Australian Ballet Ballet chassés out of the doldrums

A box office increase of 5 per cent, tight expenditure and a little magic control helped the Australian Ballet finish its 2010 financial year with a small operating surplus of $61,651, down from $220,131 the previous year, according to its annual report, released yesterday. Choreographer Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker was the company’s top-yielding ballet.

The company has taken advantage of the mania for dance, fuelled by television shows and the internet, with family-friendly programming (Coppélia was also staged) that dovetails with its expanded educational program aimed particularly at primary school pupils.

The Australian Ballet staged 23 works in 2010, up from the 18 in 2009 and 17 the year before that, during the global financial crisis. As a result of new works staged and refurbished, production costs rose from $7.98 million to $9.54 million in 2010.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano’) about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine.