Nicolette Fraillon, Kimball Wong announce departures

Two highly respected, familiar faces have announced their departures.

Maestro Nicolette Fraillon AM will bid farewell to The Australian Ballet in 2022 after an extraordinary 20-year career. The Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Australian Ballet and Artistic Director of Orchestra Victoria, she will make her final farewell performances in seasons of Romeo and Juliet in Melbourne (October) and Sydney (December).

Fraillon has had a distinguished career as one of the longest serving chief conductors in Australia’s orchestral history. The Australian Ballet and Orchestra Victoria plan to pay tribute to Fraillon over the coming year and will commence recruitment for her successor in the coming months.

Having built an illustrious career in Europe, including in her roles as Chief Conductor and Music Director at the Dutch National Ballet, Fraillon returned to Australia in 1998, to the directorship of the School of Music at the Australian National University. She joined the Australian Ballet in 2003.

In Adelaide, Australian Dance Theatre’s longest serving and most celebrated dancer has announced that he will leave the company at the end of 2021. Kimball Wong will take to the stage for the last time with ADT in the upcoming season of G, capping off a remarkable 14 years with the company headlined by a string of major national dance awards and international acclaim.

New Zealand born Wong, who spent most of his childhood in Cambridge, England, completed his contemporary dance training at London’s Millennium Dance 2000 before embarking on what has been a truly remarkable career which included working with the Michael Clark Company, English National Opera and Phoenix Dance Theatre. Wong moved to Australia and joined the ADT ensemble in 2007, quickly carving out an unsurpassed reputation centred upon his extraordinary athleticism, energy and gravity-defying dance feats.

Wong will be seen next year in a major new Australian work and is looking forward to working independently in this new and exciting stage of his career.

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G runs from November 25 to 29 at Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide. https://adt.org.au/