Bespoke is the sixth in Queensland Ballet’s annual season of new works by present-day choreographers. This season has again given greatly appreciated opportunities to choreographers to create, and to audiences to see new works in a diverse program with something for everyone.
Queensland Ballet’s Resident Choreographer Natalie Weir has long wanted to choreograph a response to the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. Her Four Last Songs, fittingly the last work on the programme, is an ecstatic, transfiguring response to this heart-wrenchingly beautiful music. The songs are recorded, and the performers unfortunately not attributed in the programme.
Both the songs and the ballet describe an older couple looking back at their lives, and facing the prospect of death. Weir interprets the four songs as Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, each for a different pair of dancers. The mood is one of quiet celebration of the past and of acceptance, while acknowledging life’s trials.
The five men wear light beige trousers and semi-transparent, flesh-coloured singlets, while each woman wears a different-coloured, floaty dress (by costume designer Noelene Hill): green for Spring, turquoise-blue for Summer, orange for Autumn, purple-blue for Winter.
Threading through the whole, a woman in a red dress (Principal Artist Lucy Green) and her partner (Principal Artist Patricio Revé) appear like the Fates, observing and directing each couple. Their performance was commanding, polished and full of energy.
In Spring, Kayla Van Den Bogert and Joshua Ostermann tenderly and exuberantly express young love. Georgia Swan and Mali Comlekci, as the married couple, evoke Summer with more intensity. Lina Kim, pliant and fluid, yearns and suffers in Autumn, partnered by Callum Mackie. Finally, in Winter, Sophie Zoricic and Rian Thompson express both suffering and acceptance.
Ingenious, daring lifts and throws are part of the dynamic partnering that is such a signature quality of Weir’s work. Nothing is ever static. Exuberance, happiness, energy, sorrow, suffering and acknowledgement are all eloquently portrayed. My abiding memory is of great tenderness conveyed by the choreography and the dancers in movement, gestures and gaze.
The stage is bare in all three works of Bespoke and lighting design is by Paul Jackson. In Four Last Songs, video and lighting are a major presence. Between each ‘season’, video of a seashore at different times of day, looking out to the horizon, is projected across the backdrop. The sound of the sea replaces the songs. During each song, the backdrop is lit in gradients of glowing intense colour.
The opening work of Bespoke is Miroirs (Mirrors), choreographed by Australian multidisciplinary artist and former Principal at Dutch National Ballet, Remi Wörtmeyer (also the set and costume designer). Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs 1, 3 and 4 are played onstage by company pianist Daniel Le – one of the highlights of the evening.
Miroirs is an abstract work for 10 dancers on the theme of reflections, the movement mirroring the music, and the dancers one another. Principal Artists Mia Heathcote and Victor Estévez featured, supported by eight Company Artists. It was a pleasure to watch the assured execution of intricate choreography with a lot of fast footwork, spinning lifts and entwining movements on the floor.
The backdrop is black, and above the stage hang looped chains made of diamond-shaped mirrors, reflecting flashes of light as they sway gently with a mesmerising effect. The dancers wear unitards in dark, metallic colours with semi-transparent tops and a silver belt. The overall impression is of streamlined elegance.
Miroirs concluded with Heathcote and Estévez reappearing alone as if in a trance, wearing matt grey costumes, Heathcote now in soft shoes rather than pointe shoes. This puzzling scene felt ‘tacked-on’. Despite changes of pace, by the end the work seemed a little too much of the same.
Paul Boyd’s Tartan is interposed between the two neoclassical/contemporary works. Boyd is Queensland Ballet Academy’s Ballet Master and Resident Choreographer – and a former Highland dancer. Tartan is an entertaining mix of ballet and contemporised Scottish dance, fast-moving and a real crowd-pleaser. Dressed in tartan kilts and skirts, Queensland Ballet’s 12 Jette Parker Young Artists leapt into its challenges with gusto, relishing the energy of the Scottish music (recorded).
There is a serious and sad element to the work. The focal point is the older Scotsman, dreaming of the friends of his youth. Queensland Ballet alumnus Graeme Collins, in full tartan regalia, anchored the youthful energy with a moving and tender portrayal of age and remembrance of things past.
Taron Geyl as the Scotsman’s younger self, and Hana Nonaka Aillon as his past love, were touchingly serious and caring at the right times and had a convincing presence in these roles. Andy Stewart’s 1960 hit ‘Donald Where’s Your Troosers’ gave Josh Fagan the chance to show off not only his dancing skills, but his flair for comedy.
The advertised length of the programme is 2 hours 10 minutes, including two 20-minute intervals, i.e. 30% of the evening. With three half-hour works, it could be difficult to break it up in any other way, but I could have done without a second interval.
