By Rhys Ryan One year after Lucas Jervies’ gladiatorial epic Spartacus, audiences of the Australian Ballet were again thrust into the wonders of the ancient world. This time, brutality and hypermasculinity were replaced with an intricate plot of heroism and triumph in the company’s co-production with Houston Ballet, Sylvia, which had its Australian premiere at
The cemetery at Heiligenkreuz before dawn: this is where Kenneth MacMillan’s narrative masterwork, Mayerling, begins and ends. A coffin lies upstage, rain pours down, and Bratfisch, a popular entertainer and cab driver for Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary, droops in grief. The coffin is for Baroness Mary Vetsera, the young mistress of Rudolf, the caddish anti-hero
by Kaija Pepper When the pas de deux are so sweet, the cast of characters so engaging and the design so fetching, there is every reason to welcome another Romeo and Juliet to ballet’s Shakespearean canon. Stanton Welch has given Houston Ballet a passion-filled, action-packed journey into doomed, young love. Welch, an Australian who has