Twenty-five years ago Queensland, Australia, was virtually a cultural desert. There was no professional opera, ballet, or drama, not even a music conservatory. Today, thanks to the initiative of a former Sadler's Wells dancer, Queensland can boast of a dance company acclaimed by international dance critics as "Australia's most vibrant classical ballet company."
The Sadler's Wells dancer, Charles Lisner, had an O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) conferred by the Queen for his services to ballet in Australia. When he retired as artistic director in 1975, he left a strong, disciplined ballet company. His successor, Harry Haythorne, coming to the company with vast European experience, was responsible for presenting classical ballet such as Les Sylphides and Swan Lake.
Most regional dance companies tend to stay close to home, the expense of touring being beyond their meager budgets. Not so the Queensland Ballet. This small company, based in Brisbane - a city with a population of 730,000 - has made a habit of crisscrossing the sparsely populated continent, creating new works and building a reputation for excellence noted internationally. The troupe makes at least two major tours in Australia, taking the dancers more than a thousand miles from home. They enjoy enthusiastic support, but this is not enough to obviate the need to operate on a shoestring budget.
Hard Work Pay-off
This is one of three major companies in Australia with a repertoire based on the classical style - the others are the national company - the Australian Ballet - and the state company based in Western Australia.
The hard continuous work has paid off. Such is the standard attained by the Queensland Ballet that, in 1985, the company was offered the rights to perform Salome, an important new ballet by the distinguished British composer Peter Maxwell-Davies. It was only the second production of this work to be presented in the world.
The twenty-seven years have not been without their problems. In fact, several times financial crises threatened the very existence of the company. The real rise to its success began late in 1978, when the current artistic director, Harold Collins, took charge.
Collins, a former dancer with the company, decided to retain the company's traditional classical base while creating new works to suit a small team of dancers. While he did not have a large corps to draw on, his choice of works was bold. He settled on dramatic, narrative pieces that would appeal to a large public: a new Romeo and Juliet, a full-length Carmen, and a strikingly visual Camelot. Ballet slippers were still in evidence, but there was also a flamboyance that broke away from the precision of the strictly classical style.
It was the success of such ballets that led to the development in 1982 of a totally modern work, and the company's first major hit on the national dance scene - Jacqui Carroll's Carmina Burana.
Carroll, one of Australia's leading choreographers, is noted for her innovative use of movement. Inspired by the well-known Carl Orff cantata, she created a work in five
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