PARAGON

DANCE

1 July

Recently landed: Paragon

Gracia’s written response to The Australian Ballet’s Identity, especially for Fjord Review.

From out of retirement came 12 dancers of The Australian Ballet. Julie de Costa[i], Simon Dow, Lucinda Dunn, Madeleine Eastoe, Steven Heathcote, Paul Knobloch, Kirsty Martin, David McAllister, Sarah Peace, Leanne Stojmenov, Jessica Thompson, and Fiona Tonkin. 12 dancers to usher, in a sense, Adam Bull into his retirement at the close of the Melbourne season of Identity, in Alice Topp’s Paragon.

The piece, while created to celebrate in 60 fast minutes 60 years of The Australian Ballet, a diamond anniversary, naturally included a selection of beautiful moments to coincide with Bull’s own retirement from the stage after more than two decades with the company; in particular the opening scene where Bull held in his arms a swathe of tulle onto which still and moving images from the company’s 60 years flickered. As tangible as threads of memory are, these familiar scenes of kinetic knowledge from the archives spoke to the identity of the company and all those who have shaped it and continue to mould its form. As Bull unfastened this rippled screen and wrapped it close to his chest, Heathcote and Adam Elmes, the Past (in the nicest sense), and Future met. It was hard not to see this as a literal changing of the guard, as each one handed over to the other and exited the stage, for this artform is not fixed but ever growing. And while in this instance, in June, 2023, it is Bull who is retiring, perhaps this role, when this work is next performed, will be filled by another dancer bidding farewell to their life on the stage, encircled by their peers and esteemed alumni.

But before I get too tangled up in farewells and retirements, this new work by resident choreographer, Topp, commissioned by The Australian Ballet, is also about how one never really retires. You might exit the stage, but does dance ever really leave your body? The answer, Topp presents, is a resounding ‘no’. Dance is a part of a dancer, of us all, by extension, at a cellular level; whether it is bathed in limelight or not. The next branches might look radically different, on an individual level, but they have grown from what proceeded them.

[i] Julie de Costa (1969–1984) for the Melbourne season only; Rachel Rawlins (2002–2012) for the Sydney season only.