Queensland Ballet at Home is the company’s first production for 2024, and the first overseen by new Artistic Director Leanne Benjamin. It consists of four short works, selected by previous Artistic Director Li Cunxin.
In between two Brisbane seasons in February and March, the program becomes Queensland Ballet on Tour, travelling to four regional centres in south-east Queensland. This short program of highlights is ideally suited for ease of touring, with no sets and with recorded music, and offers variety for the audience.
Each half begins with a pas de deux, which is followed by a more substantial piece. The opening work is Ben Stevenson’s Three Preludes, performed by principal artist Lucy Green and company artist Edison Manuel. At the beginning this reminded me of Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of a Faun, with two dancers in practice clothes in a tentative encounter in the studio.
Green and Manuel created a remote dream-like world of absorption in each other, moving around and on the barre, with many arabesques, embraces and, for Green, fluttery arms and feet. The choreography includes movements in unison and often in mirror image. There are also some ungainly lifts, for example with the woman held above the man’s head, in a foetal position on her back and clutching her knees. There was a little awkwardness in Manuel’s partnering at times.
The music consisted of three preludes by Sergei Rachmaninov, played by one of the great pianists of our time, Vladimir Ashkenazy. The volume was too high, distorting and blurring the sound. I listened to Ashkenazy recordings of these preludes later, enjoying the contrast between dreamy limpidity and passionate outbursts that had vanished from the version at the ballet performance.
Tchaikovsky Mash, choreographed by ballet master Matthew Lawrence, is a fun piece, affectionately parodying traditional tutu ballets like Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake to a medley of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s music. Principal artist Neneka Yoshida and soloist Vito Bernasconi led an ensemble of eight dancers.
Yoshida danced with authority and projected a perplexed gravity that accentuated the comedy of unexpected appearances and disappearances, and overwrought emotions. Bernasconi powered through the many leaps and bounds, with an occasional stiff landing. The ensemble had some great parodic moments, with twiddling bent-knee runs on pointe, flutterings, flappings and hand wringing, as well as chances to show their enjoyment and enthusiasm in more straightforwardly classical movement. Watch out for the Shadow (Joshua Ostermann)!
The Le Corsaire pas de deux, choreographed by Marius Petipa, music by Riccardo Drigo, arr. John Lanchbery, is a standard ballet showpiece, extracted from an extravagant ballet about pirates, captives and shipwrecks. Green, once again and Kohei Iwamoto gave strong performances. In an exquisite white, gold and pale blue tutu, she sparkled in her featured moments, while Iwamoto, looking super-fit, partnered strongly and flew through his solos with gravity-defying energy. One minor quibble: it seemed a bit much to have two bows after each part of the piece. Wouldn’t one be enough?
The concluding work on the program, and the most substantial, is A Rhapsody in Motion: 2nd and 3rd movements, choreographed by assistant artistic director Greg Horsman to the dramatic and passionate Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninov.
This abstract classical work shows the choreographer’s and dancers’ responses to the music. It is indeed rhapsodic and beautiful, with the choreography for four leading couples and an ensemble of 12 sweeping, ebbing and flowing with the music. The dancers form evanescent patterns of lines and swirls, sometimes evoking romantic and sensual dreaminess, and at others, energy and power.
The four lead couples, Yoshida and Manuel, Paige Rochester and Bernasconi, Heidi Freeman and Ivan Surodeev and Jessica Stratton-Smith with Shaun Curtis, provide a strong focus for the ensemble. The execution of the ensemble choreography needs some refining and tightening up.
The costumes, designed by Zoe Griffiths, add greatly to the visual impact of the choreography, with the different colours weaving around one another. The women’s floating chiffon dresses and the men’s singlets and tights are different shades of red, orange and apricot for the leads, and plum-coloured for the ensemble. Griffiths also designed the costumes for Le Corsaire; the designer(s) for the other two works were uncredited.
The lighting design for all four works, by Cameron Goerg, is crucial in providing a different look and feel for each, in the absence of narrative and sets. That for Rhapsody is most complex, with varied shades of blue on the backdrop, including vignetting and images of clouds. For the other works, combinations of white, blue and red lighting are used.
This program was enthusiastically received by the audience. It is an appealing compilation of varied works and should be a hit on its regional tour. At an hour and 10 minutes, however, does it need a 20-minute interval? Perhaps there are practical reasons for this.
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