an internationally certified Stott Pilates Instructor.

In 2008 she joined the Royal Swedish Ballet’s rehabilitation team; under the directorship of Johannes Öhman, she was ballet mistress and rehearsal director.

She has taught at several international summer schools and was a guest teacher with Estonian National Ballet in 2015. In 2016, she returned to The Australian Ballet as a guest teacher and in 2017 accepted David McAllister’s invitation to become a ballet mistress with the company.


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Alice Topp. Photography Lynette Wills


Amy Harris. Photography Lynette Wills


P H I L A N T H R O P Y

$1,000,000 PLUSMr Robert Albert AO RFD RD & Mrs Elizabeth AlbertThe late Betty Amsden AOThe Australian Ballet SocietyMr William Bowness AOJoan and Peter Clemenger TrustMr Jim Cousins AO & Mrs Libby CousinsMrs Barbara DuhigFriends of The Australian Ballet (NSW) LtdFrances GerardEstate of Anne GluyasEstate of Reginald Edward GregoryEstate of George William Gregson Estate of Lionel Frederick Hann and Harry John ColliganMrs Lynnette HarveyMs Linda HerdMr Ian Hicks AMLachlan & Sarah MurdochEstate of Arthur & Roma NorcottMrs Roslyn Packer ACDr Valmai Pidgeon AMThe Ian Potter FoundationLady Potter AC CMRIJames & Diana Ramsay FoundationMr Kenneth R Reed AMThe Ross TrustSandra Taylor-BowmanGraeme Uthmeyer & Lisa BolteZambelli Family

$500,000 PLUSMrs Mary BarlowMrs Jennifer Brukner & The late Mr John BruknerMs Robin CampbellMrs Susan Chisholm & the late Sam Hewlings Chisholm AOEstate of Keith M ChristensenColonial Foundation LimitedEthel Margaret Ewing Cutten FoundationFriends of The Australian Ballet (SA) IncThe Glendonbrook FoundationIn memory of Mrs J J HoldenMrs Susan MorganMrs Helen O'NeilBruce Parncutt AOThe late Lady (June) PorterEstate of Peter & Barbara ShearerPeter & Christine SmedleyMr Dick Smith AC & Mrs Pip Smith AOLady Southey AC & the late Sir Robert Southey AO CMGTalbot Family FoundationRay Wilson OAM

$300,000 PLUSEstate of Christine Ann BrownMr John A Calvert-Jones AM & Mrs Janet Calvert-Jones AOMr Colin Carter AM & Mrs Angie CarterMs Laurie CowledEstate of Melba CromackCraig Dunn & Bozena GawartEstate of Susan FitzpatrickMr & Mrs Henry GreenfieldMs Val HardingMr John C. Higgins AO & Ms Jodie MaunderIan & Jeannie JohnsonDavid McAllister AMMr Peter Reilly & Mr Linton SoderholmRenaissance ToursThyne Reid FoundationMrs Marjorie White

Italics denotes this commitment includes a bequest to The Australian Ballet

We also wish to acknowledge and thank those individuals who have chosen to remain anonymous

LIFETIME COMMITMENTS

We celebrate the individuals and foundations whose generosity has had a significant and transformative impact on the history of The Australian Ballet.

FOUNDATION BOARD

Edwina McCann Chair

Robin CampbellVIC State ChairJane Freudenstein NSW State Chair

Arun AbeyMary BarlowHayley BaillieDi BertalliBill Bowness AO Natasha BownessPrue BrownColin Carter AMGeorgina CurranCara Elsley

Suellen EnestromFrances InghamSarah Ingham Nicola KaldorGail MarshallJodie MaunderSybella MorrisKaren MorrisonMaria PannozzoLynne Wright

A NOTE FROM EDWINA McCANN

Along with everyone on the Foundation Board, I am delighted to experience Maina Gielgud’s Giselle with our Sydney audiences in 2019.

Maina’s much-celebrated production, with Peter Farmer’s beautiful designs, has been a vital piece of the company’s repertoire since it first premiered in Adelaide in 1986; it has since toured around the country and the world. On our 50th anniversary tour of New York in 2012, the sublime Act II pas de deux was a highlight of our Infinity mixed bill.

Maina’s Giselle is an essential part of the company’s history, and is one production that I happily come back to again and again.

In 1997, to celebrate Maina’s tenure as artistic director (from 1983 to 1996), the company created The Maina Gielgud Fund. The fund, which sits within The Australian Ballet Foundation, was established with donations from the public and the Friends of The Australian Ballet NSW. We are so fortunate to have such passionate ballet lovers who support the company right around the country; to all of you who made the creation of this fund possible, thank you.

With best wishes,

Edwina McCann Chair Foundation Board

Ty King-Wall. Photography Lynette Wills


MAJOR GIFTThe Ian Potter Foundation

ACCESS & OUTREACHMargaret May AttwoodCrown Resorts FoundationSir Andrew & Lady Fairley FoundationWilliam Arthur Hugh Gordon Fund - Perpetual TrusteesGraf Family FoundationRene Macrae Fund for Education and Regional ActivityPacker Family FoundationThe Colin Peasley OAM Fund for EducationThyne Reid Foundation

ADMINISTRATIONThe Richard & Barbara Allert FundThe Melba Alma Cromack FundThe Kathleen Gorham Fund established in her memoryThe Neil Hopkins FundThe Ian McRae AO FundThe Nöel Pelly AM FundThe Marigold Southey Fund

BALLET PRODUCTIONSThe Maina Gielgud FundWilliam Arthur Hugh Gordon Fund - Perpetual TrusteesThe Arthur & Roma Norcott Fund for Classical BalletThe Frank & Thora Pearce FundThe Margaret Ellen Pidgeon Fund for Classical Ballet endowed by Dr Valmai Pidgeon

The James & Diana Ramsay FundThe Kenneth R Reed FundKevin Regan Fund endowed by Max JohnstonDame Margaret Scott Fund for Choreog-raphers endowed byMrs Mary Barlow

Mrs Jennifer Brukner

Lauraine Diggins & Michael Blanche

Mr John C. Higgins & Ms Jodie Maunder

Neil & June Jens

Avner Klein & Maria Pannozzo

Mr Allan Myers AC QC & Mrs Maria J Myers AC

Robert Southey Fund for Australian Choreography, endowed by The Sidney Myer FundDame Peggy van Praagh Fund for Choreography

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GENERAL FUNDBowness Family Foundation Pty LtdMs Robin Campbell & Mr Bruce Parncutt AODavid Crawford AO & Maureen CrawfordHenry & Miriam GreenfieldMr Christopher Knoblanche AM & Mrs Anne KnoblancheMrs Susan Maple-Brown AMMrs Beth Millar and the late Fred Millar AO CBEMr Brian Nebenzahl OAM RFD and Mrs Jocelyn NebenzahlPerini Family FoundationLady (June) Porter FundQueensland Friends of The Australian Ballet

The Robert Salzer FoundationMr Dick Smith AC & Mrs Pip Smith AOPeter & Frieda ThornhillMr Richard Warburton AO & Mrs Susan Warburton

DANCERS' ENDOWED POSITIONSThe Susan and Sam Chisholm FundThe Barbara Duhig FundThe Lynnette Harvey FundThe Dorothy Hicks FundThe Lachlan & Sarah Murdoch Fund

DANCERS' RETRAININGBowness Family Foundation Pty LtdDave Poddar & Angela FlanneryLisa Ring

MUSICThe Robert and Elizabeth Albert Music FundsRobert and Elizabeth Albert Fellowships (conductor and pianist)John Lanchbery FundThe Will Noble, Joyce Sproat & Janet Cooke Music Fund

