“With dance it sort of felt right, I felt I could be myself and express myself, when I was dancing.”

David McAllister’s life in ballet started with a wish upon a star. What sounds like a scene of a movie, set up a remarkable career, that continues to shape the essence of Australian dance, particularly ballet.

David has been associated with the Australian Ballet for 35 years, as of this year. Starting as a dancer at in 1983, making his way up through the ranks, promoted to Senior Artist in 1986 and Principal Dancer in 1989. David had many career highlights including dancing for Princess Diana, in Coppélia.

“It is like a narcotic you are always going for that perfect outcome, which in some performances it happens. I can think in my whole career that went for 18 and a half years, there were five or six shows”

David danced his final performance in Giselle at the Sydney Opera House in 2001, less than 5 months later he became the seventh Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet.

The Australian Ballet is over 50 years old and is held in high regard around the world, for the strength and athleticism of the dancers. The company is also known for its first class medical team that runs an Injury Management and Prevention Program. A critical component for one of the busiest dance companies in the world with upwards of 250 performances programmed a year.

As Artistic Director David has programmed a range of choreographers including Meryl Tankard, Gideon Obarzanek, Stephen Page, Graham Murphy and many other fabulous Australian and international choreographers. David directed his first ballet, The Sleeping Beauty in 2015.

This is a generous and wide-ranging interview, which covers everything from the Marriage Equity Debate of 2017, gender fluidity, leadership to the changing face of ballet and what David is looking forward to in 2018.

You can view the full program of Australian Ballet’s 2018 season here.

This episode has been transcribed and can be found here.

If you have enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a *contribution. Currently looking to raise $500 for new recording equipment. We only need 1/4 of the audience to contribute $5. All contributors will be named on the website.***

Featured

Dalisa Pigram

‘We value everyone equally, but you know, of course each person has a role to play in the team that's been created, but no one is, you know, less valuable than another.’

Daniel Riley

‘My daughter Billie, she was in rehearsal today. My son Archie grew up the first two or three years of his life, like, on tour with me when I was with Bangarra Dance Theatre and just being in the artistic environment and being surrounded by people is such a beautiful gift, I think, that I can give to them as well.’

Antony Hamilton

‘When I'm making dance and when I think about choreography or art, I often relate my early childhood experiences to the things that I make now as well.’

Alice Topp

‘I guess for a lot of people, ballet is still very much an evolving, developing language. I think people think it was probably stuck in a time and hasn't progressed. But modern ballet is very challenging and arresting and it's finding new ways of working with an old structure.’

Lloyd Newson

I used to say for a long time that I thought the dance was the Prozac of the art forms. […] there is an aesthetic that dominates our work, often complex or ugly or difficult issues are glossed over because people are pointing their feet and look very lovely.

James Vu Anh Pham

“What I love about the dance world is that it has the possibility of bringing together so many different cultures, so many different people, beliefs, ways of thinking, ways of being in a space … we always find a common ground and a way to exist and support one another and to create something really beautiful”

Paul White

“I am totally hooked by collaboration, particularly with friends”

Amrita Hepi

“There is something about sharing something with somebody, or about teaching somebody something that allows space for a conversation that you might not normally have.”

Harper Watters

“I try to make the ballet world a lot more colourful, diverse and a lot more inclusive.”

Mette Ingvartsen

“The fact that the sexual undertone, or the desiring undertone that a lot of dance is operating through, for me it was very important to make it explicit. To actually say ‘okay part of what is happening here is a question of desire, it is a question of being stimulated physically. Then there are many different levels or layers of this happening of course. In my work it was about saying, we have to recognise that these underlying structures are there, and if we recognise it and even expose it explicitly then maybe we can actually look at for something else or question ourselves….”

This episode has been transcribed and can be found here.

If you have enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a contribution. Currently looking to raise $500 for new recording equipment. We only need 1/4 of the audience to contribute $5. All contributors will be named on the website.

If you have enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a *contribution. Currently looking to raise $500 for new recording equipment. We only need 1/4 of the audience to contribute $5. All contributors will be named on the website.***