Qld Ballet announces 2025 season
The Queensland Ballet (QB) is celebrating its 65th anniversary in 2025, and Acting Artistic Director Greg Horsman has assembled a suitably glamorous program for such a landmark year.
The company will start with Kenneth MacMillan's lauded Romeo and Juliet. This ballet, when first introduced to the QB repertoire (and to Australia) in 2014, was a watershed moment for the company, given its huge size (requiring 70 dancers) and artistic requirements, and it has remained an important asset. Horsman is proud to be presenting it again.
When the company first performed this work it had only 26 dancers, and was only able to stage it thanks to the confidence Lady MacMillan, who controls the rights to the ballet, had in Li Cunxin's leadership and many guest artists brought from within Australia and overseas. In a reflection of the company's progress since then, the company now boasts more than double that number of dancers (when taking into account its Young Artists program). Nonetheless, with some dancers on maternity leave, Horsman expects to announce some very special guest artists to augment the roles. (March 21-29.)
Another glamorous presentation and audience pleaser is Dangerous Liaisons, also of major significance in the company's history. This "damning portrayal of the French aristocracy" was created on the QB in 2019 by the late Liam Scarlett, the brilliant (late) English choreographer who was then one of the company's resident choreographers. It received its world premiere by the QB at the Playhouse in Brisbane: a considerable coup for the company and for Australia. In 2025 the ballet will be performed at the smaller Talbot Theatre in the Thomas Dixon Centre, so audiences will be truly "up close and personal" with this passionate unfolding of the tale. "Dangerous Liaisons is special to us," says Horsman, "and having access to the whole Centre will allow us to make it a bit more of an immersive experience." (October 2-8)
Between these two blockbusters comes the annual Bespoke triple bill mid year. "I'm really excited about this because I really wanted to put together an all-Australian program," Horsman says. He was also keen to exploit the musical talents of the Camerata chamber orchestra, which will play live – and have an exciting range of music to play. The program will comprise Natalie Weir's 4Seasons, which uses the Max Richter version of the Vivaldi score. Local choreographer and Australasian Dance Collective Associate Artistic Director Jack Lister will create a one act work using Dvorak's Symphony 9 (The New World) "deconstructed and reworked" with composer Louis Frere-Harvey. "Jack always thinks outside the box," Horsman says.
The third work on the bill will be Horsman's own Rhapsody in Motion, which he created for the opening of the Thomas Dixon Centre in 2022. The ballet is an outpouring to Rachmaninov's immortal Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, for which the bravura piano part will be played by international concert pianist Roger Cui, who also just happens to be the company's pianist! (June 27-July 5)
More contemporary ballet will grace the stage with "Bespoke", "an amazing platform," says Horsman, "solely for creating new work". This year the choreographers will be Yolande Brown, Canadian Robert Binet (who was the Choreographic Mentor at the 2023 Venice Biennale Danza) and Amelia Waller, former soloist with the QB and now a teacher at the Qld Ballet Academy.
"Bespoke is always an exiting occasion for the dancers and also for the audiences because they are never quite sure what they might see." (July 31-August 9)
Winding up the year will be the annual Nutcracker (December 5-13), the last chance to see the Ben Stevenson version, which has been a stalwart of the repertoire since 2013. "The Nutcracker is hugely popular and a third of the audience is new each year. It has become quite a tradition to take the family," Horsman says. There are also regional tours of Horsman's Coppelia and two seasons of My First Ballets series, Peter and the Wolf and The Little Mermaid, for the school holidays.
Horsman had to step into the breach left by the abrupt departure of Leanne Benjamin mid-year. He readily admits he didn't have the usual length of time one would like to organise such a huge thing as a ballet company season. "It was already a short amount of time even if it had been Leanne [in charge]," he says. "and we've kept some things that were already in the plan." So while there are no big commissions, like 2024's Coco,"I think that we've put together a well balanced program, and I'm pleased to have been able to include the mixed programs, which are often harder to sell."
– KAREN VAN ULZEN