INTERNATIONAL GUEST ARTISTJoan and Peter Clemenger Trust

SCHOLARSHIPSBetty Amsden AO Fund The Lissa Black Award for Classical BalletThe Walter Bourke Prize endowed by his friendsThe Paula Jacqueline Swain Bursary

The George Garratt FundThe Freda Irving Memorial Scholarship FundThe Christine Marie Johnson Maple-Brown ScholarshipBarry Kay Memorial Scholarship FundKhitercs Hirai FoundationThe Susan Morgan FundThe James Slater Memorial FundThe Dick & Pip Smith ScholarshipsThe Maurice Sullivan Memorial Scholarship FundThe Antony Williams and Joseph Hand Australian Ballet Scholarship

We are also grateful to those individuals who have made donations of $20,000 or less to these funds

THE AUSTRALIAN BALLET FOUNDATION

The acts of generosity that sustain The Australian Ballet Foundation will support the company’s aspirations for generations to come. Major gifts from individuals and organisations underpin all of the company’s activities, from our outreach and access projects to developing a new generation of choreographers and supporting our dancers as they enter the next stage of their careers. Specific-purpose major gifts, grants and endowments have built, and will continue to build, an incredible platform from which the company will present the best the art form has to offer.

FUNDS WITHIN THE AUSTRALIAN BALLET FOUNDATION

INTERNATIONAL TOURING FUND

International touring was an original objective of The Australian Ballet, and the company continues to be a proud cultural ambassador for Australia on the world stage. The International Touring Fund was established by Frances Gerard after experiencing opening night of Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake at the London Coliseum in 2005. It has considerably strengthened our touring program, enabling our dancers to perform regularly on the world stage. This important financial base gives The Australian Ballet the resources to take the best of the country’s artists to theatres across the globe.

Derek & Ann BrahamMarilyn BurtonMs Laurie CowledFrances GerardLionel Frederick Hann & Harry John Colligan FundIn memory of Mrs J J HoldenDale & Ian JohnsonLachlan & Sarah Murdoch

Mrs R H O'ConnorMrs Roslyn Packer ACDr Valmai Pidgeon AMMr Kenneth R Reed AMRenaissance ToursRoss Stretton Fund endowed by Bee FletcherTalbot Family FoundationMrs Mary Ann Wright

REGIONAL TOURING FUND

Touring across Australia has been a fundamental component of The Australian Ballet’s annual activities since 1962. The creation of the Regional Touring Fund demonstrates our commitment to making Australia’s national ballet company accessible to all, inspiring, delighting and challenging audiences.

“The Australian Ballet is one of the principal pillars of cultural activity in Australia. I believe it is important, indeed essential, that rural and country audiences away from the big cities are provided with the opportunity to see the company’s repertoire – to experience the contribution that the ballet is making to our cultural life.” Lord Glendonbrook Founding supporter of the Regional Touring Fund

Tania AustinMr John A Calvert-Jones AM & Mrs Janet Calvert-Jones AOThe Glendonbrook Foundation

Estate of Ainsley Gotto Rene Macrae Fund for Education and Regional Activity



ANNUAL GIVING

SENIOR ARTIST PATRONSGifts $15,000-$19,999R W BrownMr John R FullertonHayden Attractions Pty LtdShane LloydMrs Susan Maple-Brown AMSybella MorrisMr Robert Peck AM & Ms Yvonne Von Hartel AM peckvonhartel architectsMr Kenneth R Reed AMSandy Michell Legacy

SOLOIST PATRONS Gifts $10,000-$14,999Brian Abel in memory of the late Ben Gannon AOMrs Ruth Armytage AMThe late John Baldwin & Meredith Baldwin Marilyn Burton Mr John A Calvert-Jones AM & Mrs Janet Calvert-Jones AOLeith & Susan Campbell Mrs Barbara DuhigCara ElsleyDr Robert Gillett & Mrs Susan GillettMr Andrew Guild & Ms Ai-Gul GaisinaMrs Jill M HinrichsenMr Aron Kleinlehrer OAMJoan LyonsMr & Mrs Anthony Maple-BrownDiana McLaurinDon & Angela MercerKaren & John MorrisonBruce Parncutt AOMrs Patricia H PitmanJill ThorpeDr Michael & Mrs Lynne WrightEmma ZuberAnonymous (4)

CORYPHEE PATRONSGifts $5,000-$9,999Mr Arun Abey & Ms Bernadette BolgerMr Ross Adler AC & Mrs Fiona AdlerAntoinette AlbertMargaret BlandMaxine BownessMrs Roslynne Bracher AMCaroline & Stephen BrainMs Jannie BrownKim Burnett

Mr Michel-Henri Carriol & Mrs Julie Carriol OAMMrs Roxane ClaytonDr Anne Colman & Prof Peter Colman ACGena CulleyMrs David DarlingMr John Downer AM & Mrs Rose DownerEBCD Developments (TAS) Pty Ltd^Mr Greg EganMr Adam C Elder & Ms Joanne HartMr & Mrs Ronald EnestromFamily FaithfullMr Peter FrostMr & Mrs Chris FullertonGeoff & LorrainneMr Louis J Hamon OAMMrs Catherine Harris AO PSMBeverley Harvey & the late Richard HarveyMrs Jean M HealeyHenderson EndowmentMrs Pat HowellPeter James & Libby ChristieNicola KaldorMr & Mrs Ervin KatzDr Judith KinnearMrs Sylvia LavelleMrs Judy LeeMartin Family in memory of Lloyd Martin AMPamela M MarxMr & Mrs John M McArthurIn memory of Nola McCullaghMr Ronald B RainesRella ConsultantsRenaissance ToursProfessor Ruth Rentschler OAMLyne SedgmanMatt Shelmerdine*^The Sheridan FamilyGary Singer & Geoffrey SmithIn memory of Mrs Joan SwanSusan ThacoreMrs Susan ThomasMr & Mrs Leigh VirtueMrs Susan WarburtonPhilippa WarnerMrs Sally White OAMMr Ray Wilson OAM & the late James Agapitos OAMDonna WoodhillMs A Dickschen & Mr W. Brind Zichy-Woinarski QCAnonymous (6)

LES ETOILES Supporting the Principal Artists Gifts of $25,000

NSW/QLDHayley BaillieMrs Barbara BedwellMrs Susan Chisholm Mrs Bar CohenMrs Shanny Crouch Mrs Gordon Douglass AMMrs Jane FreudensteinBozena GawartMrs Lynnette HarveyRoland HowlettMrs Frances InghamSarah Ingham Mrs Loraine McLarenMrs Helen O'NeilMrs Roslyn Packer ACDr Valmai Pidgeon AMMrs Nancy Reardon-FonsecaMrs Kelly Wyborn

VICMrs Mary BarlowMrs Di BertalliLisa BolteMs Natasha BownessMs Robin CampbellAngie CarterMrs Maureen CrawfordMrs Annette DavisAlane FinemanPrue Gillies AMMs Val HardingMs Linda HerdRosie LewMs Jodie MaunderLady Potter AC CMRILinton Soderholm

PRINCIPAL PATRONSGifts over $20,000Mr Robert Albert AO RFD RD & Mrs Elizabeth AlbertMrs Roseanne AmarantMrs Ingrid KaiserMr Ronald G KaiserThe Stuart Leslie FoundationJudy & Steven LowyMr & Mrs Geoff O'ConorMrs Sue PeriniMrs Margaret S Ross AMMrs Anne SymonsChristopher & Carol TiplerMrs Mary Ann WrightE XipellAnonymous

At the heart of philanthropy at The Australian Ballet are our Annual Giving supporters, whose inspiring generosity makes possible everything you see on stage. Ballet lovers across Australia support the artistic director’s vision to present an ever-changing and evolving program of seasons showcasing the breadth and depth of the company's talents. All gifts to our Annual Giving program, large or small, are magnified well beyond their monetary value, as they support our artists each time they step onto the stage.

