The Dream / Marguerite & Armand

Amy Harris exquisitely dances the role of the fragile courtesan in Marguerite & Armand but leaves the Australian Ballet this month after 22 years. This short ballet was made famous by the ice-and-fire partnership of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev; it was choreographed for them in 1963 by Britain’s Sir Frederick Ashton – no wonder principal dancers left the work alone for years.  

But with Harris, Nathan Brook also leaps to the role with long-limbed ease as her arduous lover Armand, who athletically beats off impressive male competition to win her heart.  Franz Liszt’s swooning score and romantic piano solos played by Andrew Dunlop surely help.  So too does Cecil Beaton’s original set, with elegant curtaining and modernist gold structure, and his sumptuous early nineteenth century costuming. 

While Brook’s part is to dance ardour, Harris offers a tender and convincing dramatic variety as the sophisticated, untouchable courtesan, later sickly and controlled, then desperate for Armand and a freedom only found on her deathbed.  Harris’ theatrical artfulness and emotional engagement will be missed.

Last in this Ashton double bill is his magical, truly comic dance interpretation of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Again with the original costumes and set (David Walker), we are in a deep and enchanted forest perfect for getting lost in and finding reconciliation and truth in love, and a world beautifully etched by Felix Mendelssohn’s score. 

The fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania (real life partners Chengwu Guo and Ako Kondo) begin quarrelling but are reconciled in an expressive pas de deux, both powerful and truly otherworldly. In this forest of gossamer Brett Chynoweth is perfectly cast as the impish agile Puck, so manically and magically choregraphed, as are the swaggering troupe of Titania’s fairies, hilariously banging their pointe shoes.