A SERENE CELEBRATION
Recently landed: A Serene Celebration
Gracia’s written response to The Australian Ballet Celebration Gala, for Fjord Review.
Beginning in the light of the moon, a remembering. Beginning with a much-loved (and most-performed) George Balanchine Serenade, in the State Theatre, The Australian Ballet’s Celebration Gala, a surprise foretoken to the 2022 season, and, as the name evokes, a celebration. A celebration to say welcome back to the theatre. A means for me, sat in the audience, to say ‘thank-you’ and feel what I’ve missed, the goosebumps of a live performance. Beginning at the close of the year, something unexpected: the gift of a new era.
The Celebration Gala coincides with the annual Geminid meteor shower. Two breathtaking illuminations across the night sky, active in December, varied only by their radiant location: State Theatre, for one, constellation Gemini, the other. Balanchine’s Serenade invokes this vibrance by moon set. When it premiered, it “was performed in the open air, and it still somehow maintains that atmosphere.”[i] Against the gentle night sky of a bare stage, artists of The Australian Ballet appear in long pale-blue tutus as a cascade of musical motion. The stage is not bare, it is, in that moment, as infinite as the sky. It leads you to audibly draw breath. And the audience, as encouraged by Artistic Director David Hallberg’s in person welcome, burst into applause that feels befitting of both a homecoming and a bestirring. Seventeen night-blooming waterlilies, or perhaps a vine of scented moonflowers, unfurling at twilight to lure nearby pollinators, either way, this serenade is serene. One arm raised to shield the eyes, the hand flexed, we all begin.
In groupings of four, with arms overhead, a floret to a whole. Later, foliage swaying in the breeze to the running lines of the score. Led exquisitely by Amy Harris, and Imogen Chapman and Benedicte Bemet, this succession of fleeting images and repeating patterns seems to chime: pay attention; be grateful; for nothing is ever fixed.
[i] Serenade synopsis, The Australian Ballet Celebration Gala programme, 2021, p. 10.
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18th of December, 2021
The Australian Ballet in Serenade by George Balanchine (image credit: Daniel Boud)
