Australian Ballet’s David Hallberg: ‘I have no intention of alienating audiences’
The American-born artistic director says he will be choosing ‘vitality’ over ‘dusty museum pieces’ as he renews his artistic directorship for another five years.
As the curtain rose on the final night of the Australian Ballet’s Melbourne season of Nijinsky earlier this month, artistic director David Hallberg found himself overcome with emotion, and tears began rolling down his cheeks. It was partly brought on by the production itself, a deeply moving depiction of a deeply troubled, brilliant creative, Vaslav Nijinsky. Mostly, though, they were tears of pride.
“I’m so emotionally invested in the dancers, I have completely fallen for their realisation of potential and talent, and to see them become the artists they are, developing in front of my very eyes, becoming richer and more nuanced and more confident is a greater privilege than I felt as a dancer,” Hallberg tells Review, adding: “I can be a bit of a crybaby.”
The person he describes seems a long way from the poised, elegant, former international dance sensation Australian audiences have become accustomed to seeing take the stage each season to introduce the upcoming show. It seems the American has developed an emotional attachment to his 75-strong dancers, to his Australian audiences, to the Australian Ballet (AB), and indeed to Australia itself.
It is for this reason that Hallberg, 42, has decided to stay on for another five years, having agreed to renew his contract as artistic director until 2030.
“It’s an emotional decision,” he states simply. “It was an emotional decision to begin with (in 2020), when my gut instinct was ‘this is exactly where life is taking you – take it’. And I feel the same about it this time. I’m just starting to get some momentum going in crystallising the artistic vision.”
There is no denying the past four years have been a rollercoaster of exhilarating highs and the very lowest of lows. When Hallberg was announced in March 2020 as the company’s eighth artistic director, replacing former AB principal artist David McAllister who had led for 20 years, he was still dancing internationally. The former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and the Bolshoi Ballet (the first American to join the top rank), principal guest artist with the Royal Ballet in London and a regular guest artist with the Mariinsky Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet and AB, among others, was looking forward to a host of glittering farewells in London, New York, Milan and Moscow before taking up the reins in 2021.
Instead, the rapidly spreading global pandemic meant Hallberg found himself rushed to Australia early before the borders shut and before a single farewell had taken place, his first 14 days spent in quarantine in a Sydney hotel before being grounded in Melbourne with the company for the better part of a year.
“I had the most fresh, naive, ‘sky’s the limit’ plan, and all of that was completely put on pause or forgotten about or cancelled,” he says.
Refusing to be defeated, he leant into the opportunity, using the time to really get to know the company, working closely with 12 dancers each fortnight for the full year, a rare gift. His first two years were spent cancelling productions before building the company back up to being stage ready.
As Hallberg enters his fifth year as artistic director – more akin to his third – and before embarking on the next chapter, it is worth taking stock of just how much has been achieved. Only three years in, Hallberg’s tenure is already remarkable for the boundary-pushing repertoire he has introduced to audiences and dancers, from some of the world’s most exciting living choreographers, ensuring that ballet remains a living, breathing 21st century artform. Kunstkamer, a joint creation from Paul Lightfoot, Sol Leon Marco Goecke and Crystal Pite in which Hallberg himself starred, was unlike anything many here had seen; the stark and unsettling Carmen, from Johan Inger; and the upcoming Prism featuring two premieres by William Forsyth and AB resident choreographer Stephanie Lake alongside Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces.
Part of his creative vision involves introducing a diversity of voices, including First Nations creatives, to what he calls “a very Euro-centric artform”. In 2023, Wiradjuri man Daniel Riley, artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre, was commissioned to create a new work for the AB’s 60th anniversary, The Hum, while Hallberg’s new dance festival DanceX, conceived to showcase the country’s diversity of dance, featured works from the likes of Bangarra Dance Theatre, Marrugeku and Queensland Ballet across a two-week period in Melbourne.
Hallberg also commissioned sought-after British choreographer and personal friend Christopher Wheeldon to create Oscar, the first new full-length classical ballet created at the AB in 20 years. It included a new score, sets and costumes. This biographical tale of Irish literary genius Oscar Wilde was, astonishingly, the first ever queer love story seen on the mainstream classical ballet stage. It was a critical and box office success.
“To bring in (someone) like Christopher Wheeldon and tell a story that’s diverse that the ballet world has shied away from, and to have the dancers approach it with such confidence and pride, was a huge moment for all of us,” Hallberg says.
To support the dancers’ preparation Hallberg brought in intimacy co-ordinator Amy Cater to ensure the dancers felt comfortable performing sexually charged scenes. Cater is now regularly brought in on productions involving challenging subjects, whether that’s sexual violence in Manon or mental ill health in Nijinsky.
