Culture Club: Ballerina Mia Heathcote to perform in Melbourne
IT will be a special moment when Queensland Ballet rising star Mia Heathcote takes to the stage in Melbourne in October – the first time QB has toured the Victorian capital under Li Cunxin.
Confidential
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IT will be a special moment when Queensland Ballet rising star Mia Heathcote takes to the stage in Melbourne in October.
Queensland Ballet is taking its acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the Victorian capital where Heathcote, 23, grew up.
She has become an audience favourite in Brisbane and was promoted to soloist in 2017. She will be dancing a couple of roles including Titania, queen of the fairies.
It will be the first time that Heathcote has performed professionally in her home town and her parents, both former dancers, will be there to see her.
Her dad is Steven Heathcote, a former star who is currently ballet master with the Australian Ballet and her mother Kathy was also with the Australian Ballet. They come to Brisbane to watch their daughter dance usually so it will be special to have her in a starring role in her home town.
This will be the first time QB has toured to Melbourne since Li Cunxin became artistic director. It’s nice that we are now exporting Queensland culture and this ballet, by English choreographer Liam Scarlett, is special, replete with enchanted forests, mischievous forest sprites, elves and fairies and the like. Li Cunxin points out that this will be the Melbourne premiere of this ballet which was created for Queensland Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2015.
“We just know it will become a favourite of Melbourne audiences,” Li says. “Audiences will fall in love with the characters, the beauty of the ballet and the magical music. I’m thrilled to bring QB back to what was my first home in Australia.”
Because Li Cunxin was also a ballet star at the Australian Ballet like Mia Heathcote’s dad Steven so it will be a homecoming of sorts for Li as well.
The ballet will open at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne on October 3 and the company will give eight performances over five days. queenslandballet.com.au
FROM MUMMIES TO MONKEYS
What do you follow an exhibition of Egyptian mummies with? Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives has been wowing punters at the Queensland Museum and it’s only on now until August 24 so hurry in if you haven’t seen it yet. Amazing stuff.
And if you have seen it you are probably wondering, like me, what’s next?
We can reveal that it’s something that sounds like it’s going to be a hell for a lot of fun.
Monkeys! A Primate Story will, according to the museum “bring visitors closer to their primate cousins” when it opens on Saturday September 29.
That’s their subtle way of insinuating that we are all related and of course, whether we like it or not, we are.
This exhibition will feature more than 60 spectacular taxidermy specimens from the tiny mouse lemur to the mighty gorilla and it comes to us direct from the National Museum of Scotland for an exclusive Australian season.
Queensland Museum Network acting CEO Dr Jim Thompson says the exhibition will give visitors “the chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with our closest living relatives” and no doubt some will resemble them more than others. I envisage a lot of family fun as people make various comparisons. Being born in the Year of the Monkey I feel I have some skin in the game when it comes to our primate friends.
Dr Thompson says the exhibition will explore the connections between us all.
“It examines the relationship between humans and primate, including the ways in which many species are threatened with extinction through the impact of habitat loss and hunting,” he says.
This is a hands on family exhibition with plenty of interactive elements for you to monkey around with, if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s on at the Queensland Museum from September 29 to January 28 2019.
Kids under 5 get in free and for everyone else tickets are $12 and you can book now at qm.qld.gov.au
RITE OF SPRING? OR RIOT OF SPRING?
Okay everyone, settle down ... just because there was a riot the first time Rite of Spring was played and performed doesn’t mean audiences here have a licence to go off.
The Queensland Youth Symphony (QYS) is playing Rite of Spring on at QPAC on August 18 and they hope there is more applause than uproar. The work, by Igor Stravinsky, written as a ballet and orchestral piece, was first performed for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes company. The avant-garde nature of the music and choreography at the time was a sensation and nothing short of a riot broke out as Stravinsky recalled in his autobiography.
“At the performance, mild protests against the music could be heard from the beginning,” he recalled. “Then when the curtain opened the storm broke. I was unprepared for the explosion.”
Objects were thrown at both the musicians and dancers during the performance and eventually the police were called and through all this the show went on. It’s one of the most infamous episodes in the history of the performing arts and the QYS will have it in mind when they start playing, no doubt.
Queensland Youth Orchestras’ founder and conductor John Curro says the QYS was the first orchestra in Queensland to do a concert performance of the Rite of Spring in 1991. QYS performed it again in 2011. Curro conducted both those concerts and will be conducting again this time around. There will be 118 musicians performing the work. The concert will open with the world premiere of Alexander Voltz’s new work Moray Street and Curro’s son Dan Curro, a cellist, will be one of the feature soloists on the night.
If you’ve never heard this famous work played live this is a great chance to do so but please, don’t throw anything and ... no rioting. OK?
Queensland Youth Symphony, Rite of Spring, Saturday, August 18, Concert Hall, QPAC, tickets $41 ; qpac.com.au
SPOOKY MEN
They wear silly headgear and act the goat a lot but boy can they sing. I’m referring to the Spooky Men’s Chorale, an a capella male group who have been causing quite a stir here and overseas.
They’re coming to Brisbane for a show next week and you really should hear them. Who else would sing a song called Don’t Stand Between a Man and His Tool?
Their show is sometimes boofy, sometimes absurd and is celebratory of maleness in a rather interesting fashion. Novelty is a feature and they are certainly inventive. Who else could do a mock Sufi ode to The Bee Gees?
One news outlet described them as “a vast, rumbling, steam powered and black clad behemoth. seemingly accidentally capable of rendering audiences moist eyed with mute appreciation or haplessly gurgling with merriment”.
Formed in the Blue Mountains in 2001 by Christchurch-born spookmeister, Stephen Taberner, they soon attracted attention with their fun approach to music.
So what does the show consist of? I refer to the publicity blurb ... “Men singing songs. Some of them are funny. Georgian table songs, immaculate ballads and tawdry anthems.”
Sounds like your cup of tea? You know it does!
Spooky Men’s Chorale, Sunday, August 12, Princess Theatre, 8 Annerley Road, Woolloongabba. Tickets $35 - $45 ; spookymen.com
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