Jerome Robbins - A Celebration
The Sunday Age
Sunday June 15, 2008
The Australian Ballet. The Arts Centre, until tomorrow. $115-$30. Tel: 1300 136 166.
A season of Jerome "West Side Story" Robbins might appear a little populist. Musicals are the hot ticket in Melbourne and Robbins was among Broadway's best. The Australian Ballet's latest, however, will put paid to nay-sayers. This is some of the most generous, intimate dance Melbourne's main stages have seen in years. Robbins subtly reimagines the classic Afternoon of a Faun: two dancers in a studio engage in a romantic pas de deux while staring at their own reflections in the wall-sized mirror - a role played here by the audience. In A Suite of Dances, a single performer accompanies a solo cellist onstage in a manner upending all expectations of ballet. The unaffected playfulness of the dance seems like a glimpse into the rehearsal studio, the dancer toying with moves and flirting with his musical partner. Story, character and themes are done away with in favour of, well, messing around. And it's brilliant. The big number of the night is the comic long-player The Concert, a rambling and ridiculous riff on audience's tendencies to mentally wander during shows. It's an ironic end to a night that grips the gaze from beginning to end, but a fitting gesture from a choreographer whose work seems always to have been a knowing wink to his audience.
© 2008 The Sunday Age