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.