Australian Ballet launches its 60th anniversary season

Artistic director David Hallberg has drawn on the Australian Ballet’s heritage of performing classical ballet, modern classics and contemporary works.

Principal dancer with the Australian Ballet Chengwu Guo. Picture: Mark Stewart

Sixty years ago, the dancers of the newly formed Australian Ballet began rehearsals for what would be their inaugural season of Swan Lake in Sydney.

Among the original company back in 1962 were dancers Kathleen Gorham, Marilyn Jones and Garth Welch, under the direction of former dancer and ballet mistress Peggy van Praagh.

The company chose the anniversary on Thursday to launch its 2023 season, drawing on its heritage of performing classical ballet, modern classics and contemporary works.

Artistic director David Hallberg has built the 60th anniversary program around revitalised productions of Swan Lake and Nureyev’s Don Quixote, with masterworks by George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton.

“When I look back into the archives, I see the richness of the artists who graced the stage on the first performance,” Hallberg said on Thursday.

“How lucky of us to have that lineage that is carried on. It’s one of the beautiful things about ballet that roles are passed on and interpreted through generations.”

Nureyev came to Australia in 1972 to film his version of Don Quixote – with Robert Helpmann as the Don, Lucette Aldous as Kitri and Nureyev as Basilio – in a hangar at Essendon Airport.

The film became an international hit for the still-young Australian Ballet, and Hallberg said the ballet’s revival next year would have fresh scenic design by Richard Roberts, based on the original film sets by Barry Kay.

Hallberg will also introduce a revitalised production of Anne Woolliams’s Swan Lake from 1977, which he will direct.

“It’s part of my passion to bring the classical repertoire up to today,” he said.

“We want to show Don Quixote and Swan Lake in the freshest light possible.”

Hallberg is especially proud to introduce two modern classics to the Australian Ballet’s repertoire: Balanchine’s Jewels, and a double bill of Ashton works: The Dream, and Marguerite and Armand.