The descent into the circular foyers of the State Theatre of Arts Centre Melbourne has often brought to my mind Dante's circles of hell, despite the fact that gliding down those escalators takes me to my idea of heaven.
At the moment, however, the theatre is a building site, as the Centre is being refurbished, and is "ordered chaos" as CEO Karen Quinlan describes. So when I saw the idea behind this photo I thought it rather apt.
The photo is the first of a new contemporary artist commissioning program for the Australian Performing Arts Collection, the first of its kind since the theatres opened 40 years ago. It puts together renown photographer Bill Henson with David Hallberg, Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet. Hallberg is depicted as archetypal artist, superimposed over an interior of the State Theatre taken by leading architectural photographer John Gollings during the early days of the renewal works.
"The theatre was built for our two resident companies, Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet, and I began to wonder about the ‘starkness’ of the contrast between the precision, form, beauty and strength of ballet dancers and the carefully planned destruction of the wonderful auditorium surrounding me," Quinlan says in the press release announcing the project.
This "contrast" led to the decision to place Hallberg at the heart of Henson’s new commission.
"In the studio I found myself thinking about David as a Dantesque figure," Henson says. "It just popped into my head and the more incongruous the image seemed, the more compelling the strangeness of it became for me... I knew almost immediately that my disembodied vision of Dante needed to float, or perhaps rise up, in the midst of this vast industrial wasteland of a building site."
Dante Aligieri's Inferno, part of his Divine Comedy and finished around 1314, is thought to have been inspired in part by the Arsenale shipbuilding and armory site in medieval Venice, the largest industrial complex ever known at the time, so the comparison is not inappropriate.
For Hallberg, floating and rising above is part of pushing the limits of body and performance, which made for an exciting sense of anticipation as the pair came together. "I have always had the most interesting experiences with artists from different mediums. They see dance and the dancer in a different way; through a different lens. I never wanted to work with someone from the same language. It is always more interesting to have a different viewpoint. Better angles come of it," he says.
The work will be on public display in the Theatres Building at Arts Centre Melbourne when the State Theatre reopens after refurbishment, expected to be December, 2026.
Arts Centre Melbourne is in charge of two collections: the Australian Performing Arts Collection and the Public Art Collection. The Australian Performing Arts Collection is dedicated to the collection, preservation and interpretation of Australia’s circus, dance, music, opera and theatre heritage, past and present. Collecting began in the 1970s.
The Public Art Collection was initiated by John Truscott while designing Arts Centre Melbourne’s interiors in the late 1970s. These foundation works from the Collection enhance the foyers of Arts Centre Melbourne’s venues and can be viewed whenever the buildings are open.
– KAREN VAN ULZEN