Ty King-Wall and Amber Scott. Photography Lynette Wills

NATASHA BOWNESS President Annual Giving

Correct as at 02.04.2019


ANNUAL GIVING

CORPS DE BALLET PATRONSGifts $3,000-$4,999Miss Catherine AlstonDr Lorraine BakerPhil & Laurel BendreyMs Kirsty BennettMr Charles G ClarkCharles & Patricia GalluccioThe Greatorex Foundation Pty LtdAlan & Marion GrundyLouise HamshereMs Sue Harlow & Mr Mervyn KeehnDianne HodgeDoug HooleySusan Jennison OAMDale & Ian JohnsonTherese A KennedyMs Barbara KingsellMr Hugh MacLachlan & Mrs Fiona MacLachlan OAMMrs Barbara MaidmentKen & Christina MarksJudy MatearMr Robert W McCormack AMDr M L Murnane AMMr Barry P MurphyA.M. NashTom & Lurline PayneGeoff & Jan PhillipsMrs Elisabeth PiddMrs Josephine R StruttThe late Mrs Susan Wakil AOSuzanne Waterhouse Barbara Watson & the late Danny WatsonRuth ZionzeeAnonymous (2)

Gifts $1,000-$2,999Nina Aberdeen*^Gemma Felicity Acton^Mrs Alexandra AdamsMrs Lenore AdamsonEllie* & Charlie Aitken^The Aitken FamilyÂldridge Family EndowmentJulie & Benjamin AllenJane AllenJanet AllenFor Ian & Ila AndersonJuliet Anderson* & Denham Schiff^Shauna Anderson^Dr MP Anthony^Jeremy ArnottJosie Ashton*^Maximilian Bak^*Mia & Jasmine BarbourScott & Alina Barlow*^David Barlow^Penny Barlow*^

Vanessa Barlow^Miss Margaret BarnesMr John W H Barr AM & Mrs Rosemary BarrPamela BarrPhillip Benedetti^Sharon Bennie^Leah Bischoff*^Ms Christine BishopMiss Catherine BoagBodycentric AdelaideLisa Bolte*Ôlivia Bond^Patricia BoyleMrs Alix BradfieldSanchia Brahimi^Ms Elizabeth BrayJacqueline BrooksDr William Brooks & Mr Alasdair BeckBrooke Brown^Prue Brown^Louise Bryant*^Mrs Geraldine BullBarbara BursillMrs Nancy ButlerTrish ByrneMrs Nancye E CainMs Clea CaisleyElizabeth & John CaldicottPam CaldwellJune CameronJanet CampbellDr Verne CaradusMrs Frances CattellEmily Chambers^Dr David & Mrs Caroline ChampionDr Joanna CheungDiana Choquette & Robert MillinerLisa Clark Dance CentreChristine CloughAndrew ConnollyAnnette CookDr Margaret CookG CossMr Tim K Cox AO & Mrs Bryony CoxAngela CrammondMs Kay CranwellAlexandra de Crespigny^Flora Zeta Cheong-Leen^Lucy Clemenger*^Sarah ColquhounÂmanda Coombs^Veronica Corrigan^Paula CroninMrs Prue Crookes^Paul & Samanth Cross^Ms Elinor CrossingSophie Crowe^Lyndall CummineMrs Gweneth CundyBernard & Georgie Curran*^

Mr Charles P Curran ACDr Carolyn CurrieMrs Katherine S DammMs Anthoula DanilatosMiss Ann DarbyJenny Darling & Emma DarlingMrs Mary Davidson & Mr Frederick Davidson AMMr Ernest Dawes OBE & Mrs Nola DawesMrs Felicity DemediukSandra & Stephanie DenmanSarah Hogan MPA^Kay DowlingLorraine DrogemullerPatricia DuffyMrs Edrina Dunstan Kristin Edmonds*^Lyn Edwards & Robert BryceEeskay Investments Pty LtdIn memory of Joyce CordonyJudy Eyre & Tony De DomenicoMr & Mrs Barry FaggH Elizabeth Fairfax^Caroline FazakasIsaac & Judi FeldmanAnna Findlay*^Mrs Holly FletcherAlethea Flynn^Dr Joanna FlynnMrs Chantal de Fraga^Yvonne FrindleMrs Kylie GankoMichelle Gardiner^Diana GerstmanGeorgie George^Prue Gilbert^Vanessa Gilbert* & Marshall Hunwick^Mr Neil R Gill & Mr Lee ChristofisMrs Joan GillespieElizabeth GippsKimberley Gire^Joakim Apostolas & Kirra Givanni^Jennifer & Sarah GoddardRyan Gollan^Mr Charles Goode AC & Mrs Cornelia GoodeJulie & Bill GooldAlexandra Gordon^Dr Kirsten Gormly & Mr Kristian DowningMrs Christine Gorrie Lianne GrafMrs Susan V GrantMrs Beatrice GrayKate Elizabeth Griffiths^Ms Lyn GriggJennifer Grimwade & Ian CashionMrs Felicity Gunner OAM & Mr Perry Gunner

Mrs Jenny GustMr Hugh HallardRuth HallettWendy & Andrew HamlinCharles Hardman + 100th GalleryMr L HarrisonMelissa HartmanÂndrew Hartwell^Mr Haskins OAM & Mrs HaskinsJill HawkerNick Hays Mrs Sarah F HaywardKaren Healey^Linden D Hearn OAMAndrew HendersonHannah HesseÊlisa Hindhaugh^Dr & Mrs Darryl HodgkinsonMr Peter HolbeachLisa & Daryl HolmesKatrina & Simon Holmes à Court^Mr Robert A HookMrs Robyn HopkinsCarrie HowardJenny HowlandDr Judith HumberstoneGillian HundGeorgina Hunt^Frances Ingham^Sarah Ingham*^Mrs Marilyn JackaDr Alastair Jackson AMMrs D JacksonFiona JamiesonÎn memory of Jayantha JayasuriyaShareen Joel^Cmr Leigh Johns OAMMs Michelle JohnsonJinah Johnston^Kerry-Anne JohnstonMax JohnstonMaggie Joye^Nicky Joye^Prof. Peter Juliff AMMs Irene KearseyRoslyn KeayMike Kendall^Rhonda & Emily KeeneMarion J KellyPatricia & Alun KenwoodMr Paul KeoghMrs Diane KierceMem Kirby^Mrs Karen Margaret KightleyKathryn KingsMrs Valda KlaricPatricia Kline & the late George KlineVivien & Graham KnowlesMrs Dinah Krongold

Mr Tom KudelkaMrs Nicholina KunerSamantha Lambert^Marissa Knies Lanier^Beatrice LangR LatteyMrs Sylvia Laumets-TsirosMrs Elizabeth LavertyProf Bruce R Lawford & Dr Susan ShadforthDr Joan M Lawrence AMMary Jane M. LawrieDelysia LawsonAnne LazbergerDino LeoneLessep Investment Management^Regina Levine*^Mr Ross LiebmannMelanie Listorti^Brooke Lockett^*Elizabeth H LoftusGrace Logvyn^Mr Richard LongesAndrew Low^Debbie MaharMichael & Monika Malone^Lyn MaloneyLouise & Robert ManifoldLaura Manning^Helen Mantzis^Carolyn MarlowJohn & Margaret MasonSusanna MasonMr Graham H MathesonSam McCardelRuth McColl AOCarole McCormickIrina McCreadiePip McCullyKay & Wayne McDonaldMrs Jane McGregorMalcolm & Sandy McLachlanMr Garry McLeanMrs Ann McNamaraGina McNamara*^Catherine McOmishDr Pam McQueen & Mr Andrew McQueenIan McRae AO & Ms Asa RoweJacqui Melck^Mr Roger MenzIan MerryleesMs Meredith MillerPrue Miller^Patricia MillerDr David Millons AMDavid MinnsDesmond B Misso EsqAlice Moore^Maryanne MooreSusan MorganEmma Morrison^Marie Morton

