David Hallberg on why ballet needs an ‘exercised heart’, as Australian Ballet celebrates its 60th year
The artistic director on keeping the art form fresh with four significant upcoming productions.
David Hallberg, artistic director of the Australian Ballet, says he believes ballet – the art form of his life – has a “beating heart”.
Right now, as the Australian Ballet celebrates its 60th year and ballet evolves and expands, Hallberg is thinking about this beating heart as something that needs to be exercised.
“I think of my role as artistic director as reading the room, you have to read what’s going on around you, you have to read your audiences, you have to continually take the pulse of your art form for your audiences, for (the) dancers of the company,” says Hallberg, who packed up his life in New York for the artistic director role that he has described in the past as a calling.
“I’ve seen leadership for arts organisations that just aren’t staying on it, they’re not on the ball. And I think that’s my job to really continually take the temperature, so there is that beating heart, that freshly beating heart that – (and) this is going to sound a little off base – but (it’s) the exercised heart.
“You know, if you’re exercising, your heart is pumping fresh blood, and I think any arts organisation or the Australian Ballet needs to exercise fresh art to pump that beating heart in a way.”
This year the Australian Ballet will mark six decades with four significant works, including refreshed classics such as Swan Lake and Don Quixote, as well as Identity, a joint production between the Australian Ballet and the Australian Dance Theatre, supported by a new multi-year partnership with Audi.
Identity is a program of two works, one by Daniel Riley, a Wiradjuri man, choreographer and artistic director of the Australian Dance Theatre, with music by Deborah Cheetham, the first female First Nations composer to be commissioned by the Australian Ballet, and a second from Australian Ballet resident choreographer Alice Topp.
Hallberg says Identity, which will bring back company members and explore ideas of what it means to be a dancer and how this connects to the audience, shows “two very different perspectives (of identity) … which makes it a really modern take on that word”.
In his time with the Australian Ballet, his second act after a world-renowned dancing career including as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and the Bolshoi Ballet, and having danced every major full-length classical ballet, among many others, Hallberg has observed that Australian audiences are open and willing to be challenged.
“The Australian ballet audiences love ballet. They love, you know, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, but you know, so do audiences elsewhere around the world. But I also find that Australian audiences are really open to experiencing something that they maybe don‘t know.
“There’s an openness and a receptiveness to something, to give it a go, you know?
“I think that’s a term that I learned when I moved here … like, you know, let’s have a go kind of thing,” he says with a smile.
Part of Hallberg’s plans for moving ballet along with the times has been the addition of a mental health program for the company and continuing to evolve and challenge ideas of what ballet, and a ballet dancer, looks like.
“I think ballet is going through a transition … there’s definitely a sign of changing expectation of what a dancer looks like, of who a dancer is, of what people expect on stage. Which I think is a great thing. If you look back on how ballet was created and who it was created for … things have evolved,” he says.
A particularly proud moment so far in his time with the Australian Ballet is the performance of Kunstkamer, a work commissioned for the 60th anniversary of leading contemporary dance company Nederlands Dans Theater last year.
“No one knew even really how to pronounce the title, let alone know what it is. And (Australian audiences) came and they saw it and they were excited by it.”
See more of David Hallberg’s editorial in the March issue of Vogue Australia, out now. Identity opens at the Sydney Opera House on May 2. Tickets available from australianballet.com.au.