© David Kelly Special Feature on AB in July 2005 Ballet.co magazine Australian Ballet Swan Lake story and creative team Australian Ballet reviews Australian Ballet Photographs ABTalk - discuss the Australian Ballet UK tour Australain Ballet website Michelle Potter reviews

But where does this production fit within the repertoire of the Australian Ballet? And where does Graeme Murphy, best known now as artistic director of Sydney Dance Company, come in?

Swan Lake occupies a special place in the history of the Australian Ballet: it was the work that brought the company into existence. On a spring night in 1962, on 2 November to be exact, the company gave its first ever performance at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney. A full-length Swan Lake, in a production by Peggy van Praagh and Ray Powell following the Petipa/Ivanov choreography, was led by guest stars Sonia Arova and Erik Bruhn. Just eighteen months later, in April1964, this van Praagh production was revived for a series of guest appearances with the Australian Ballet by Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. Van Praagh’s production remained in the repertoire for a decade and a half and during that time served as a vehicle for many illustrious guest stars, as well as for the technical and dramatic talents of the Australian Ballet’s finest artists of the time. 

Anne Woolliams, third artistic director of the Australian Ballet, produced a new version of Swan Lake for the Australian Ballet in 1977. It opened on 19 October at the Palais Theatre, Melbourne, with Australian principals Marilyn Rowe and Kelvin Coe in the lead. Woolliams created new choreography for Acts I and IV of this production, retained the Ivanov choreography for Act II, and had Ray Powell create new character dances for Act III. In her program notes Woolliams wrote: ‘This production tries to avoid the trend of changing traditional ballets solely in order to be different. On the other hand, any attempt to reproduce what is believed to be an authentic version usually has a museum quality of interest only to historians’. The Woolliams production was not universally popular – not everyone likes change, however small. But it had dramatic logic, brooding designs and clearly patterned choreography for the corps de ballet. And it was powerful enough to remain in the Australian Ballet’s repertoire for twenty-five years, until Graeme Murphy was commissioned to make a new version.

The Murphy production opened on 17 September 2002 at the State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne. Leading the cast were Simone Goldsmith as Odette, Steven Heathcote as Siegfried and Margaret Illmann as the Baroness von Rothbart. Choreographed by Murphy, and showing the hallmarks of all the very best choreographers – they make the movement tell the story, the work is credited not just to Murphy but to Janet Vernon and Kristian Fredrikson as well. Vernon, now Murphy’s wife, has worked alongside him since the 1970s. A former dancer with the Australian Ballet herself, her eye for technical and conceptual detail is unsurpassed. Fredrikson has collaborated on Murphy productions also since the 1970s, initially as a designer but increasingly as a contributor to the concept behind a work.
 

Murphy is no stranger to the Australian Ballet. He is a product of the Australian Ballet School and his professional dance career began in the corps de ballet of the Australian Ballet. Not only that, it is not often recognised that he was in fact the Australian Ballet’s first resident choreographer. After leaving the Australian Ballet in the early 1970s he worked variously in Europe, especially in France with the company of Felix Blaska. He spent 1975 back in Australia freelancing as a choreographer and then rejoined the Australian Ballet in 1976 as a dancer and as the company choreographer.

The Murphy work that emerged during that year, 1976, was Glimpses,a somewhat outrageous work to a score by the Australian composer Margaret Sutherland about the decadent art of Australian artist Norman Lindsay. It was not created as a mainstage piece for the Australian Ballet and in fact it is probably fair to say that Murphy’s year as resident choreographer did not produce a piece for the company, which is perhaps why the appointment is rarely mentioned. Glimpses was created for Ballet ’76, a program designed to encourage emerging choreographers from the Australian Ballet. It was hugely successful for Murphy, however, and became a staple item in the repertoire of Sydney Dance Company once Murphy took over the directorship of that company at the end of 1976.

But as Murphy grew in stature as a choreographer, and grow in stature he did once he had his own company with which to work, he was invited back to the Australian Ballet to create series of one act works for the flagship company. They included the popular Beyond Twelve, a work madein 1980 that looked at the life and loves of a young boy growing up and maturing as a dancer; Meander (1984); and Gallery (1987). Murphy cemented a place as a choreographer of classically-based works with his full-length Nutcracker made for the Australian Ballet in 1992. It was followed by the joint Sydney Dance Company/Australian Ballet production of Tivoli in 2001. And then, of course, Swan Lake in 2002.
 

There has always been much discussion about whether Nutcracker or Swan Lake is the greater achievement as far as full-length Murphy creations for the Australian Ballet are concerned. Swan Lake probably wins with audiences, Nutcracker perhaps with critics or with those who recognise its deep connections with an Australian cultural identity, conceived as it was as a kind of homage to the growth of Australian ballet from its European roots. But the Murphy Swan Lake, its production team and cast, won several awards in 2003, the year after its premiere. They included a Green Room Award for concept and realisation, two Helpmann Awards, one for choreography and one for design, and two Australian Dance Awards, one for choreography and one for best performance by a female dancer (Simone Goldsmith).

As audiences in the United Kingdom set out to see, analyse and criticise this work they can rest assured that it has been put together in a truly Australian way. A bit of larrikinism here, a bit of breaking the rules there. In Australia we hope those audiences will open their hearts and enjoy.