Mr Michael MountLachlan & Sarah Murdoch*^John Jerome MyersÎrena NebenzahlSimon & Meredith NettletonJames Neuman & Allan Lifson, California, USABeverly Ng^Mr & Mrs Anthony NicholasPeter & Carolyn NorrieLyn & Gus NossalMrs Kathleen NowikSusie Nugan*^Mrs Rachel O'ConorMr Richard O'DwyerJanette O'KeefeMrs Janette O'KeefeCatherine L OsborneMrs Mary ParryJoshua Penn^Mrs Yvonne R PennyJodi Pettersen*^Margie PhillippsDr Richard K S PhoonNorman & Carolyn PinderPaul M PinelPinpoint Pty LtdMr Dave Poddar & Ms Angela FlanneryDiana PolkinghorneMrs Katherine Pontifix^Kerryn PratchettBeverley & John PurdeyCarli Ratcliff^Ms Lynn C Rainbow Reid AMMary RaynerPaul ReinMiss Jennifer RhodesMrs Susan RiggDr Peter Rigg-Smith Judy RoachMichael Robertson^Dr Stephen Rodgers-Wilson & the late Dr Diane PalmerJudith RogersMs Sandra RolloJohn & Helga RoseCecilia Rosenberg^Nadine Rosham^Ms Sandra RowlandsMr Mark SampsonVanessa Sanchez-Levy^Kaylene Savas^Judge Stephen Scarlett OAM RFDEvelien Scherp^Mr & Mrs Douglas G ScottPenelope Scott^Lorraine SeabrookMrs Christine SearcyMarilyn SeidelMrs Margaret Sekel




Initiated in 2014 by The Australian Ballet’s Global Ambassador Sarah Murdoch, our Ballet Ambassador program connects an international network of individuals, leaders of a new generation of ballet lovers advocating for the company around the world. Through intimate ‘behind the curtain’ access, our ballet ambassadors become deeply committed to the development of the art form and promotion of the company to new audiences.

ANNUAL GIVING

Ms Lisa ShadgettDr Robyn SharpJane Shaw^Jennifer Shaw^Lynne Sherwood & the late Tim SherwoodMrs Dorothy ShortCharlie & Sandy ShuetrimDr John SimeMr Nev SimpsonMrs Rosemary SimpsonMs Sara J SimpsonMrs Joecelyn SmithProf Nerida A SmithPip SmithSmith Finance Group Ptd Ltd^Mr Sam Smorgon AO & Mrs Minnie SmorgonEzekiel Solomon AMCamilla Speer^Mrs Heather M Spencer Nicola StanfordSarah StavrowÎn memory of Susan Steele-taylorDr Kristen Steele^Jessica Steiger-ThorpeÂlisa St John*^Valentina Stojanovska*^Dominique Stokes^Swann Family FoundationMs Suzanne Swensson & Mr Paul JonesMr James SymeRobyn TamkeJodie Tapscott^Mildred TeitlerDr Christine ThevathasanMr Douglas ThirkellMrs Annalise ThomasPeter & Lesley Thomas

Paris Thomson^Mr Allan ThornePenelope ThringSue ThrowerMs Lisa Xia He Ting^Miss Ruth TraitMeg Tudehope^Daphne & Ross TurnbullJanet Cliff & Jenny TurnbullRosslyn J TurnerMs Patricia TylerMrs Jean UptonCatherine & Patrik ValsingerVinta Investment Management Pty LtdStan & Judy WallisMaggie Wang^Mrs Carolyn WardMrs Margaret WardThe Shirley Ward FoundationMr Ralph Ward-Ambler AM & Mrs Barbara Ward-AmblerMrs Hazel WatsonDr Peter Wearne & Ms Polly ShawPat & John WebbMr Tim WeisheitLaura Weston^Miss Pamela WhalanMrs Anne WhartonAnne WhiteChloe White^Mrs Marjorie WhiteJudith WilliamsAnnabel WilliamsonDr Edward WillsAlice WilmotMs Josie Woodgate OAMAndrew Wright^Helen Wright

Melinda Wright^Kelly Wyborn^Wyke FamilyDavid Wynne^Susan Wynne^Ms Yang Yang^Yvonne YendellEvelyn Yong*Îrene Zaparas^Mark & Krista ZieleznaAnonymous (40)

DEVOTEESGifts $250-$999(456)

SUPPORTERSGifts $25-$249(909)

SUPPORT FROM TRUSTS AND FOUNDATIONSAustralian Decorative & Fine Arts Society Sydney Inc.The Calvert-Jones FoundationColonial Foundation LimitedThe Copland FoundationThe Cory Charitable FoundationCrown Resorts FoundationEthel Margaret Ewing Cutten Foundation - Equity TrusteesThe Duncan Leary Charitable TrustGandel PhilanthropyThe Glendonbrook FoundationGraf Family Foundation

Joan and Peter Clemenger TrustDr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable FoundationThe Marian & E. H. Flack TrustMcCusker Charitable FoundationPacker Family FoundationPierce Armstrong TrustThe Ian Potter FoundationThe Profield FoundationJames & Diana Ramsay FoundationThe Ross TrustThe Sentinel FoundationDick and Pip Smith FoundationThyne Reid Foundation

SUPPORT FROM FRIENDS AND SOCIETIESThe Australian Ballet Society IncInterim President Judith RhodesFriends of the Australian Ballet (NSW) LtdChairman Greg KhouryFriends of the Australian Ballet (SA) IncPresident Lorraine Irving

Major Partner

"The Australian Ballet is truly central to my passion for ballet and I am committed to representing the company as Global Ambassador. I want every Australian, whether in Australia or around the world, to look up to our company and be proud. Our dancers and our productions are a true representation of who we are."Sarah MurdochGlobal Ambassador

* Ballet Ambassador Board^ Ballet Ambassador



LEADERSHIP GIFTSThe Ian Potter FoundationThe Zambelli StudioEndowed by the Zambelli Family

The Susan Morgan Pointe Shoe RoomEndowed by Susan Morgan

Ian & Primrose Potter Physiotherapy SuiteEndowed by Lady Potter AC CMRI

James & Diana Ramsay Pilates SuiteJames & Diana Ramsay Suite for Artists of The Australian BalletEndowed by James & Diana Ramsay Foundation

William & Joanne Crothers Medical Consulting SuiteEndowed by the Upotipotpon Foundation

Lisa Bolte Dancers' Lounge Endowed by Graeme Uthmeyer

PLATINUM GIFTSCraig Dunn & Bozena Gawart

GOLD PATRONSRuth Armytage AMBowness Family FoundationColin & Angie CarterFamily FaithfullMrs Lynnette HarveyDiana McLaurinChristine & Peter SmedleyMr Dick Smith AC & Mrs Pip Smith AOPeter & Anne WhiteMrs Sally White OAM

SILVER PATRONSBrian AbelBarbara BedwellLibby Christie & Peter JamesSuellen & Ron EnestromMs Linda HerdJoan LyonsDavid McAllister AMMr Robert W McCormack AMMcLaren FamilyTony Osmond & Fiona GriffithsMrs Sue PeriniMr Peter Reilly & Mr Linton SoderholmMrs Mary Ann WrightAnonymous (2)

BRONZE PATRONSHugh HallardMrs Catherine Harris AO PSM

SUPPORTERSDr Lorraine BakerPhil & Laurel BendreyMarilyn BurtonMr Jim Cousins AO & Mrs Libby CousinsMr Ronald G KaiserGraham MathesonDave Poddar & Angela FlanneryE XipellAnonymous

DANCE WITH US – THE PRIMROSE POTTER AUSTRALIAN BALLET CENTRE REDEVELOPMENT

The renovation of The Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre will have both an immediate and a far-reaching impact on our dancers’ health and wellbeing; the development of new ballets; and ultimately, our performances.

