Tutus and trauma: a delicious slice
By Talia Carlisle

It’s nev­er too late to join the bal­let band­wag­on, unless that wag­on is the Tem­pest sea­son of Dying Swan­o­logues at BATS Theatre, in which case you have sorely missed out.

The short and sweet sea­son from July 5–9 was made short­er with two last minute can­cel­la­tions due to ill­ness, but nev­er­the­less, made a spec­tac­u­lar leap to the stage fol­low­ing their 2022 Fringe Fest­iv­al post­pone­ment and a suc­cess­ful Boos­ted Cam­paign.

The emo­tion­ally-fueled pas­sion pro­ject was the geni­us of per­former, writer and pro­du­cer Bea Lee-Smith, and sup­por­ted by a multi-tal­en­ted and enthu­si­ast­ic cast and crew. This included El Yule’s inspired dir­ect­ing, stu­dio-per­fect light­ing by Janis C.Y Cheng, and cap­tiv­at­ing cho­reo­graphy by Tabitha Dom­broski.

Thank you to the bright­ness and cre­ativ­ity of Lee-Smith as Lou, the pas­sion of Otto Kosok as Joe, the joy­ful spark that is Feli­city Cozens as Mary, and the cour­ageous ambi­tion por­trayed by Lor­na Rosevear. The leads jumped swiftly to and from sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, brought wildly to life with the guid­ance of assist­ant dir­ect­or and accent coach Hil­ary Nor­ris.

This treas­ure chest of relat­able and rhyth­mic­al char­ac­ters leaped onto stage and into my heart. Sandra Norman’s role as the nur­tur­ing bal­let mas­ter was filled in by Patrick Dav­ies, but I heard great excite­ment from the audi­ence about her pre­vi­ous per­form­ances.

It was set on the simple yet eleg­antly set Stage by set design­er Becky Sees. I have no doubt pro­du­cer and music­al theatre great Jo Marsh’s tal­ents con­trib­uted greatly to the flow of the show, as did the juke­box soundtrack designed by Lee-Smith. Just like a chocol­ate box, there is a favour­ite song in there for every­one, and that is a deli­cious ele­ment that lif­ted the energy and emo­tion of the show up into the rafters.

Rehears­al stage man­ager and sound design­er Patrick Dav­ies stepped in to read the role of Patrice for the final Fri­day per­form­ance I atten­ded, and fit­ted in like a glove with his sig­ni­fic­ant pri­or exper­i­ence with the role.

For such a char­ac­ter-filled and digest­ible show, it barely filled the stage time it deserved – or ful­filled the happy end­ings and begin­nings I would have liked to see elab­or­ated. I feel lucky how­ever that my own tim­ing was impec­cable and I was able to exper­i­ence Dying Swan­o­logues when I know so many more Wel­ling­to­ni­ans who would have been touched by its per­form­ance if not for the can­cel­la­tions or lim­ited sea­son.

The show cen­ters around an adult bal­let class as its pupils, aged mid 20s to late 50s, man­euver life’s ups and downs through dance, dia­logue and friend­ship.

Just like their char­ac­ters, the per­formers are clearly con­nec­ted through a love of dance, demon­strated in their well-prac­tised cho­reo­graphy and sta­bil­ity in the roles, des­pite the many date changes, roles filled in and the threat of cov­id can­cel­la­tions at any moment.

The idea is to cre­ate a place for people to com­fort­ably con­nect with them­selves and each oth­er on a soul level. This is very much needed at a time of instabil­ity and dis­con­nect due to cov­id, tech­no­logy and polit­ic­al divide.

The fact these char­ac­ters can show up to class, and the audi­ence to the theatre recon­nects us to what’s import­ant – show­ing up as we are. And that’s just what Dying Swan­o­logues does best and in full resi­li­ent strength.

For a relax­ing Fri­day at the theatre, I was filled with won­der, cour­age and strength to see these incred­ible char­ac­ters embra­cing bal­let as it frames their per­fectly drawn storylines of new rela­tion­ships, travels and career aspir­a­tions, encour­aging us all to tackle our own demons or adven­tures when we are ready. It is nev­er too early or late to start.