Li Cunxin has breathed life into Queensland Ballet, but he’s playing it safe

Queensland Ballet has been revolutionised by the arrival of Li Cunxin, and the evidence of his success if everywhere, but it needs to look beyond a safe repertoire.

The Queensland Ballet’s Vito Bernasconi and Lina Kim in We Who Are Left. Picture: David Kelly

Queensland Ballet has every reason to rejoice. Ten years ago it was a shadow of its present self. It was a small company with small ambitions and, quite frankly, a provincial outfit.

Along came Li Cunxin, promising a return to classical style and higher standards. He has delivered. He was, and remains, extremely ambitious. There are twice as many dancers than when he took over. QB has a fully fledged training academy and a $100m expansion of its Thomas Dixon Centre is almost complete. Soon it will have a dedicated production centre.

Government backing, corporate and private support and a devoted audience are in place. No wonder the company is hailing Li’s decade at the helm with such vigour.

It’s fine to reflect on the past but equally important to think about the future, especially as Li recently signed on for another three years.

What do these formidable achievements mean for the artistic life of the company?

In the offstage arena QB has been exceptionally bold. Onstage the picture is more mixed.

Li can rightly point to his success in securing two big Kenneth MacMillan ballets, Romeo and Juliet and Manon (it premieres later this year) for QB. Like every classical company it needs a clutch of strong, popular narrative works.

What happens outside that core repertoire is where things can become really interesting. Or not. The triple bill Li’s Choice could have been called safe choices. There was nothing to amaze or challenge. Nothing to show where ballet can go – is going – in the 21st century, particularly for a company whose repeated mantra is that it’s world class.

The one new work is MacMillan’s brightly coloured nonsense set to ragtime, Elite Syncopations. Well, it’s new to QB. The ballet was made almost half a century ago.

There’s lots of tricky, effervescent choreography dispatched with verve but much of the humour hasn’t aged well. Think pratfalls, faux sexiness and mugging. To be fair, the opening night audience seemed delighted with the dancers-behaving-badly vibe.

Li stayed close to home for the other two works, both seen relatively recently.

The evening opens with Glass Concerto (2017) by Greg Horsman, QB’s chief ballet master. It’s a high-octane, glossy neoclassical work to the propulsive music of Philip Glass, a subset of ballet that’s reasonably crowded.

Glass Concerto is often dazzlingly speedy and there’s visual appeal in the way George Wu’s elegant costumes are gradually stripped down. The work is never less than entertaining but its effects are mainly on the surface. Glass Concerto has physical rigour in abundance but feels oddly vaporous. It doesn’t linger long in the memory.

QB resident choreographer Natalie Weir’s We Who Are Left premiered in 2016 as part of a program commemorating the centenary of World War I. Within that context it had emotional pull. There are five couples, young men who go to war and the women who wait for them. Most don’t return.

On that bill Weir’s work was strongly supported by the overarching idea and, possibly as a result, the performances were more affecting than now. In Li’s Choice the work is sandwiched between Glass Concerto and Elite Syncopations and shouted down by both.

The quality of dancing at QB has happily skyrocketed under Li. On Friday night standouts included Yanela Pinera and Patricio Reve (Glass Concerto), Shaun Curtis (We Who Are Left) and luxurious Lucy Green and Victor Estevez (Elite Syncopations).

Li’s Choice. Queensland Ballet, QPAC, Brisbane, June 10. Tickets: $98-$160. Bookings: 136 246 or online. Duration: 2hrs 15mins including two intervals. Ends June 25.