The contributions of our Ballet family have been the keystone of this once-in-a-generation project, and we gratefully acknowledge those individuals and organisations whose generosity is celebrated in the new spaces of The Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre.

Jade Wood. Photography Kate Longley




Miss Patricia DownesGeorge DrewMrs Lorraine DrogemullerMrs Jill DuckEdrina Dunstan & The Late David DunstanBetty EastgateCarol & Ted EdwardsJo EdwardsLyn EdwardsThe Late Mrs Joan Daphne EvansRichard EvansTerry FahyRoss FairhurstMrs Jacqueline FarrarThe Late Jim FinchPeter F FlemingBarrie I Follows AM JP & Margaret Gail FollowsMrs Geraldine Fox-PenglisJennifer FultonFrances GerardAnthea GilbertSuzanne GleesonMs Margo GrahamDerek & JoanLyn GriggMr Leonard GroatColin GuntherLouis J. Hamon OAMLouise HamshereMrs Lilian HardySue Harlow & Merv KeehnVivien & Christopher HartMiss Carol HayJennifer R HayRobert B HaynesHilary A HazledineMrs Jean HealeyChristopher Hector & Ros NeaveLinden D Hearn OAMMs Linda Herd Kathy HirschfeldMs Dianne HodgeMs Claire HoustonDr & Mrs Ken HoyleDr Irene IrvineLilla ItoMichael & Jennifer JamesCmr L. A. T. Johns OAMDale & Ian JohnsonMax JohnstonMr Paul Jones Ms Suzanne SwenssonMr Ronald G KaiserMarlene KavanaghDawn V KellyMarion J KellyDr Judith KinnearMrs Valda KlaricLisa KokegeiSimon Lambourne

Francine LancasterMavis LanceMrs Carlean LangbeinRichard LaslettMrs Judy LeeLilian LeightonDaniel-Francois LemesleDr C S LoaderThe Late Mrs Patricia LoughheadPamela & David LuhrsChris MackayGeoff & Margaret MarkhamLeonor Marrone in memory of RominaPatsy MartinThe Late Mr Edward J MasonGraham MathesonDavid McAllister AMMr Robert W McCormack AMSandra McCullaghAnn McFarlingD J McGregorDel & Andrew McGuinessMr Michael McKenzie & Mr Neil JonesJudithe & John McKindleyHeather McNicolDr Toni MeathRoger MenzPrudence MenziesDesmond B Misso EsqCarolyn & Ian MitchellKen MitchellSusan MorganMary MurphyTJ NakasuwanSimon & Meredith NettletonMiss Shirley NevilleDr Jennifer M NewtonDr Kersti NogesteCarolyn NorrieKathleen Y NowikMr Richard O'DwyerDiane O'Flaherty & Verna OakleyThe Late Kathleen O'HaraCatherine L OsborneMrs Sue PeriniMrs M M PetersMargaret PhillippsD E PiddThe Late Lady (June) PorterMario ProtoThe Late Mrs Diana Ramsay AO DSJPenelope S RawlinsKenneth R Reed AMDr Stephen Rodgers-

Wilson & the late Dr Diane PalmerRhonda & Peter RogaRichard RossCaroline J Ross-SmithMs Ros RussellMrs Margaret SaultMargot SeeleyRhonda SheehyMr & Mrs Charles SheldonMr Michael ShortStephanie Shwabsky in memory of Betty ShwabskySara J SimpsonGary Singer & Geoffrey SmithElvira SinicinsMr Alan Smith & Mr Daryl AndersonProf Nerida A SmithLady Southey ACMs Miranda StarkeAnnie StephensMs Juanita StockwellMiss Pat SutherlandDeb SuttonElizabeth SwantonSusanne SweetlandRegine SzmulewiczMs Susan TaylorSandra Taylor-BowmanDr Christine ThevathasanShirley A TinkMichele & Mario TopcicDr Sally TownsendMiss Ruth TraitPatricia TylerMrs Jean UptonJohn & Susan VanderstockHon Rosemary VartyMs Jill VaughanPeter VaughanMrs Jacqueline WallaceKenneth W WatkinsPamela WhalanDinah Whitaker in memory of Emma ToussaintBrenda WhiteMargaret Amery WhiteBarry & Megan WillcoxDeb WilliamsJan WilliamsLeonard J WilsonRay Wilson OAMMs Sallyann WilsonJosie Woodgate OAMYvonne YendellDamian YoungVictor & Christine ZemancheffMrs Ruth ZionzeeAnonymous (72)

Mr L Kevin AdairAlexandra AdamsMrs Sheila AdamsRichard Allert AM FCA & Barbara AllertPatricia AndersDr Greta ArchboldLorelei Anne BacheDr Lorraine BakerMrs Mary BarlowDr Rosemary BarnardMs Jennifer BarnesLesley M BawdenPhilip & Laurel BendreyMr Ken BloxsomTamara & Mark BoldistonPatricia BoyleAnn & Derek BrahamDonna BrearleyPatricia A BreslinMs Christine A Brewer Mrs Margaret Broeks

Beverley A Brown OAMJannie BrownDr Roger BrownJennifer Brukner & The late John BruknerMs Deborah BuckettDr Sheena L BurnellTrish ByrnePam CaldwellMr John Calvert-Jones AM & Mrs Janet Calvert-Jones AOThe Late Dr Brian T CareyRobert E A CarliRowena CatchatoorFrank & Danielle ChamberlinRon & Luci ChambersMiss Beverley F ClarkRosalie & Graeme ClarkJanet Cliff & Jenny TurnbullJoyce Clothier OAM

Patricia Concannon in memory of Ruby ConcannonJudy ConnorDr Margaret CookCaroline Cooper MVOMs Joanne CoughlinMr Jim Cousins AO & Mrs Libby CousinsJudith CowdenMiss Katrina CowenMrs Joan CowieLaurie CowledAdam & Donna Cusack-MullerMrs Maree D'AlterioJohn DalyAnn Darby in memory of Kath & Jim DarbyMrs Merawyn DaviesDavid de Verelle-HillAndrew R. Dixon in memory of Phyllis J. Manning

The impact of making a gift in your will to The Australian Ballet is truly profound, and will continue to benefit generations of ballet lovers and dancers, as well as the art form we all love and admire. Nearly 300 members of the Ballet family have confirmed a bequest to The Australian Ballet.

