A Classical Celebration

Another end-of-year-show piece, which enabled principal dancers and soloists to shine in audience-popular classical excerpts, along with nine graduates of this year’s professional training programme augmenting the corps de ballet. What an opportunity for the initiates!

Brisbane balletomanes love their classics with orchestral accompaniment. This show gave them much to feel proud of.

François Klaus put the show together; top credits to him! Noelene Hill’s costumes were lavish eye candy, yet always practical and atmospheric. Likewise Graham Maclean’s set designs and Ben Hughes’s supportive lighting. What a sterling creative team!

The Eastern European set for ‘Le Corsair’ impressed me; likewise the romantic design for ‘Romeo and Juliet’; also the lush, plush Café in the ‘Swan Lake’ international dances extract.

Principal dancers deserved their outbursts of applause. This was their show! Rachael Walsh and Piran Scott in Romeo and Juliet to Prokofiev’ score, tapped into my twenty-year-old erotic memories – their love was palpable; the lavish grandeur of Kaiser Waltz was asplendid opener ─ long, elegant white frocks and men in tails and bow-ties ─ a black-and-white fantasy in waltz time; and Klaus’s signature downbeat finale, The Little Mermaid, to Bach’s Air in G simplicity in a reverie. And Keian Langdon, Meng Ningning, Clare Morehan, Hao Bin, Terri Crilly, Yu Hui … I can’t cover everyone who sparkled.

This recital lived up to its name.

Jay McKee

Images: Principal Dancer Meng Ningning - La Sylphide, and Piran Scott & Rachael Walsh - Romeo & Juliet  - Queensland Ballet A Classical Celebration. Photographer: Ken Sparrow.