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…
Scintillating and sensational. Riverdance is back and how! It has been more than a decade since this Irish originated troupe last visited Australia (they toured five times between 1997 and 2012) and this is their 25th anniversary show. First coming together for a seven-minute performance at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin in 1984, the following year…
Electrifying rhythm, dance, drums and more, Argentina’s Malevo is mesmerising machismo. 13 artistes extraordinaire and a four-piece band hold the audience in the palms of their hands for 80 minutes. Created by director, choreographer and dancer Matias Jaime in 2015, the all-male group specialises in what is known as Malambo. That is a traditional Argentinian folk dance…
Sensual, highly energetic and colourful, Jazz Men appears intent on giving Magic Mike a run for its money. I speak of 11 locally based dancers – some finely chiseled – strutting their stuff in front of a most appreciative audience who don’t hold back. The showmen change their costumes – which range from the elegant to the…
Magic Mike or Santa? Honestly, there are times you can’t tell the difference in this sexually promiscuous, irreverent Christmas revue that provides no shortage of fun. It upends everything you thought you knew about the festive season and keeps the laughs coming. A traditional Christmas carol behind curtains gives way to smut and innuendo, which the enthusiastic…
Sensual and alluring, Matador combines scantily clad performers with pulsating English and Spanish beats, and acrobatic acts in a fast-moving show. It is a fusion of dance, circus and burlesque, a modern celebration of forbidden love, carnal desires, passion and pain in its many coloured hues. At its core is acceptance of diversity. Eleven performers cavort, clamber…
Two, original, 35-minute works broken by a 20-minute interval, the first involves 22 dancers aged 10 to 17 (the youth artists) and the second 15 adults. Youngsters in various formations – all dressed in parallel versions of white and black – run, leap, tumble and turn in Happily Ever After. A series of vignettes, the scenes…
4/4 is characterised by a series of complex movements and maneuverings against a stark stage and backdrop. It is black, white and grey all the way, save for the golden sun peeking through at the end. This, against a strong and dynamic sound bed. 4/4 is a highly expressive work, with eight performers paired off. Ostensibly dressed in black…
What a superb visual and aural feast Walanbaa Yulu-Gi is and how it has metamorphosised since Burn the Floor first burst onto the scene 25 years ago. Featuring the incredibly talented First Nations’ performer Mitch Tambo, the production has no shortage of sizzle. The deft footwork … the singing … the showmanship is top shelf all the…
Two new and very different works, each lasting just under an hour, constitute the opening of the 2023 ballet season in Melbourne for The Australian Ballet. Named Identity, in a nutshell it is contemporary dance versus traditional ballet. While there were elements of both that I admired, I felt there was too much repetition in the first,…
