Nocturnal Imaginings
Sun Herald
Sunday February 17, 2008
Electronica and flamenco music in a ballet? Andrew Taylor meets a young dancer putting the pointe back in the classic art form.
DANIEL GAUDIELLO is not afraid to admit he is a dreamer. The 25-year-old ballet dancer's mind is filled with vampires, pregnant aunties and "millions of dreams where I'm doing things I know I shouldn't," he says. "Sometimes I'd rather not remember them."Yet Gaudiello bravely (or perhaps foolishly) ventures into his nocturnal fantasies to choreograph his first work for the Australian Ballet's Bodytorque. To The Pointe.Gaudiello's After Hours explores the dreams of a young bloke after a night living it large. In one dance he spies a group of attractive women, one of whom catches his wandering eye. In the next sequence he pursues her, even though he has a girlfriend waiting patiently at home, and performs a passionate pas de deux with the saucy minx."He's cheating and that's a little bit shocking but in a way justified because it's in a dream and dreams take you away from reality," says Gaudiello, who won the Telstra Ballet Dancer Award last year.That particular idea must have raised the eyebrow of Gaudiello's own girlfriend, fellow ballet dancer Lana Jones, particularly since she is one of his performers.Gaudiello is one of five dancers invited by the Australian Ballet to stretch their choreographic muscles in the fifth instalment of the Bodytorque contemporary dance series. Gaudiello and his fellow choreographers, who include principal artists Robert Curran and Rachel Rawlins, are given free rein to reinvent the ballet wheel so long as they include dancing on pointe, or the toe shoes that allow dancers to perform intricate turns and fancy footwork. Gaudiello has previously choreographed work for dance studios in his home town of Brisbane, drawing upon contemporary issues like drugs, prostitution and domestic violence. In comparison, he says After Hours is tamer: "I'm not getting 15-year-olds to pretend they're prostitutes."I don't want to change the style of dance but the reasons why we dance."Gaudiello is also pushing boundaries with his choice of soundtrack, opting for electronica, flamenco and a composition by Chopin rearranged for a Spanish guitar.He chose to choreograph the dream sequence as a vehicle to unite three otherwise distinctive pieces of music, including songs from The Mask of Zorro and Ferris Bueller's Day Off."For a long time I didn't know if I could put it all together and make it look as one," he says.Gaudiello wasn't the only one who had doubts about his choice of music."At first the conductor looked at me and giggled a little," he says. "She told me: 'I think what you've chosen is a little bit simple'. But I really wanted to do it."Gaudiello returns to the stage in April in Swan Lake with the Australian Ballet's new principal artist Yosvani Ramos. He's also angling for a role in Maina Gielgud's production of Giselle, which opens in Brisbane in July. The dancer is also hoping he will be given the opportunity to perform with Jones."We're both saving ourselves for it," he says. "I think we'd dance well together. We've got the same energy ... and being together gives you that extra bit of passion.""It would be great but I think there is a bit of a height issue," he adds.At 175 centimetres Gaudiello is one of the shorter male dancers in a world that favours tall timber. "The desired height for a male dancer is pretty tall," he admits. "I'm trying to break that and show people you can be whatever height and be amazing at what you do."Bodytorque. To The Pointe plays at the Sydney Theatre in Walsh Bay from this Thursday until Sunday. $22 to $57. Phone (02) 9250 1999 or see www.sydneytheatre.org.au.
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