Carmen

Do not take your children to see this ballet. This is a strange way to start a review but it needs to be said and said often – this ballet is not suitable for children. It not only includes adult themes but horrific depictions of gendered and intimate partner violence. Carmen should come with a trigger warning far more explicit than we are given. Art is a product of its time and so audiences need to be prepared to see ideas and ideologies that may be outdated. But just because you can show something doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Just because you can have a pas de trois that freezes in a tableaux at the moment that Don Jose (Callum Linnane) is about to punch Carmen (Jill Ogai) in the face, doesn’t mean you should. Just because you can slut-shame the character of Carmen, having her gratuitously opening her legs with regularity, doesn’t mean you should. Just because you can have other female characters dragged from the stage, literally screaming, doesn’t mean you should.  It is 2025 and the day before International Women’s Day. Surely it’s time we stop presenting this kind of gendered violence with no discernable purpose.  Come on, Australian Ballet - you can do so much better than this.

The ballet is choreographed by John Inger and attempts to reimagine the story of Carmen, so well-known from Bizet’s Opera.  Inger seems to be trying to modernize the story but in his creation Carmen loses all her fire and passion and becomes cold, manipulative and scheming as she uses sex to her own ends.  The character is given no power beyond the ability to sexually appease the Toreador, Zuniga and Don Jose. Ogai dances the part with clinical precision, but Carmen remains heartless still.  Marcus Morelli makes a fine Toreador, the one character in this ballet with any real personality.  In leather pants and a sequined jacket, the preening toreador comes to life through the magnificent heights of Morelli’s jumps.  Brett Chynoweth is underused as Zuniga but always charismatic and step perfect. Fresh from his fabulous Nijinsky, Linnane is adequate as the modern day incel stalker, Don Jose but sadly the character has no redeeming qualities.

Act II features a long, long sequence where members of the Corps de Ballet, wrapped in black roll across the floor from one side of the stage to the other, as other black clad figures drag women off to… hell? It’s highly disturbing. Did I mention the women actually screaming? Don Jose sniffs Carmen up and down to see if she has slept with anyone else, and then ruts against her to completion. There are some lovely moments as Linnane, Ogai and Lila Harvey (as the Boy) dance a perfect family scene but this is broken by the aforementioned tableaux of violence.

Many critics love this show and it is understandable. The Australian Ballet are indeed a great company and they seem, of late, to really be hitting their straps in the contemporary arena. For me, it doesn’t matter how great the dancing is when the story is so utterly problematic.

L.B. Bermingham

Photographer: Kate Longley