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Ballet companies seek great leap forward

Should they have the means and motivation, Australian balletomanes can experience the ultimate triple bill this year. The performance begins in Perth tomorrow when West Australian Ballet starts its 60th-anniversary year with the annual outdoors season at the Quarry.

Soon afterwards on the east coast, the Australian Ballet and Queensland Ballet will launch radically different programs as they both mark 50 years of classical dance.

To add to the occasion, both state companies are currently searching for new artistic directors: Ivan Cavallari will leave WAB in December, with Francois Klaus ending his long tenure in Brisbane next year.

QB popped the cork early on its 50th birthday in 2010, acknowledging the company's beginning as the Lisner Ballet in 1960. Two years later it became known as the Queensland Ballet Company in a bid to secure sustainable state government support.

In light of growing competition from interstate and abroad, QB chief executive Anna Marsden says the company needs to work hard to remain relevant to its audience and maintain a point of difference. "In Brisbane what's essentially happening over the next four years is that we'll have the Australian Ballet every year, and a Hamburg or a Paris Opera Ballet or what have you, and Queensland Ballet," Marsden says. "If we stick our head in the sand and keep on doing what we're doing we won't survive."

Marsden says it's a case of working with touring companies to secure joint promotional opportunities, such as combined dance classes and education programs. QB is no stranger to publicity, having marshalled 1400 people last year to break the Guinness World Record for staging the largest ballet class.

On the other side of the country, WAB is also looking to increase its profile with the culmination of a five-year strategic plan. Cavallari and general manager Steven Roth arrived in 2007 at a particularly problematic period in the company's history -- the dancers were threatening to strike because of low salaries exacerbated by the mounting costs of living associated with the resources boom.

The WAB board responded by creating a new business case to attract increased government funding. The board's vision was to grow the organisation to the point at which it could tackle more ambitious repertoire, which in turn would attract larger audiences and greater corporate and private support.

The magical figure was 32 full-time dancers, augmented with up to eight young artists. The state government pledged extra funds almost immediately, but the federal government is yet to commit the additional $400,000 required, meaning the company has had to dip into its reserves to field a full stable of dancers in its 60th year.

Cavallari, a former principal dancer with Stuttgart Ballet, made the case for what could be when he secured Marcia Haydee's lavish production of The Sleeping Beauty in 2010. Realising Haydee's vision required 65 performers and a move from the company's regular performance space, His Majesty's Theatre, to the much larger Burswood Theatre. The gamble paid off -- the production made almost $1 million at the box office, and was praised by The Australian's national dance critic, Deborah Jones, as "a delight: grand and lucid in conception, detailed and persuasive in presentation".

Beyond WAB's commitments in Perth, Roth says regional touring in a state the size of western Europe has meant perfecting the fly-in, fly-out approach favoured by mining companies. In September last year, with funding from major sponsor Woodside, WAB staged a one-night-only performance in Karratha, where a temporary stage was erected on a golf course.

QB's touring footprint is also immense. Until 2010, the company followed a rotating schedule, which covered regional centres one year and smaller towns the next. QB shares West Australian Ballet's desire to grow its ranks, although its strategy is not so much focused on repertoire as it is on mobility.

"The challenge for us is about dancer numbers," Marsden says. "If we got to, say, 34 dancers you could arguably send two tours out or have one season in Brisbane of a smaller program and be touring, but at our current size (27) it's just a little bit too small to do that."

International exposure has increased under Klaus's watch, with multiple tours to Europe and Asia completed since 2006.

Roth says such outreach has been impossible for WAB because of the exorbitant cost of sending its dancers overseas. "It's a really big challenge here because of the cost of getting the company out of Perth -- even to Sydney. The airfares are phenomenal. You're paying 100-grand in airfares, before anything else," he says.

With corporate support, WAB will make it to Sydney in October for a special mixed bill featuring works by Jiri Kylian, Alejandro Cerrudo and Garry Stewart.

Roth says this year's programming is as much a case of looking forward as holding on to the past. Very few of the company's heritage works are able to be re-staged, although former long-serving artistic director Barry Moreland will re-create his Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune (1985) as part of the Diamonds season in May.

One of WAB's most significant achievements in its 60-year history is, in fact, an administrative one: securing funds for the new $12m State Ballet Centre in Maylands, which opens next month.

Despite these gains, Cavallari says the top item on his wish list remains a purpose-built venue in Perth suitable for dance. The Heath Ledger Theatre, which opened last year with a capacity of 575, is too small for large works, as is His Majesty's, which cannot be used to capacity because of poor sight lines.

"They (the government) will realise very soon that without a lyric theatre, this company, the West Australian Ballet, will get stuck at one point," Cavallari says.

The AB will take advantage of the Burswood Theatre's larger capacity when it takes Graeme Murphy's Romeo and Juliet to Perth in October as part of a three-state tour. In June there will be a rare conjunction of the nation's three main classical companies when the AB stages Let's Dance, a 50th-anniversary celebration featuring a range of Australian dancers, including guests from QB and WAB. The season will reflect the ballet companies' shared heritage dating back to early tours of the Ballets Russes in the late 1930s.

While both state companies have experienced financial fallout and near-closures throughout their histories, their balance sheets are in good health today. QB is now a $5.4m organisation and has maintained a small surplus for more than a decade, with WAB's annual budget hovering at about $8m.

Klaus echoes Cavallari in saying that securing an appropriate performance venue in Brisbane remains a point of frustration. The city's largest theatre, the Lyric, can hold 2000 patrons but is in constant demand from international productions and touring musicals. Although QB is rarely able to book the space, its potential is clear. Klaus's 2007 production of The Nutcracker sold 15,000 tickets there.

Marsden says her five-year vision for the company is to gain more certainty around dancer numbers and touring, and to substantially build education and philanthropic activities. The key for a state dance company, she says, is to know its audience well, clearly define its brand, and produce exciting seasons within budget that distinguish what makes it unique.

"We don't want to be just a smaller version of Australian Ballet," Marsden says. "We're not just a cheaper version of it; we're not Nutcracker pared down. We should proudly be Queensland's company: owned by the state, loved by the state and have a relationship with those people."

WAB's Ballet at the Quarry, tomorrow to March 3, Perth. Let's Dance, including performers from the AB, QB and WAB, June 7-16, Melbourne.

Cameron Pegg

The Australian

9/2/2012