Hallberg has also always been at pains to emphasise his love for and commitment to the classics.
“I have no intention of alienating audiences, I have intention of pushing audiences, of giving them a taste of something they haven’t seen, it doesn’t mean they have to like it. But for audiences who want Romeo + Juliet or Sleeping Beauty – and I love those ballets and have a great respect and knowledge of them – they’re going to continue to be programmed but it’s my goal that we do productions that aren’t dusty museum pieces but show the importance and vitality of our classical repertoire.”
To that end audiences have had the opportunity to see everything from the very specific, recently neglected choreography of 20th century British Frederick Ashton (Marguerite and Armand) to George Balanchine’s Jewels, a fiendishly difficult triple bill entrusted to the AB for the first time, or a fresh production of Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Q with the added gravitas of former French prima ballerina Sylvie Guillem agreeing to guest coach the dancers. She later returned to work with the company on Swan Lake.
National dance critic Deborah Jones believes Hallberg’s intelligent programming has been one of the hallmarks of his first term.
“He’s really broadened the audience’s understanding of what classical ballet can look like, and that is super important because if you get too caught up in giving the audience what it thinks it wants you’re going to have a very moribund artform,” Jones says.
“His programming has been very stimulating and his choices of the more canonical works alongside works by living choreographers is really interesting. That his Swan Lake was (AB founding director) Anne Woolliams’s version, harking back to the AB history, was very clever and kind of modest, going against perceptions of what you might do for your 60th anniversary; and basing Don Q on Nureyev’s film, a splendid idea. It had history but also glamour and a real story.”
CEO of the Sydney Opera House Louise Herron has worked with Halberg from the get-go and says not only has he become a personal friend but she admires his ability to juggle various stakeholders, from multi-generational audience members to staff.
“I’m such a fan of him as a person,” Herron says. “David is so fresh and new and of the future. I’ve always been impressed by his understanding of the whole spectrum it takes to make a company successful, all the relationships are deeply ingrained in him. He makes the place float and sing; he’s a marvellous person.”
Of course it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Hallberg contended with a serious, headline-grabbing dancers’ strike over pay and conditions in June 2023 when the dancers took the radical move of “holding the curtain” – a last resort in which they delay the start of a production to ensure they are heard. They ultimately reached an agreement with management and a new enterprise bargaining agreement was signed on December 29, but Hallberg describes it as “one of, if not the most trying time for me as an artistic director”.
Six months later executive director Lissa Twomey stepped down just 18 months into the job, a replacement for the longstanding Libby Christie, Hallberg’s first ED, who died from cancer in 2023. A new ED is expected to be announced this week.
Hallberg admits learning to be a leader on the job was often an uncomfortable experience. “I’ve made mistakes in the way I’ve communicated with a dancer, or staff, I didn’t have a (management) degree, there were times I was a wallflower and didn’t have the confidence to speak up in meetings,” Hallberg says. “Honesty is really important to me and open communication and empathy and I try to exemplify that but I’ve been on an enormous learning curve.”
At times it has been a very lonely existence. “I’m four years and two months in and I still feel lonely at times. It’s a lonely job, you’re overseeing a very large organisation, you’re the boss, you’re the artistic director, that’s been a really abrupt adjustment. And also the time that I don’t have much of to cultivate a life outside work, find great friendships and a relationship that works and sticks, in terms of love. The fulfilment I feel from living in Australia and developing what I’m doing at the Australian Ballet overrides all these feelings, but it doesn’t erase them.”
But there is work to be done. Hallberg is determined to continue defining the individuality of the company, through nurturing the Australian choreographic voice – resident choreographer Lake, herself a radical appointment in that she’s a contemporary choreographer who hadn’t come up through the ranks, has also been re-signed beyond 2025 – while the bodytorque season supporting emerging choreographers will continue biennially (albeit in Melbourne only), and the DanceX festival is due to make a welcome return in Melbourne this year.
He believes there is more to be done in raising the standard of the company’s dancers and will continue to invite guest coaches such as Guillem to work with them; and he is determined to boost the company’s international presence, which has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.
“We’ve done some great work but we’re not done yet. The commitment is for five more years and I really feel great about that,” he says. “I love living in Australia. I’m watching a really difficult time in America and I really feel I’m a happier person than I was as a hard-edged New Yorker, I feel like I’m more pleasant to be around. I absolutely feel I am in the right place in my life to be at the Australian Ballet and doing what I’m doing. It won’t last forever, I don’t want the organisation or audiences to get tired of me; but in this moment it’s absolutely where I should be.”
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout