West Australian Ballet (WAB) is off to Jakarta this August.
The seeds of the tour were sown in August 2015, when WAB soloist Christopher Hill and Australian ballerina Juliet Burnett performed in the Ballet Indonesia Foundation’s first ever Indonesian Ballet Gala. The result of the Gala was a demand for Western dance in Indonesia. “The public loved it and they were really asking for more,” says WAB artistic director Aurelien Scannella. “We are going to be the first Western ballet company to be invited to perform in Jakarta.”
WAB will present a gala style program in Jakarta, including David Dawson’s 5 and On the Nature of Daylight, a solo from The Nutcracker, a pas de dux from David Nixon’s Beauty & the Beast, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s La Pluie, and a ball scene from Jayne Smeulders’s Cinderella along with a performance by a youth ensemble comprising local Indonesian dancers. “Having an Australian ballet company travel to Jakarta is very important in building a cultural bridge between our two countries. Everyone has been working hard to get this tour on track in less than a year, which is really amazing.” remarks Scannella.
The tour, which will run 2-7 August, has been made possibly by investments of $114 440 by the Federal Government’s Catalyst arts fund and an $20 000 from WA’s Department of Culture and the Arts.