Don Quixote

For its first ballet in its 60^th year, the Australian Ballet has staged Rudolf Nureyev’s film version of Don Quixote, on stage. It’s joyous and colorful, and highly technical.  Nureyev’s choreography is some of the most complicated the Australian Ballet has seen, and it all takes place in gloriously flamboyant costumes in and around filmic sets. Whilst it’s far from the perfect ballet and even further from the source material, Don Quixote is a crowd pleaser and rightfully so.

The titular character, played by Adam Bull on opening night, adds only a little pathos to this story.  However, Bull reminds us here that he is not just an exquisite dancer but he can act as well.  This is his final season with The Australian Ballet and it would have been nice to see more dancing from him.  This said, he did do some impressive work with giant windmills in the second act. He, and Quixote’s sidekick and squire Sancho Panza, incredibly performed by Timothy Coleman, head out to civilize Spain by righting wrongs wherever they may be.  Quixote even rides a nag of a horse, brilliantly created and performed by  puppeteers from A Blanck Canvass.

The ballet, however, primarily centres around young lovers Kitri and Basilio, played on opening night by Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo.  They were magnificent.  Both dancers are incredibly accomplished and there wasn’t a step put wrong in each act, but what really made this such a fantastic performance was just that, the performance. The flirty love affair between the two characters was played to the audience, letting us in on the joke. Ballet acting can be trite and tedious, but when Kondo and Guo hit the stage, their exuberance charmed the audience to their very core. At one point, as Guo holds Kondo above his head with one arm, he cheekily scratches his behind – Basilio knows he’s great and we know it too.  There are spectacular jettes and pirouettes and arabesques a-plenty and just when you think there can’t be more, another half dozen come your way.  Paul Knobloch provides loads of comic relief as the fancy Gamache, a potential suitor whom Kitri has no interest in.

The sets are gargantuan in scale. In fact, this may be the first time an audience has actually applauded a set in a ballet, but the gasp and approving mutters that accompanied this applause for the Act II windmills was well deserved.  There is very little to fault in this production, even the often loose dancing of the Corp de Ballet was precise.  No show is perfect but Don Quixote is rollicking good fun.

L.B. Bermingham

Photographer: Rainee Lantry