Beating heart of Carmen comes alive at the Australian Ballet

The Australian Ballet’s production of Carmen opens at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday. 

Dancer Lilla Harvey as Carmen during a dress rehearsal of the new production at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Richard Dobson

“Vamos!” yells a tall blond man to the ballerinas huddled at one corner of the stage. The man walks down purposefully after the curtain closes on the first act and calls the cast to him to deliver his notes. It seems like he is demonstrating the energy he wants to hear from the dancers when they yell “Vamos!”

It’s one day until the Australian Ballet’s first performance of Carmen and the whole production has come together for the dress rehearsal.

The man is David Hallberg, the artistic director of the company who has had a storied career at the world’s best ballet companies, becoming the first American to become a principal dancer for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow after time at the highest ranks of the American Ballet Theatre.

“What’s so exciting about Carmen is that people see a really fresh take on the story that many people know really well,” he says.

“What’s really fulfilling as an artistic director is to see the dancers sink their teeth into the movement. This isn’t, you know, this isn’t Swan Lake. It’s a really contemporary take, a contemporary movement.”

Hallberg draws attention to one moment in the first act, when the titular Carmen seems to take the heart out of the protagonist, Don Jose. In the choreography, Don Jose stands still as Carmen’s hands mimic a beating action like a heart.

“I think when audiences come into the Opera House to see Carmen, I want them to feel that kind of beating of the heart,” Hallberg says.

“That it’s alive. This is live art. This is live movement.”

Back near the stage, the hubbub of the orchestra and dancers has fallen silent. Instead, the dancers have made a loose semicircle around the two principals and the choreographer, Johan Inger. The conductor looks ­intently at the stage and all the musicians, in turn, at him.

“Johan is bringing – I think – a grittiness, a raciness. Sensuality, sexuality,” Hallberg says. “What’s so amazing with this company is that we closed last year at the ­Sydney Opera House with Swan Lake, and this year, we opened it with Carmen.

“This shows the beauty of dance, the versatility of dance.

“If you look at Carmen, there’s a flaw to her, there’s a sensuality to her, there’s a humanness to her.

“And we are all flawed. We are all sensual beings.”

The Australian Ballet’s Carmen runs at the Sydney Opera House from Wednesday to April 27.