Shorter is sweeter as Queensland Ballet charms the pants off us

A legacy of the lockdown is a welcome one if Queensland Ballet’s latest production is any indication, writes Phil Brown.

With Queensland Ballet’s entire season 2020 cancelled, the company has scrambled to stage ballets that are mostly shorter and more hastily prepared.

Diamonds are created by intense pressure, and these shows have sparkled like precious stones – none more so than 60 Dancers : 60 Stories, which opened at the Playhouse QPAC last night for a short season.

It runs until Saturday, and I believe there are still some tickets left (but not many), so my advice is to book now or miss out on one of the theatrical highlights of our year from hell.

This series of short pieces was created and performed by the company’s 60-strong retinue of dancers during lockdown and was first seen online.

It is a triumph on stage.

When things began to ease this was the first show Queensland Ballet staged in an attempt to get dancers back on stage with real live audiences in front of them.

The first iteration was staged at the Brisbane Powerhouse, then at HOTA (Home of the Arts) on the Gold Coast, and it was great.

Queensland Ballet shines in 60 Dancers : 60 Stories.

But it has been tweaked, and I enjoyed it more in the Playhouse at QPAC last night, accompanied by live music from a small group of local musicians.

It looked wonderful and felt wonderful, and the audience responded in a way that you don’t often see at the ballet.

There was catcalling, people shouting “bravo” with gusto and laughing out loud at the antics on stage.

As achingly beautiful and emotional as some of the works are (they are all based on aspects of love, after all) there is also plenty of humour, and in Looking For Love and Comrades the dancers really shine and seem to be having a lot of fun in a scenario reminiscent at times of West Side Story – without the knives.

At other times, instead of tears of laughter, tears of joy welled in people’s eyes, and in pieces like Ave Maria, danced by real-life couple Mia Heathcote and Victor Estevez (to Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria featuring QSO principal first violin Shane Chen), the beauty was almost overwhelming – transcendent is a word you could use.

It was great to have Mia Heathcote dancing again after a lay-off due to injury, and it must have been special for her to have her parents there, Kathy and Steven Heathcote, who are both ballet royalty and jetted in from Melbourne now that they can.

Victor Estevez and Mia Heathcote in 60 Dancers : 60 Stories.

It was lovely to see another couple, Yanela Pinera and Camilo Ramos, also on stage together.

One of the beauties of this production is that it gives us a chance to see so many individual dancers shine.

The musical choices were lovely, some Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy and others.

There was even a bit of Thus Spake Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, a piece most people know from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey – wild.

Neneka Yoshida, dancing in Afterglow of a Nocturne to a piece by Chopin, was sublime, and just one of the special moments.

Sixty works were created, and this show is a kind of live highlights reel, taking an hour which is just about right.

Shorter shows are a legacy of the pandemic, and a good one I think. So much better to leave wanting more.

Last week I saw QB’s condensed version of The Nutcracker, dubbed The Best of The Nutcracker, and that was also superb.

By cutting the show in half you could destroy it, but QB’s shorter version was utterly compelling and showed a certain genius in choosing just the right elements, distilled to evoke the whole.

The audience was ecstatic about that, and ecstatic about 60 Dancers : 60 Stories.

Queensland Ballet artistic director Li Cunxin has rallied his company and saved 2020 from being a year without ballet. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA NewsWire

It’s such a treat that we get to see some ballet in a year when we expected none. The company has rallied in the most wonderful way and is still intact thanks to Li Cunxin and his team.

He hasn’t lost a single dancer due to the pandemic and has rallied financial and moral support as only he can.

Now we can look forward to 2021 and know the company is in better shape than ever and raring to go.

Bravo again.