West Australian Ballet has postponed the search for a permanent artistic director while it completes a strategic review, with David McAllister to fill in for another year.
West Australian Ballet has postponed the search for a permanent artistic director while it completes a strategic review, with David McAllister to fill in for another year.
Mr McAllister joined last year as guest artistic director after the surprise exit of Aurelian Scannella and had been planning to stay for just one year
Executive director Lauren Major said the company had deferred the search for a new artistic director while it focused on a broad strategic review.
“It’s been enormously helpful for us to have David’s experience in that,” she said.
“It became really obvious this year that if we could convince him to stay for at least another year, it would really set an incoming director for success.
“Rather than bring somebody into the company when we were still working on some foundational elements, that we would get those things well and truly in train and set an incoming director with a really solid framework to come into.
“This is a huge luxury for us, to take the time to think about what is going to work for West Australian Ballet in a new artistic director.
“Given the opportunity we would have been crazy not to have taken it.”
Ms Major said the strategic review took longer than normal.
“We really needed to think about the wider context of arts in Western Australia, the funding context, where our income comes from, what we wanted to do artistically and how we grounded that in our local context.
“It has probably taken us 18 months to work though that process, we are just at the end.”
Mr McAllister, whose past roles have included being principal dancer and artistic director of The Australian Ballet, said the search for a new artistic director for WA Ballet will happen next year.
“We have a timeline now,” he said.
“We will start the application process in the second quarter.
“We will do the search with the board through the middle of the year and we are hoping there will be an announcement date around the end of August.”
Mr McAllister has also launched WA Ballet’s 2025 season, which he said was part of the build-up to its 75th anniversary.
“We are thinking of 2025 as the beginning of the three-year build,” he said.
The 2025 season includes a mix of classics and four world premieres.
The annual Ballet at the Quarry season comprises three premieres from three Australian choreographers – Loughlan Prior, Lucas Jervies and Tara Gower.
WA Ballet will also debut Butterfly Effect, a modern take on Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.
It is the first full-length ballet from choreographer Alice Topp.
The 2025 season includes performances of Don Quixote and Cinderella at His Majesty’s Theatre and Alice (in Wonderland) at Crown Theatre.
Mr McAllister said Crown drew a different audience.
“We know from our previous experiences, there is s 75 per cent audience that don’t come to the Maj that go to Crown,” he said.
“It is about audience development but its (also) targeting different places.
“We’ve been talking about how we can take ballet out of the city as well, taking it to Joondalup, going to the eastern suburbs, going to southern suburbs.”