The Australian Ballet will stage Swan Lake as the centrepiece of its 2023 season, in the first major commission for the company’s new artistic director.
David Hallberg’s production will also work as a symbolic tribute to the very first show staged by the company, in 1962.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but show audiences why this is the most famous ballet in the world,” he told AAP.
The Australian Ballet has already performed the famed tale of Prince Siegfried and his love for Odette/Odile almost 700 times, and Hallberg anticipates 2023’s Swan Lake will be around for decades to come.
“What’s so important is that every major ballet company around the world has a Swan Lake that they can turn to and let audiences enjoy,” he said.
As artistic director of the Australian Ballet he follows in the footsteps of David McAllister, who was in the job 20 years – which anyone might think would be challenge enough.
But Hallberg spent his first months in the new role cancelling and postponing shows due to COVID-19 lockdowns, while trying to motivate professional dancers who found themselves suddenly unable to perform.
“We’ve weathered the storm but it was devastating, it was nothing like the organisation has ever experienced,” he said.
Yet rebuilding and resilience is at the very core of his relationship with the company he now helms.
Hallberg credits the Australian Ballet with reviving his dancing career when it looked like injury would force his early retirement.
He joined the American Ballet Theatre in 2001 and was the first American dancer to become a principal with Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet in 2011.
But in 2014, complications from ankle surgery left him almost unable to plié.
He spent more than a year recovering in Melbourne with physiotherapists at the Australian Ballet, going on to become its first resident guest artist.
The company is staging its own recovery in 2022, with a successful production of Anna Karenina at the Sydney Opera House, and a production of Kunstkamer opening later in April.
Hallberg says Swan Lake, a guaranteed hit, can only help.
The production will feature crisp and realistic set and costume design in a re-imagination of Anne Woolliams’ iconic 1977 version.
Hallberg believes the show can also help the company define its new vision, which he says is already beginning to crystallise through the results of an intensive period of studio work.
But he cautions change will happen slowly, in part due to the cultural importance of the institution that sets the benchmark for Australian dance.
“What Australian Ballet means to Australians is really important, much like what the Bolshoi means to Russians is really important,” he said.
The Australian Ballet will announce its full 2023 season later this year.
