Winter Season
The Australian Ballet School
Riverside Theatres, Parramatta
June 12-13, 2026
The Australian Ballet School’s 2026 Winter Season, presented at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, offered a well-proportioned glimpse of dancers nearing the end of this chapter of their training. Running at approximately 70 minutes, the program was long enough to reveal range, discipline and developing artistry, but concise enough to keep the audience’s attention on the students themselves. It was a particularly well-balanced program for Level 7 and Level 8 dancers: classical form, contemporary physicality, new work and repertoire created originally for a professional company all sitting alongside one another without overburdening the evening.
The opening Défilé, performed by Level 8 students, was choreographed by Lucinda Dunn OAM and Andrew Murphy to Antonín Dvořák’s Polonaise in E Flat Major. As a formal introduction to the graduating year, it did exactly what it needed to do. The students presented themselves with obvious joy, clarity and confidence, carrying the sense of dancers ready to step beyond school and towards the next stage of professional life. There was a steadiness to the ensemble work, and an evident understanding of occasion, which gave the opening a ceremonial weight without making it feel stiff. Lucelle Davis stood out in this work.
Stephen Baynes’s Le Bal, performed by Level 7 students to excerpts from Alexander Glazunov’s The Seasons, was especially well suited to this cohort. Baynes’s choreography gave the dancers classical refinement to inhabit without pushing them beyond the emotional and technical register appropriate to their stage of training. The result was elegant, if simple, rather than overreached. The carousel pattern was particularly effective, especially the canon of the dismount, which showed both the dancers’ musical responsiveness and their capacity to hold a stage picture cleanly. Hugh Colman’s costumes, courtesy of The Australian Ballet, gave the work a polished classical frame, while Richard Vabre’s lighting drew out the hint of a sweet, almost narrative world. Lila McGrath and Charlotte Withford were notable for the refinement and ease of their work.
The shift into Lucas Jervies’s Fight or Flight, performed by Level 8 students to Paul Terracini’s Gegensätze, brought a welcome change of physical and theatrical language. The work unfolded through a series of charged tableaux, with some of its strongest moments found in stillness and slow motion. At times, the dancers seemed to reverse the audience’s position, making us feel observed rather than the observers. There were echoes of the muscular tension and sculptural groupings familiar from Jervies’s choreography for Spartacus, though here scaled to a student ensemble and to the particular anxieties of emergence and release. Importantly, the dancers maintained a group sensibility even when individual movement came to the fore. That collective charge was one of the work’s strengths.
Mason Lovegrove’s Atlas Waiting, performed by Level 7 students to Ryan Lott’s Beautiful Mechanical, was clearly an audience favourite, and deservedly so. Lovegrove, a graduate of The Australian Ballet School and current soloist with The Australian Ballet, has created a work that gives young dancers something substantial to meet. Darker and more brooding in tone, it was made more imposing by Vabre’s lighting, which allowed the dancers to appear as conduits for the work rather than students moving dutifully through choreography. Of all the works in the program, this was where the students appeared most deeply connected. One image of a dancer running on the spot was especially evocative, recalling the familiar dream sensation of exertion without progress. The final lift was both choreographically satisfying and very well executed, giving the work a strong sense of arrival after its restless accumulation of anticipation.
The closing work, Jervies’s Concerto Anniversary, performed by Level 8 students to excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, presented a different kind of challenge. Created in 2025 for West Australian Ballet, the work comes from a professional context, and the students met it with considerable discipline. Its demands are substantial, particularly in the musical phrasing and sustained classical energy. While the dancers’ commitment did not falter, the length of the work made the edges of stamina visible in places. That is not a failure so much as a reminder of where these young artists are in their development. Kayleigh Yuan, in a featured role, stood out technically and emotionally. Her pas de deux work had a slightly more developed emotional quality than some of the other pairings, supported by her partner, Zachary Medved, who was well matched to her in both ability and presence, without overwhelming or outshining her. All the couples approached the material with seriousness and care. The lighting for the work was most effective in its redder tones, which gave the work warmth and theatrical scale; the cooler states were less generous to the choreography.
Across the evening, the female dancers appeared slightly more technically developed than their male counterparts, particularly in partnering sequences. The young men, however, brought a combination of gusto and care that felt entirely right for their age and stage. What mattered most was not polish alone, but the sense that these students were actively learning how to hold the demands of performance. The dancers also excelled in canon throughout the program, where their timing, focus and shared musical instinct were repeatedly evident.
There were also pleasing details in the presentation. The dancers stage make-up was commendable, particularly on Matia Ingrey, and a reminder of how much these seemingly peripheral elements affect a performance. They help young dancers understand how to project, transform and meet an audience.
Under Artistic Director and Head of School Megan Connelly, The Australian Ballet School continues to show the standard expected of a national training institution, with students grounded in classical discipline while being exposed to contemporary choreographic ideas and professional expectations. It was also pleasing to see graduates of the School, including Lucinda Dunn OAM, Stephen Baynes and Mason Lovegrove, alongside Connelly herself, contributing to the artistic and choreographic life of the season. Who better to understand the demands and expectations placed on these students than artists shaped by the same institution, returning now with the authority of professional experience. In that sense, the program also felt like an appropriate homage to the School’s own lineage.
There was an intimacy to the performance, with a warm and clearly appreciative audience of teachers, parents, alumni and ballet supporters. For students, these performances are more than showcases; they are likely among their first experiences of touring, of adjusting to new theatres, and of meeting audiences beyond the school’s Melbourne home. For that reason alone, they deserve strong support (read: if the Australian Ballet School comes to your city, I highly suggest you attend – particularly if you are a young dancer aspiring to this institution or indeed any finishing school). But this Winter Season also offered a clear artistic reason to attend: it showed young dancers at a meaningful point of transition, working with discipline, enjoyment and increasing authority as they prepare to step into the profession.
-Olivia Weeks