From Spain to Bollywood

Leanne Stojmenov nominates her first big break with the Australian Ballet as the role of Kitri in Don Quixote. The occasion was an outdoor performance of classical excerpts before thousands of fans at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne in 2006. As is the custom with these occasions, one of the main showstoppers was the Don Quixote Grand pas de deux. Madeleine Eastoe, who was to dance the part with Mark Cassidy, had to pull out because of injury. It just so happened that Stojmenov had recently performed the role as a guest artist with her old ballet school. Artistic director David McAllister had seen her rehearsing and decided to let her step in.
“It’s a performance I will always remember!” she says. “The orchestra was behind us and it was like the music just seeped in from behind. I was hardly aware of the audience; wasn’t thinking about anything. It was incredible!”
Stojmenov is now a principal dancer, but back then she was only a coryphee. Unlike most of the dancers in the company, she did not arrive through the Australian Ballet School (ABS). Born in Perth, she received all her training in her home town, first with Helen McKay, then with the Graduate College under Terri Charlesworth. She had always wanted to go the ABS, but her teacher was keen for her to go to Europe for more training. Just before she was about to leave for an audition tour, she landed herself a job with the West Australian Ballet.
The WA Ballet was a little like Europe away from home. At the time, the artistic director was Dutchman Ted Brandsen, and the repertioire included choreography by Hans van Manen and other European choreographers alongside premieres by cutting edge Australian choreographers. Nonetheless, “her eye was always on the Australian Ballet” and she joined two years later, in 2001.

The role of Kitri has been good to Stojmenov – she performed it with the WA Ballet and in a further season with the Australian Ballet in 2007. It fits her to a T. She looks the part, with dark sparkly looks inherited from her Macedonian father. She is petite, vivacious and strong, with light, quick feet and a dazzling smile. She is a natural for soubrette roles, lapping up the intricate embroidery steps of petit allegro and charming her way through tough technical challenges. She has conquered such parts as the mischievous Swanilda in Coppelia, the cold-hearted Ballerina Doll in Petrouchka and the showpiece Esmeralda and Corsaire pas de deux. But her expressive range also reaches to deeper and more complex roles, and she nominates as career highlights the dramatic Manon, MacMillan’s abstract Concerto and, of course Odette in Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake. She loves dramatic roles, and would love to perform “something like the Baroness in Swan Lake”.” I love to get all those sides out of me. They’re challenging and quite rewarding – sometimes it’s the only time you show that side of yourself – other than at home.”
With 15 years experience under her belt, Stojmenov says the work she puts into her technique and physical maintenance hasn’t changed.
“I’m always trying to work my body, get my legs higher, get more flexible, get stronger, that’s constant, and as you get older you need to work on that even more, because you don’t want to lose that flexibility and fluidity of movement.
“In rehearsals I don’t try to conserve too much. You get to a point where you do things over and over it becomes second nature and you have more than enough stamina when you get on stage. If I do it over and over in rehearsal I know I’ll be comfortable on stage.”
Nonetheless, she credits Pilates with having produced a big improvement in her performance. She says it “refined my technique, changed my body, and gave me more strength, endurance and power because it is coming from my core rather than my extremities”.
Luckily for Stojmenov, her husband runs a Pilates studio in Yarraville, so she has a personal coach at the ready. He is Mark Cassidy, the former Australian Ballet senior artist who was her Basilio in that thrilling Myer Music performance of Don Quixote. It was the first time they had danced together, and it is another reason why that performance remains a special one for her. “I had liked the look of him from the first day I arrived [in the company],” she grins. They married in October last year.
Stojmenov’s next big role in La Bayadere, a major new work by which was choreographed for the 40th anniversary of the Houston Ballet by the company’s Australian artistic director and choreographer, Stanton Welch. She has worked with Welch before, having performed the lead role of Suzuki in his in 2011 and Aurora in his Sleeping Beauty. “All his pas de deux are really challenging but very rewarding to do – they set your heart on edge.” She has performed in the famous Kingdom of the Shades scene once before – she was the fourth dancer in the hypnotic stream of arabesqueing women that uncoils from the wings like the smoke from Solor’s opium pipe.“You feel very exposed,” she says of the part, “but it is so enriching to be part of the corps de ballet.” But this will be her debut the lead role of Nikiya, the sensuous temple dancer who is killed by the bite of a snake. The company learnt the ballet last year, with rehearsals starting in earnest in July. Welch’s choreography is close to the original, though the company is promising a Bollywood flavour and a rumour is doing the rounds that the production includes live snakes. “I think there will slightly different stresses on me this time,” Stojmenov jokes.

Photo: Leanne Stojmenov photographed by  JAMES BRAUND