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Australian BalletMarch 2005 Melbourne, State Theatre By Michelle Potter © Michelle Potter is dance critic of the |
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The Australian Ballet has been engaged in all kinds of anniversary programs recently: Beyond Forty, the company’s own 40th anniversary celebration in 2002, Balanchine and Ashton celebrations in 2004 and most recently a tribute to August Bournonville in honour of the 200th anniversary of his birth. The Bournonville program was the company’s second one for 2005 and the main offering was La Sylphide, last performed by the company almost ten years ago in 1996 during the directorship of Maina Gielgud. This classic of the Romantic era was preceded by three divertissements. Two works from the Bournonville repertoire - an excerpt from Le Conservatoire and the pas de deux Flower Festival in Genzano - were followed by an absolute show stopper, Grand Tarantella, choreographed by former Australian Ballet dancer Walter Bourke in 1974 initially for himself and his wife, Swedish Ballet principal Maria Lang.
The opening night of La Sylphide marked the return in a leading role of former principal artist, Lisa Bolte. Bolte retired from the stage in 2002 to await the birth of her first child. In 2003 she appeared as Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet but this was her comeback in a ballerina role. As the Sylphide who lures the young Scot, James, away from hearth and home Bolte was all lightness and playfulness. She captured beautifully the poise and calm in the upper body and arms that is such a foil to the fast, precise, beaten footwork of the Bournonville style. As James, Robert Curran was an inspiring and inspired partner and executed his demanding solos in both Acts I and II with beautiful buoyancy. Bolte and Curran, coached in the roles on this occasion by Johnny Eliason, have great rapport. When they look they see and together they allowed the story to unfold seamlessly. A little more guile on Bolte’s part, however, would have taken her interpretation to another level and heightened the Romantic duality that underpins the work, a duality that Erik Aschengreen has referred to as ‘the beautiful danger’.
 Special Guest Artist Lisa Bolte and Robert Curran in Australian Ballet's La Sylphide © Jeff Busby Bolte and Curran had excellent support especially from Marc Cassidy as Gurn, initially spurned by James’ fiancée, Effie, but eventually winning her hand. And an uncredited young dancer from the Australian Ballet School almost stole the show in the Act I cameo role of the child who joins in the adult festivities. A wonderfully poised young performer, she held her own in both mime and dance scenes. At the next day’s matinee, the leading roles of the Sylphide and James were danced by Madeleine Eastoe and Tim Harbour. Eastoe caught easily the feathery and insubstantial nature of the Sylphide but she also conveyed a bit of artifice in her dealings with James. She hovered. She darted. She was here. She was there. Her bourrees were as delicate as the wings of the butterfly she catches for James in Act II. But when she wept at the window in Act I, when she melted with grief as she rebuked James that he loved another, and when she capriciously snatched the ring meant for Effie from his hand, we knew that James was trapped not by love but by the trickery of a fey person. Here was the beautiful danger. This was Eastoe’s debut performance as the Sylphide and she showed all the technical and dramatic strengths that mark her as one of the Australian Ballet’s true stars.
It was Harbour’s debut performance too but also his first principal role with the company. He danced strongly throughout although needed just a bit more assertiveness in characterisation to match Eastoe and to push the performance to the level that Bolte and Curran achieved. Perhaps just more experience and opportunity? And in a much-watched move the Australian Ballet’s senior principal, Steven Heathcote, danced the role of Madge the fortune-telling witch. He brought a clearly articulated characterisation to a role that can easily degenerate into silliness. But those manic jumps of the witches around the cauldron as Madge concocts the shimmering scarf that will bring the Sylphide to her doom always look like Bournonville gone wrong. This scene rarely works well and certainly doesn’t in this production.
 Special Guest Artist Lisa Bolte and Robert Curran in Australian Ballet's La Sylphide © Jeff Busby As for the divertissements, the pas de trois between Mr Alexis, Miss Eliza and Miss Victoria from Le Conservatoire and the Flower Festival pas de deux had some charming moments, but some uncomfortable ones too. In Conservatoire no-one really managed to bring off those fiendish turns in attitude (on demi pointe in pointe shoes) ending in a developpe a la seconde followed by a promenade, and the excerpt looked very lonely on the big stage of the State Theatre without its context of ballet master, musician and the rest of the class. But Bourke’s Grand Tarantella made up for any feeling of unease. This work, when danced in Moscow by David McAllister and Elizabeth Toohey at the Fifth International Ballet Competition in 1985, reputedly had one Russian judge exclaim ‘Dancing at last!’ Its fast, really fast pace, its choreography that uses the full space of the stage, its continuous flow of bravura step on top of bravura step, requires dancers with stamina, technique (especially an ability to turn, jump and move expansively) and personality. It was danced with huge panache on opening night by Lana Jones partnered by Remi Wortmeyer. Wortmeyer was in particularly good form. Earlier that day he had received the Walter Bourke Award, a $20,000 award in honour of the choreographer of Tarantella. Leanne Stojmenov and Daniel Gaudiello were equally captivating at the matinee with, in particular, dancerly joy written all over Stojmenov’s face and body.
This program plays in Sydney from 8-28 April.
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