“The Australian Ballet has not only been my career but also my life’s passion, so by including the company in my will I hope I can assist many others to experience the wonderful joy of dance.” Colin Peasley OAM Planned Giving Ambassador

PLANNED GIVING – DAME PEGGY VAN PRAAGH LEADERSHIP CIRCLE



Liz RuggieriPlanned Giving ManagerVIC/TAS/SA/WA03 9669 [email protected]

Nick Hays Philanthropy Manager 03 9669 [email protected]

Ben LeePatrons ManagerVIC/TAS03 9669 [email protected]

PHILANTHROPY TEAM

FOR A CONVERSATION ABOUT PHILANTHROPY PLEASE CONTACT:

Kenneth Watkins Philanthropy Director03 9669 [email protected]

Heather McNicol Planned Giving Manager NSW/ACT/QLD 02 9253 [email protected]

Mr Reginald Edward Gregory MBE & Mrs GregoryPatricia Marie SmitPatricia Hope WillisColin Robert MarshallHazel GrahamEthel Margaret Ewing CuttenRobert J ShipsidesE M BlackPaul SinclairMrs M M C DjordjevicDr George GarrattRobert Salzer AOBetty Gleeson-WhiteClifford BurgessKeith M ChristensenWilliam Arthur Hugh GordonFreda Eileen SpicerAsle Noel ChiltonGwendolyn Letitia TennantSir Robert Southey AO CMGBrenda June McGowanMr Will NobleNorma Lucas PayneMrs Ila Leland Massy Burnside

Gay John Therese ClarkeGwendoline I TregearLesley Morgan SperryGwen HuntMrs Patricia McSpeerinMr Noël Pelly AMLady Snedden AMWilliam F WellsMrs Thora PearceMiss Ann WilliamsMr Ian Berkeley SmallNola Joan HassallJean HammondMr A S LeslieMr Laurie DaviesEsther Primrose Lucy Gertrude PoelmanDame Joyce Margaretta DawsLady Nancy Fairfax AM OBEErnest SpinnerMargery I PierceBarbara Bishop HewittMrs Sylvia BoxDr Donald WrightMrs Sally SinisoffBetty June DrabschMarianne MartinMr Norman Drogemuller OAM

Jean M NegusDr Dawn Meryl ThewJudith Gwen NewberryDuncan Elphinstone McBryde LearyMiss Ruth Margaret DavidsonDr Alf HowardMs Jane D CrawfordMr Harold G Marshall AMMuriel LeadbeaterMelba Alma CromackPatricia Cameron-StewartCanon Albert McPhersonCharles Ross AdamsonMiss Sheila Scotter AM MBEHarold Bruce CadellMrs Rosemary Campbell OAMPauline Marie JohnstonPeter & Barbara ShearerMary Sylvia Joyce JonesPeter Langford AMNorman StevensDr Lynn Harvey JosephJanet FischerDr Diana TolhurstDr Richard VeseyMrs Anne Gluyas

Ronda Anne ChisholmMrs Dorothy (Deri) SaundersMr Wilfred John StantonJacques Spira OAM & Edith SpiraMr George FosterCorel GarlingJanice PettersonMr Antony WilliamsPatricia Speher VanderwalMr Arthur L Norcott & Mrs Roma NorcottPaula Jacqueline SwainBetty Amsden AOChristine Ann BrownDr Brian T CareyValerie Ellen MooneySusan FitzpatrickJoan Winsome Maslen Ainsley GottoLionel Frederick Hann & Harry John ColliganJohn N MannRita Doreen FletcherGeorge W Gregson Judith Mary SteeleAlan John RobisonJoyce JohnstonAnonymous (27)

PLANNED GIVING – ESTATES

The Australian Ballet gratefully acknowledges all the bequests it has received from the following ballet lovers. We are exceptionally privileged to be able to realise the dreams and aspirations of these individuals to see their legacy become a part of the company’s history.

CONTACT PHILANTHROPY AT THE AUSTRALIAN BALLETPhone: 1300 752 900Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pmOnline: www.australianballet.com.au/donateEmail: [email protected]: The Australian BalletPhilanthropy DepartmentPrimrose Potter Australian Ballet CentreLevel 6, 2 Kavanagh StSouthbank VIC 3006

