Dancers from The Australian Ballet have been in New York for appearances at the annual Fall for Dance Festival at City Center. They performed Glen Tetley's GEMINI for Fall for Dance on November 1st, repeating it on the 2nd. This brief visit serves as a calling card for the Company's season at Lincoln Center June 12th thru 17th, 2012. Above: Australian Ballet's artistic director David McAllister, photo by Matthew Murphy.
On Wednesday Octiber 26, thanks to publicists Michelle Tabnick and Helene Davis, photographer Matt Murphy and I had an opportunity to watch a quartet of the Company's dancers in rehearsal:
I saw GEMINI in 1978 at ABT danced by Cynthia Gregory, Jolinda Menendez, Clark Tippett and Gregory Osborne. To be honest, I don't remember very much about it but I did scrawl the word "GREAT!!!" across my cast page. Seeing it in rehearsal today, I would add several more exclamations to the word "GREAT": it is a terrific piece, placing extraordinary demands on the dancers. You really could not attempt to dance this piece with anything less than a perfect technique; it asks for virtuosity on a killer scale, but also has a deeply lyrical quality to counter-balance the fireworks. Athleticism abounds, and so does a very intense and intimate partnering style.
The four dancers, only recently arrived in Gotham from Down Under, prepared to walk thru the first movement to get a feel for the space while a small invited audience were regaled by the Company's artistic director David McAllister with news of the Company's upcoming June 2012 season at Lincoln Center as well as background information for Tetley's GEMINI, created for Australian Ballet in 1973. It was revived there periodically from that date on. McAllister danced in one revival ("They had a short cast that year..." he joked); it was most recently performed in Australia about a dozen years ago and as far as I know, it has not been seen in New York since its ABT performances in the late 1970s.
Australian Ballet principal ballerina Amber Scott (above) gets ready to dance.
The dancers then took their marks and the Hans Werner Henze score sets them on the fantastic journey of dancing GEMINI. Adam Bull partners Amber Scott (above)...
...and Lana Jones dances with Rudy Hawkes (above).
Lana (above) has a solo of mind-boggling complexity; her speed, accuracy and striking musicality were breath-taking with a sparkling series of grand jetes executed with buoyant clarity.
Amber's dark-haired beauty is so appealing in her role which has a somewhat more lyric vein than Lana's. The choreography calls for extreme fluidity of style and suppleness of body; Amber's dancing radiates a deeply feminine quality aligned to diamond-brilliance of technique. The men were likewise very impressive: Adam Bull with his imperial height and space-covering movement deploys a flashing extension, and he has great strength as a partner. Rudy Hawkes has the type of intense physicality that put me in mind of New York City Ballet's Adrian Danchig-Waring.
David McAllister warned that the dancers were still adjusting to a change of time zone and hemisphere, but once the music started there was no hint of fatigue or of taking things easy. They simply went at it full tilt.
Here are some more of Matt's photos from the rehearsal:
Adam Bull, Amber Scott
Lana Jones, Rudy Hawkes
Lana Jones, Rudy Hawkes
Lana Jones, Rudy Hawkes
Adam Bull, Amber Scott
As these fantastic dancers sailed thru the strenuous demands of Tetley's choreography, I felt such deep-rooted gratitude for their commitment and energy in re-introducing this great ballet to me, and to New York audiences. I can hardly wait to see it at Fall for Dance. The Festival is sold out, but if you can beg, borrow or steal a ticket for November 3rd, by all means do so.
My sincere thanks to Matt Murphy for taking time from his busy schedule to shoot these pictures for me. Matt will be doing some official shoots for Australian Ballet in connection with their June 2012 New York season; I look forward to seeing those images. Matt's series DISPLACED will show at the gallery of Dance New Amsterdam opening on November 4th.
