- Sydney Dance Company
The Sydney Dance Company is one of
Australia 's most successful and well-known contemporary dance companies. The company was founded in 1965 as the dance-in-education group "Ballet in a Nutshell" by Suzanne Musitz (Davidson), later changing its name to "Athletes and Dancers", and "Dance Company (NSW)". In 1979 the company was renamed the Sydney Dance Company by its new artistic directorGraeme Murphy , who had joined the Dance Company (NSW) in 1976. Monkey see is a very weird performance.The success of Murphy's tenure as artistic director, with fellow dancer, collaborator and wife Janet Vernon, has been compared to the dancer and choreographer
Jerome Robbins because of the way he and his company has marketed dance to a wider audience, and brought contemporary dance into a more commercial arena.Part of Murphy's success has been his wide-ranging taste in music and the eclectic choices of musical accompaniment he has made for his dance works. The breakthrough work "Some Rooms", which received enormous acclaim, featured a selection of existing music by composers
Keith Jarrett ,Joseph Canteloube ,Francis Poulenc ,Benjamin Britten andSamuel Barber , whereas other works featured newly-commissioned original music. "Hate" (1982) had a score by noted Australian composerCarl Vine , and his successful 1985 production "Boxes" featured original music by composer and musicianIva Davies , who was then the lead singer with popular Australian rock band Icehouse.In May 2007, the company announced that
Tanja Liedtke would be its new artistic directorcite news | first=Valerie | last=Lawson | coauthors= | title=Welcome to her brave new world | date=May 4, 2007. | publisher= | url =http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/sydney-dance-co-appoints-new-director/2007/05/03/1177788310527.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1 | work =The Sydney Morning Herald | pages =12 | accessdate = | language = ] ; however on August 17th of that year Liedtke was accidentally killed after being struck by a garbage collection truck in an inner northern suburb ofSydney [http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22260614-1702,00.html Sydney Dance director killed, "The Australian", 17 Aug 2007] .In December 2007, Executive Director of the Sydney Dance Company,
Noel Staunton launched the company's 2008 season, announcing three guest choreographers,Meryl Tankard ,Raphael Bonachella andAszure Barton , to create new works for the company.Dancers and choreographers
Sydney Dance Company has launched the careers of several highly successful Australian dancers and choreographers, including
*Gideon Obarzanek , now director ofMelbourne dance companyChunky Move
*Paul Mercurio who has gone on to make several movies includingStrictly Ballroom which was directed byBaz Luhrmann .
*Stephen Page , now choreographer and director ofBangarra Dance Theatre
* Kim Walker, who spent ten years as Artistic Director of The Flying Fruit Fly Circus based in Albury, and took up the position of Executive Director at the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA)in 2007.
* Joseph Brown, who has been playing the lead character Johnny Castle in the stage version of "Dirty Dancing " since it opened in Sydney in 2004References
External links
* [http://sydneydancecompany.com/ Sydney Dance Company] website
* [http://www.australiadancing.org/subjects/61.html Sydney Dance Company] , [http://www.australiadancing.org/ Australia Dancing] entry
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