Perhaps the most anticipated opening of Queensland Ballet’s 2024 season, Coco Chanel: the Life of a Fashion Icon was sold out before the curtain even went up. It is fantastic news for the arts in Brisbane, and well-deserved, as this production delivered everything a theatre-going fashionista could dream of. The ballet is a co-production between…
What you read into and see in dance is very much about interpretation. Here is a piece where the mood is constantly shifting. What starts out as beautiful, gentle, caring and nurturing, turns into something frenetic and disturbing. So, what is at play? Why do we transition from calm to calamitous? Needs, wants and desires…
An esoteric work for selective tastes, as far as I could make out An Organised Odyssey is about finding one’s true voice. According to Greek mythology, Scylla is a legendary, man-eating monster. She lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart, sea-swallowing monster Charybdis. Ancient Greek poet Homer described Scylla…
Bangarra Dance Theatre’s world premiere work Horizon shines on the main stage as their first cross-cultural collaboration, and its national tour has arrived in Brisbane where it is showing as part of Clancestry, a celebration of identity and connection providing a platform for established and emerging First Nations artists to share their stories, perspectives and…
SIX sizzles and girl power rules. It is a high-octane musical in every sense of those words. I speak of talent, production values, choreography, sound and lighting – the complete package. The concept is pitting the wives of King Henry VIII against each other in a show of strength about who was the most hard…
Queensland Ballet’s annual Bespoke program is a triple bill of brand-new contemporary work that includes Katina Olsen’s gundirgan, wise woman, Milena Sidorova’s Birds of Paradise and Jack Lister’s Papillon. Now in its seventh year, Bespoke is an exhilarating opportunity to see elite ballet dancers perform in dynamic, contemporary settings, and the 2024 season did not…
Just in time for the school holidays, Cinderella has arrived, beautifully presented by Queensland Ballet as part of their My First Ballet series. A charming, all-ages adaptation by Matthew Lawrence, Cinderella was first performed in Brisbane in 2013 and has been adapted with permission by Ben Stevenson OBE. As one of the world’s most beloved…
A much-loved classic with a fresh update and uniquely Australian twist, Queensland Ballet’s season of Coppélia is a charming presentation that will appeal to all ages. Choreographed by QB’s Associate Artistic Director, Greg Horsman, after Arthur Saint-Léon and Marius Petipa, this updated version is a co-production with West Australian Ballet and was first performed in…
Spectacular, colourful and creative headdresses, feathers and finery are front and centre as performers from Club Vegas hit the stage. Broad smiles, popular song and dance numbers, athletic, dare-devil acrobatics and comic interludes are the order of the day. It is a show that is dynamic, bold and brassy, and has the enthusiastic audience cheering throughout. For…
Queensland Ballet’s 2024 season has kicked off with Shakespeare’s whimsical masterpiece A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an enchanting tale of love, magic, mischief and mayhem. A co-production with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first performed in 2015 in Wellington and has since toured China and Australia. The late Liam Scarlett’s choreography…