Ty King-Wall and Ako Kondo. Photography Jeff Busby



S Y D N E Y

OPERA AUSTRALIA ORCHESTRA

CONCERTMASTER AND ORCHESTRA DIRECTOR

Jun Yi Ma

ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER

Huy-Nguyen Bui

VIOLIN

Katherine Lukey Deputy Concertmaster

Catalin Ungureanu Principal 1st Violin

Tony Gault Principal 1st Violin

Airena Nakamura Principal 2nd Violin

Mark Fitzpatrick Assoc. Principal 2nd Violin

Virginia Blunt

Rachel Easton

Yu-Qing Rebecca Irwin

Adrian Keating

Marek Kruszynski

Daniel Rosenbaum

Jaroslaw Talar

Rachel Westwood

Ben Smith

Kelly Tang

Julia Broom

Dominique Gallery

Belinda Jezek

Reafen Liu

Daniel Lopez

Ursula Luxton

Kerry Martin

Michele O’Young

Yuhki Mayne

Jennifer Taylor

Tracy Wan

Sonia Wilson

VIOLA

Virginia Comerford Principal

Ida Speyer Gron Assoc. Principal

Tara Houghton

Amanda Murphy

Magda Kruszynska

Neil Thompson

Ella Brinch

Charlotte Fetherston

Greg Ford

Justin Julian

CELLO

Teije Hylkema Principal

Ezster Mikes-Liu Assoc. Principal

Andrew Hines Acting Assistant Principal

Pierre Emery

Margaret Iddison

Minah Choe

Victoria Parkin

Thomas Rann

DOUBLE BASS

Brett Berthold Principal

Andrew Meisel Assoc. Principal

Edmund Bastian

Bonita Williams

Jennifer Druery

FLUTE

Elizabeth Pring Principal

Amanda Hollins Assoc. Principal

Nicola Crowe

Kim Falconer

James Fortune

PICCOLO

Diane Berger Principal

OBOE

Conall McClure Principal

Matthew Tighe Assoc. Principal

Mark Bruwel

COR ANGLAIS

Rixon Thomas Principal

CLARINET

Peter Jenkin Principal

Philip Green Assoc. Principal

Richard Rourke

BASS CLARINET

John Lewis Principal

BASSOON

Douglas Eyre Principal

Matthew Ockenden Assoc. Principal

Melissa Woodroffe Acting Assoc. Principal

Gillian Hansen

Greg Taylor

HORN

Bourian Boubbov Acting Principal

Lisa Wynne-Allen

Robert Johnson Guest Principal

Lee Wadenpfuhl Guest Principal

Milen Boubbov

Michael Dixon

Katy Grisdale

Jenny McLeod-Sneyd

Rafael Salgado

TRUMPET

Joshua Clarke Principal

Craig Ross Assoc. Principal

Brian Evans Principal 3rd

Colin Grisdale

TROMBONE

Gregory van der Struik Principal

Brett Favell Assoc. Principal

William Farmer

Roslyn Jorgensen

BASS TROMBONE

Brett Page

TUBA

Edwin Diefes Principal

Matthew Walmsley

TIMPANI

David Clarence Principal

Allan Watson Assoc. Principal

PERCUSSION

Shaun Trubiano Principal

Kevin Man Assoc. Principal

Joshua Hill

Timothy Paillas

Hugh Tidy

HARP

Jane Rosenson Principal

Emily Granger

Natalie Wong

OPERA AUSTRALIA MANAGEMENT

Chief Executive Officer Rory Jeffes

Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini AM

Chief Operating Officer John Horn

Corporate Affairs Director Yvonne Zammit

Head of Music Tahu Matheson

General Manager Technical Services Clif Bothwell

Executive Producer Touring and Commercial Alex Budd

Human Resources Director Jessica Platts

General Manager, Orchestra Gérard Patacca

Executive Producer Theatre Georgia Rivers

Executive Producer Major Projects Louisa Robertson

OPERA AUSTRALIA BOARD OF DIRECTORS

David Mortimer AO Chairman

Philip Bacon AM

Brian Benjamin

David Epstein

Jonathan Feder

Jane Hansen

Tim McFarlane AM

Alison Pert

Deena Shiff

Andrew Sisson AO

Josephine Sukkar AM

ORCHESTRA MANAGEMENT

General Manager, Orchestra Gérard Patacca

Orchestra Manager Emma In der Maur

Deputy Orchestra Manager Ella Howard

Orchestra Operations Manager Rhonda Jones

Assistant Orchestra Manager Anna Bennett

Orchestra Coordinator Bradley Barrack Ashley Retter

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

Sydney Opera House Bennelong Point GPO Box 4274 Sydney 2001 NSW

Administration (02) 9250 7111

Box Office (02) 9250 7777

Facsimile (02) 9250 7666

Website sydneyoperahouse.com

Sydney Opera House Trust

Nicholas Moore Chair

Anne Dunn

Michael Ebeid AM

Kathryn Greiner AO

Chris Knoblanche AM

Deborah Mailman AM

Kevin McCann AM

Kylie Rampa

Jillian Segal AO

Phillip Wolanski AM

EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT

Louise Herron AM Chief Executive Officer

Kate Dundas Executive Director, Performing Arts

Jade McKellar Director, Visitor Experience

Ian Cashen Executive Director, Building, Safety & Security

Brendan Wall Director, Engagement & Development

Jon Blackburn Executive Director, Corporate Services & CFO

Kya Blondin Director, People & Government

Hugh Lamberton Director, Office of the CEO

Proud Performance Partner of The Australian Ballet

The Opera Australia Orchestra is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, the NSW Government through Create NSW and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.


Dimity Azoury. Photography Kate Longley


C O M PA N Y A N D D I R E C T O R S

MELBOURNE

The Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre, 2 Kavanagh St, Southbank Victoria 3006 Telephone 1300 369 741 [email protected] australianballet.com.au

SYDNEY

The Australian Ballet Level 4 10 Hickson Road, The Rocks Sydney 2000 Telephone (02) 9253 5300 The Australian Ballet ABN 57 004 849 987

PATRON

His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Ret’d), Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia

BOARD

Chair Craig Dunn

Directors Olivia Bell – Dancers’ Director Annabelle Chaplain John Ellice-Flint Penny Fowler Catherine Harris AO PSM Catherine Livingstone AO Edwina McCann Tony Osmond Bruce Parncutt AO Susan Street AO

Global Ambassador Sarah Murdoch

FOUNDATION BOARD

Chair Edwina McCann Arun AbeyMary BarlowHayley BaillieDi BertalliBill Bowness AONatasha BownessPrue BrownRobin CampbellColin Carter AMGeorgina CurranCara ElsleySuellen EnestromJane FreudensteinFrances InghamSarah InghamNicola KaldorGail MarshallJodie Maunder Sybella MorrisKaren MorrisonMaria PannozzoLynne Wright

Honorary Life Members Past & Present

Dame Peggy van Praagh DBE NR Sneddon AO CBE Sir Ian Potter Sir Robert Helpmann CBE Sir Robert Southey AO CMG Noël Pelly AM Dr HC Coombs Ila Massy Burnside John McCallum AO CBE Elizabeth Albert Robert O Albert AO RFD RD John Calvert-Jones AM Timothy KF Cox AO Maina Gielgud AO FW Miller AO CBE Colin Peasley OAM Lady Potter AC CMRI Dame Margaret Scott AC DBE Lady Southey AC Josephine Woodgate OAM Marilyn Rowe OBE Ian McRae AO

Peter Smedley Dr Valami Pidgeon AM Lynnette Harvey Mrs Roslyn Packer AC Graeme Murphy AO Janet Vernon AM Peter Clemenger AO Joan Clememger AO Prof John Rose AO Diana Ramsay AO Lady June Porter Julie da Costa OAM Kenneth R Reed AM David Crawford AO Christopher Knoblanche AM Barbara Duhig Marilyn Jones OBE Stephen Baynes Jim Cousins AO Sarah Murdoch Bill Bowness AO Frances Gerard Susan Morgan Beverley Brown OAM Barbara Marrett Toni Cody

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR David McAllister AM

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Libby Christie

MUSIC DIRECTOR & CHIEF CONDUCTOR Nicolette Fraillon AM

Executive Assistant to Artistic Director Kate Longley

Executive Assistant to the Executive Director Sarah Monaghan

ARTISTIC

Ballet Artistic Associate & Principal Coach Fiona Tonkin

Ballet Mistress & Repetiteur Elizabeth Toohey

Ballet Master Regional & Storytime Tours Paul Knobloch

Ballet Master & Regional Touring Associate Steven Heathcote AM

Ballet Mistress & Rehabilitation Specialist Megan Connelly

Guest Teacher Tristan Message

Resident Choreographers Stephen Baynes Tim Harbour Alice Topp Stanton Welch AM

Guest Teacher Johnny Eliasen

Music Executive Assistant to Music Director & Chief Conductor Alexandra McKnight

Assistant Conductor Simon Thew

Principal Pianist & Music Librarian Stuart Macklin

Pianist & Associate Music Librarian Duncan Salton

Pianists Brian Cousins Kylie Foster

The Hephzibah Tintner Foundation, and the Robert and Elizabeth Albert Conducting Fellow Patrick Burns

Artistic Management Senior Artistic Coordinator Alex Wyatt

Artistic Coordinator Robyn Begg

Education Head of Education Katy McKeown

Dance Development Officer Jasmin Dwyer

Dance Education Presenters Alexander Mitchell Yvette Sauvage Chantelle van der Hoek Ben Obst

Education Administrator and Content Coordinator Sophia Bender

Artistic Health Principal Physiotherapist & Artistic Health Team Manager Susan Mayes

Rehabilitation Physiotherapist Sophie Emery

Physiotherapists Bridy White Michelle Bergeron

Myotherapist/Massage Therapists Shaun Bryce Brad Moffitt

Exercise Instructors Sakis Michelis Darren Spowart

Consultant Sports & Exercise Physician Dr Andrew Garnham

General Practitioners Dr Vicki Higgins Dr Jason Lam

Medical Administrator Sarah Thompson

STAGE

Director, Production & Planning Chris Yates

Artistic Planning and Operations Director of Artistic Planning Helen McCormack

Head of Artistic Planning Tessa Kay

Contract Administrator, Artistic Noeleen King

Associate Producer, Regional Touring and Storytime Ballet Hannah Beer

Company Manager Jess Jellie

Deputy Company Manager Kate Peters

Assistant Company Manager Hannah Denison

Technical Technical Director Jon Buswell

Stage Manager Deborah Whiteley

Assistant Stage Managers Drew Cipollone Christabel Fry

Head of Staging Operations Bart Kendall

Head of Lighting

Graham Silver

Wardrobe Master Geoffrey Harman

Deputy Head of Touring Wardrobe Valantine Turner

Head Mechanist & Head Flyman Tom Cole

Deputy Head Mechanists Tom Paine Taylor Chen

Lead Mechanist Pip Strachan

Head Electrician Adrian Siggs

PRODUCTION

Business Manager, Production Darren Conway

Production Coordinator Freya Phillips

Production Wardrobe Head of Costume Workshop Musette Molyneaux

Costume Administrative Coordinator Eloise Fryer

Wardrobe Coordinators Jenny Howard Christie Milton

Senior Gentlemen's Cutter Marsia Bergh

Senior Ladies’ Cutter Ruth Bartel

Cutters Sophia Cameron Etai Alves Georgiana Russell-Head

Costumiers Ruth Owen Jessie Dole Rhiannon Irving Alice Mere Kate Powers Emily Lewis Madeleine Duncan

