When David Hallberg commissioned a new show based on the life and loves of Oscar Wilde, he realised that in his own stellar dancing career, despite being a gay man, he had never danced a gay character. Such roles simply weren’t in the classical repertoire, says Hallberg, artistic director of Australian Ballet, “even though there were gay people dancing and creating work since ballet’s beginning”. How does he explain this? “I attribute it to fear,” he says. “But now we can change the course, without apology or fear.”
The choreographer helping change that course, as the ballet Oscar opens this month in Melbourne, is US-based Briton Christopher Wheeldon, one of the world’s leading dance-makers, whose ballets include adaptations of The Winter’s Tale and Like Water for Chocolate. Wheeldon had the first inkling of this idea years ago, after seeing the 1997 film Wilde, starring Stephen Fry. “I thought one day that might make an interesting ballet,” he says, speaking by phone from Melbourne.
