Firebird and Other Legends

Review: Gotta love a score by Stravinsky and Chopin conducted vigorously by Nicolette Fraillon. Gotta love a triple bill showcasing the choreography of Mikhail Fokine, a dinky-di modernist who embodies the search for extension, freedom, clarity of line, visual depth, exoticism and experimentation. But as Graeme Murphy's reconstruction of Firebird unfolded the lovin' stopped, sucking Fokine's original conception of life and line.

Les Sylphides, that archetypal and quintessential ballet, opens in tableau to the sweet, sweet strains of Chopin. Always in danger of descending into saccharine prettiness, Les Sylphides is saved by Fokine's refined musicality. This is a dance of gentle abstraction, stripping ballet back to the fundementals of unison, line and shape. The  corps is the star as they sweep and fold into lines of action only to halt for excruciatingly extended periods of living design.  Fokine avoids displays of extreme technique and instead indulges in delicate elevations, repetitions and progressions that ride and embody Chopin's music. More musical than narrative, Les Sylphides suits the shortened form of the triple bill, presenting a slice of history without descending into the archaic.

But it is what happened next that truly reveals Fokine's adaptability, breadth and sense of theatrical absurdity. Petrouchka is the tale of a doll come to life through magic. Here Fokine's choreography becomes truly modernist. Daniel Gaudiello dances Petrouchka the harlequin clown, who, in all his knock-kneed, hunch-backed floppiness, relinquishes traditional ballet vocabulary and becomes a hang-dog symbol of sadness. The crowd scenes are dense with colour and thick with multi-focused action. Soldiers dip and bob in classic cossack steps that require and produce the super-human quadriceps muscles. Guilded girls weave circles of folkloric hand-holding with handerchiefs. People beg, stamp with the cold, rub their hands, get drunk, shop, chat and flirt. Gypsy girls fight over the same man-with-money. A 'wow' moment erupts as a menagerie of  strangely costumed creatures creates a circus, including a giant goose, a leaping devil and an ever-so-Russian bear in chains. Amid this madness the clown doll is spurned in love, pads madly round his cell and is finally killed in anger. This ballet is a wonderful slice of the early Ballet Russes and of the early 20th century when Fokine and others were asking, 'what is dance?'

Graeme Murphy's Firebird sits in another time and place. A series of internally lit translucent pods are scattered across the stage in a play of light, shadow and shape that is abandoned far too quickly. Caveman costuming and a huge cracked egg produce primeval questions of birth, rebirth and the battle of good and evil. Stravinsky's score rumbles and mutters, it shrieks and hums as it builds, drops and dives in and out of strange and unknown places. Murphy's choreography produces some interesting and intricate partner and trio interactions, but is too reliant on production values and cannot live up to the music. At one point I closed my eyes, just to listen to Stravinsky's modernist landscape. Murphy's Firebird is a lacklustre end to a night of particular and fine embodiment that only created a longing to see Fokine's original. Pauline Manley

Preview: Graeme Murphy handpicked Lana Jones to star in his new Australian Ballet production of Firebird.

The firebird of Russian legend is a beautiful but mercurial creature that bestows boons and curses in equivalent doses. While the titular role in Graeme Murphy's new Firebird is a gift of a part for rising ballet star Lana Jones, it's also a highly demanding one. "The ballet goes for 30 minutes," Jones, 26, says with a laugh. "Graeme's fitted enough in to kill me in half an hour."

Firebird is part of an Australian Ballet triple bill (along with Petrouchka and Les Sylphides) celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Ballets Russes this year. Russian great Mikhail Fokine choreographed the original 1910 Firebird and Igor Stravinsky composed the score.

The story concerns the questing Prince Ivan (Kevin Jackson), who enters the garden of Kostchei, an immortal snake ogre (Chengwu Guo), where he encounters the Firebird, one of the magical creatures held captive. "He's fascinated by me, and then I decide that he doesn't want to hurt me," explains Jones. "I give him a feather to say, 'if you get in trouble shake this and I'll be there to help you.'"

Fokine's Firebird has been completely reworked by Murphy and creative associate Janet Vernon. It's Murphy's first collaboration with the Australian Ballet since 2002's Swan Lake (in which a neophyte Jones played a guardian swan).

"Graeme and Janet really wanted everyone to be taken back to the Ballets Russes when they saw this," Jones says. "[The Ballet Russes] weren't about subtlety, so they kept saying: 'Think Margot Fonteyn's big eyes looking around. Draw people in like that.'"

Jones also spent time in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens observing how birds move their heads, which is "short and sharp. It's not a languid movement. I tried to make myself look like a bird, not Lana Jones doing the Firebird."  

Jones grew up in Canberra a "hyperactive" child. "To burn the energy I went to mime and movement class. I did gymnastics and soccer and then ballet. And I got to a point where I had to choose between them." At 15 she moved to Melbourne to attend the Australian Ballet School, where she graduated top of the class. She joined the Australian Ballet in 2002, and Firebird marks her ascension to the rank of senior artist. "Graeme chose me as his Firebird and that's a huge honour and compliment," she says.

"It's a very strong role but there's fragility and vulnerability in it too. Graeme and Janet really respect their dancers while pushing and challenging you in such an encouraging way... The first solo the Firebird does is really fast and tricky."

But she's mastered it, presumably? "You never master it," Jones laughs, "but I'm working on it." Nick Dent