Wig Supervisor Alison Kidd

Production & Design Production Design Coordinator Kat Chan

Production Centre Production Facilities Manager Avon Kilcullen

Production Centre Costume Coordinator Penelope Bjorksten

Collections Program Manager Tessie Scott

Production Facilities Storeman Andrew Nish

MARKETING, COMMERCIAL AND AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT

Director Marketing, Commercial & Audience Development Penny Rowland

Executive Assistant Melanie Swieconek

Marketing Senior Marketing Manager Renee Colquhoun

Marketing Managers Stephanie Corne Melissa Ray

Marketing Specialist Jackie Money

Marketing Coordinator Keshia Contini

Lead Graphic Designer Ashleigh Hills

Graphic Designers Lucy Brown Stephen Wood

Audience Engagement Audience Engagement Manager Viviana Sacchero

Audience Engagement Program Coordinator Mary Grul

Digital Digital Manager Joanna O'Connor

Content Expert Rose Mulready

Social Media Specialist Hannah Leane

Digital Specialist Maeve Ashby/Sam Sally Cha

Recording & Broadcast Recording & Broadcast Manager Robyn Fincham

Content Creator Brett Ludeman

Public Relations Public Relations Manager Kate Muir

Publicists Anthea Waller Sophie Rennard

Customer Experience & Ticketing Senior Manager, Customer Experience & Ticketing Steven Payne

Customer Knowledge Manager Richard Laslett

Ticketing Operations Manager Shannon Toyne

Tessitura Database Coordinator Viraj Godbole

VIP Ticketing Specialist Rose McNeill-Young

Ticketing & Merchandise Operations Coordinator Sara Klug

Customer Experience Team Leader Perry Hingston

Customer Experience Assistants Emily Klug Mary Grul Natalie Howe Gabrielle Monaghan Jonathan Gormann

Reception Lynne McDougall

EXTERNAL RELATIONS Director External Relations Penny Waitsman

External Relations Partnership Managers Fiona Gosschalk Sarah Vick

External Relations Development Manager Matthew Henry

Grants Manager Kate Horwood

Account Executive Hannah Fulker

Account Coordinator Alyssan Russell

PHILANTHROPY

Director Philanthropy Kenneth Watkins

Executive Assistant Philanthropy Sharyn Gilham

Philanthropy Manager Nick Hays

Patrons Manager (VIC & TAS) Ben Lee

Patrons Manager - Orchestra Victoria Olivia Passmore

Planned Giving Managers Liz Ruggieri Heather McNicol

Philanthropy Services Manager Adam Santilli

Ballet Ambassador Program Specialist David Wynne

Philanthropy Services Coordinator Diana Chatfield

Patrons Coordinator Philippa Clement - Levin

BUSINESS SERVICES

Finance

Chief Financial Officer & Director of Business Operations Sally Underwood

Executive Assistant Michelle Saultry

Finance Manager Carolyn Dryley

Manager, Forecasting, Planning and Analysis Nazif Marikar

Orchestra Accountant Senthil Radhakrishnan

Senior Business Analyst Diana Bedoya

Payroll & Indirect Tax Specialist Kristina Barisic

Accountant Stephanie Cornish

Assistant Accountants Isabel Pena Munevar Thilini Siriwardana

Information Technology Technology Manager David Cooper

IT Manager Damien Calvert

Web Developer Daniel Lukas

Building Management Building Projects & Ballet Centre Manager Tracy Hosier

Building Services Assistant Simon McGowan

Cleaners Lance Humphries John Athinis Casey McCormack Bishnu Sapkota Estaban Llano

HUMAN RESOURCES

Human Resources Consultant Kate Reilly

correct as 29.03.19


THE AUSTRALIAN BALLET GISELLE

57

W I T H T H A N K S

In business, as in dance, the right partner is everything. Our corporate partners provide much-needed funds that help us realise our artistic vision, from producing exciting new ballets and staging iconic works to making a splash on the world stage. They also assist us behind the scenes, giving us product and in-kind support, which allows us to achieve excellence on both sides of the curtain.

Importantly, sponsors bring us closer to you. They help us to keep ticket prices affordable, visit communities across Australia and broadcast our ballets. We’d like to acknowledge the generosity of our current partners, whose support enables us to care for tradition, while daring to be different.

If you would like to learn more about our corporate partnerships program, please contact Penny Waitsman on 02 9253 5308 or email [email protected]

S U P P O R T I N G O U R E V E R Y S T E P

PRINCIPAL PARTNER

LEAD PARTNERS LEARNING PARTNER

Official property partner Official airline partner

MAJOR PARTNERS

GOVERNMENT PARTNERS INDUSTRY PARTNER

The Australian Ballet is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body

The Australian Ballet is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW

The Australian Ballet is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria

SUPPORTING PARTNERS

Official piano partner

Official legal partner

MEDIA PARTNERS

Official pointe shoe partner

Official cruise partner

Official jewellery partner


OPERATING IN SYDNEY, MELBOURNE, CANBERRA, BRISBANE, ADELAIDE, PERTH, HOBART & DARWIN

OVERSEAS OPERATIONS:New Zealand: Wellington: Playbill (NZ) Limited, Level 1, 100 Tory Street, Wellington, New Zealand 6011; (64 4) 385 8893, Fax (64 4) 385 8899.

Auckland: Mt. Smart Stadium, Beasley Avenue, Penrose, Auckland; (64 9) 571 1607, Fax (64 9) 571 1608, Mobile 6421 741 148, Email: admin@playbill.

co.nz.

UK: Playbill UK Limited, C/- Everett Baldwin Barclay Consultancy Services, 35 Paul Street, London EC2A 4UQ; (44) 207 628 0857, Fax (44) 207 628 7253.

Hong Kong: Playbill (HK) Limited, C/- Fanny Lai, Rm 804, 8/F Eastern Commercial Centre, 397 Hennessey Road, Wanchai HK 168001 WCH 38; (852) 2891

6799; Fax (852) 2891 1618.

Malaysia: Playbill Malaysia Sdn Bhn, C/- Peter I.M. Chieng & Co., No.2-E (1st Floor) Jalan SS 22/25, Damansara Jaya, 47400 Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul

This is a PLAYBILL / SHOWBILL publication. Playbill Proprietary Limited / Showbill

Head Office: Suite A, Level 1, Building 16, Fox Studios Australia, Park Road North, Moore Park NSW 2021PO Box 410 Paddington NSW 2021Telephone: +61 2 9921 5353 Fax: +61 2

9449 6053 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.playbill.com.au

This publication is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s consent in writing. It is

All enquiries for advertising space in this publication should be directed to the above company and address. Entire concept copyright. Reproduction without permission in whole or in part of any material contained herein is prohibited. Title ‘Playbill’ is the registered title of Playbill Proprietary Limited.

PLAYBILL AD 55

The cast for this performance is available on the nightly cast list which is issued free of charge to patrons. The Australian Ballet reserves the right to cancel or alter any detail of this season, or any performance forming part of this season, as it considers necessary.

For this production Costumes manufactured by the Production Division of The Australian Ballet

Scenery & properties manufactured by Show Works

Scenery & properties painted by Scenic Studios

Scenic materials & backdrops supplied by Imported Theatre Fabrics

Fabric dyeing Lynn Munro

Specialist footwear manufactured by Steppin’ Out, Sydney

Program edited by Rose Mulready

Graphic Designer Jasmin Tulk

The Australian Ballet portrait photography by Daniel Boud

INSTAGRAM

@ausballetFACEBOOK

theaustralianballetYOUTUBE

theaustralianballetPINTEREST

behindballetBLOG

australianballet.com.au/blog

TWITTER

@theausballet

Open Masterclasses & National Audition Tour 2019

Visit our website for locations, dates, and further information

australianballetschool.com.au

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1 – 18 MAY 2019 | SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

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