Why different body types in ballet ‘are a road to freedom’

Of the recent furore in which a critic upbraided The Australian Ballet’s dancers for being too thin, star choreographer Graeme Murphy is circumspect.

Australian Ballet School’s 60th Anniversary Gala Performance of Four Seasons.

There is an invisible thread that runs through Graeme Murphy’s inimitably diverse life in dance that is inextricably woven into the fabric of the nation’s premier ballet academy. Fitting, then, that he was front and centre of outgoing Australian Ballet School director and former Australian Ballet star Lisa Pavane’s plans for a gala showcase in May to celebrate the school’s 60th ­anniversary.

The showcase, performed by more than 100 full-time students and school alumni to a packed house at the Sydney Opera House’s Joan Sutherland Theatre, featured the premiere performance of Four Seasons, commissioned by Pavane to honour the history and celebrate the future of school in its 60th year. Each “season” was choreographed by an alum of the school, each of whom trained during different eras and under different directors.

Murphy, as befits his national treasure status as Sydney Dance Company visionary, choreographer non pareil, global gun for hire who has worked with everyone from Mikhail Baryshnikov to ice skating’s Torvill and Dean, and one of the school’s early graduates, was given first pick and plumped for Winter (Spring was created by Kevin Jackson, Summer by Lucas Jervies, and Autumn by Serena Graham).

“Why Winter?” muses Murphy. “Because now is the Winter of my discontent. Haha. No, I chose winter because it does somehow represent that latency, the stillness, everything is preparing to burst and flower, because spring follows winter, and all those new dance students from the school are about to burst forth and hit the stages, not only in Australia but around the world.”

Murphy’s ties to the Australian Ballet School run deep; he credits his career to its first director, the formidable Dame Margaret Scott. “Maggie dragged me still pink and slippery out of Tasmania and put things in my head and gave me hope and possibilities of things I’d never dreamed of,” he says.

“I went to the school not really knowing what dance was. I had limited technique. I’d had a fabulously theatrical teacher in Kenneth Gillespie in Tasmania. But Maggie taught me so much, she became a lifelong friend, and I would hook up with her and her husband around the world and continue that friendship right until both of their deaths. They were like a second set of ­parents.

“It was a nice symbolic feeling for me coming back to where I started. Because Janet (Vernon, Murphy’s partner in life and work) was in year 2 of the school and I was in year 3. We were both incredibly young, me from Tassie and Janet from Adelaide, both ripped from our homes. I was 14 when I auditioned, and Janet was maybe 15 or 16. Very young for such an adventure.”

Stewardship of the school, and the hopes and dreams of the next generation of Australian dancers, now passes from Pavane to Megan Connelly, its fifth and latest director, via a legacy that also encompasses the directorships of Marilyn Rowe and Gailene Stock as well as its founding artistic director, Dame Peggy van Praagh.

Graeme Murphy with dancers Madeline Flood and Levi Miller, at the Sydney Opera Hous. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Says Murphy: “I thought it was a great idea of Lisa’s to bring different alumni together to create Four Seasons, each who had been there under different directors at the school.

“I was under Maggie, some with Gail, some Marilyn and some Lisa, who has been there 10 years. And each of the seasons had a beautiful uniqueness to it, because you weren’t looking at four seasons from one lens, but from four points of view.”

Murphy is particularly close to Pavane, who has turned to him previously to create works specially for the school, in among his landmark creations for the Australian Ballet. Some of the latter, including his unique takes on Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, remain in its permanent repertoire.

“It’s fascinating for me to work with the graduating students in their last year as they are all on the cusp of big adventures,” he says. “I love to know who are the up and coming talents and one of the great places to find that is the Australian Ballet School. Even with Sydney Dance Company, so many of our dancers came from that background.”

Murphy, 73, shows few signs of slowing down. “When not working we split our time between Tasmania – we have a place on the Tamar River, at the top end of Tassie – and our apartment in Coogee Beach in Sydney. We chase the weather a bit.

“I’ve been freelance since I left Sydney Dance Company in 2007, so Janet and I have been guns for hire. And that’s fun. Having your own company, that autonomy and creative freedom is very different. But we’ve covered a lot of new bases since we stopped running a company, so that’s been nice.”

Murphy says things have changed immeasurably for the school’s current crop. “You look at the dancers there now and they seem much more accomplished and mature, they are 18, 19, more well-rounded. I didn’t have a complete high school education because I left for the school so young.

“Today they have ticked all the boxes and they are performing like adults and it’s beautiful.” In the creation of Winter for Four Seasons “we didn’t treat them like students, we treated them like professionals. We pushed the boundaries like we would have pushed professionals. We made no allowance because I didn’t think we had to, and I think at the end they felt like they were an equal part of that creation”.

While the school thrives on great teachers, Murphy doesn’t consider himself among their ranks. “Oh God, I remember at Sydney Dance, in the early days when we had very little staff I would sometimes have to take morning class. And when I walked in there would be a groan of disappointment. Because, inevitably, halfway through barre, I was trying to invent new moves and try new things, and the dancers just wanted to get warm.”

Great teachers, he says, transcend technique or the dry imparting of knowledge. “I look to the ones who touched me and inspired me. A great technique can get you a job. But a great teacher can get you a career and a brain that thinks about how to do it. With Maggie Scott, the technique was always important but there were things she said to me that changed my life and coloured my existence.”

Outgoing Australian Ballet School director and former Australian Ballet star Lisa Pavane with Student Lilly Keith. Picture: Jason Edwards

Of the recent furore, in which a newspaper reviewer upbraided The Australian Ballet’s dancers for being too thin, Murphy is circumspect.

The history of ballet is littered with eating disorders and body dysmorphia, tied to the relentless pursuit of perfection the art demands and fuelled by days spent gazing into mirrors.

“I don’t really want to comment on it. I think everything at the school and company is in place in that respect (looking after dancers in terms of health and their relationship with food). But having run a company that embraced all sorts of body types, heights, weights – that to me was a palette that gave you richness, there was a spectrum of individuals which was pure inspiration.

“I’ve recently been working with older dancers, in Made in Tasmania, and that has been a fabulously rewarding adventure for me, delving into what the aged body has to offer. Body types for me are a road to freedom. Variations on a theme.

“A corps de ballet is about exquisite uniformity. But as much as I admire the perfection of classical dance, I’m looking for the rebel, the outsider.

“All these beautiful technicians who are coming out around the world, they are doing things we never dreamed were possible back then. But unless it’s coupled with an artistry that speaks, unless it can communicate real things to an audience, it’s meaningless.”

The Australian Ballet School, he says, produces both; classically perfect prodigies, and characters with something unique.

“I was aware of it as I was doing more work internationally. You’d go into a company and there would be an Australian Ballet School graduate, and you’d sort of gravitate to them.

“The school should be so proud. It has shot its arrows into eternity, all around the world.”

Jason Gagliardi was a student at The Australian Ballet School from 1985-1986. He is The Australian’s engagement editor. The Australian Ballet School’s 60th Anniversary Gala Performance is at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre is on Sunday 6 October, 7.30 pm.