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Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

San Francisco beckons Canberra dancer

CANBERRA ballet dancer and choreographer Paul Knobloch has chosen a different path to many star graduates of the Australian Ballet School.

For after several years with the Australian Ballet, he has mostly danced with multi-national companies like the English National Ballet and the Bejart Ballet Lausanne in Switzerland.

Now he’s signed up for three years with the imaginative African-American choreographer Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet in San Francisco.

I caught up with him  just as he was about to fly to the US.

“I’m finished with the Bejart Ballet, which was fantastic…I’d still be there if  [the late founding director Maurice]  Bejart was still alive, handing down his choreography,” he told me.

“Dancers want to dance and I’ve done that. It felt great touring the world with Bejart. I even got to dance on the stage of the Paris Opera.”

In the past two years, Knobloch has been thinking about the problems of growing older as a dancer, and has started to choreograph his own works. However, in San Francisco, he’ll be mainly dancing.

All the same, as he says, his new director, King, is known as a visionary and “a great collaborator,” praised for joining forces with composers, musicians and visual artists from around the world,  fusing geometric principles of energy and deeply rooted cultural traditions to develop a new language of movement.

“I worked with Alonzo when he came to Switzerland – he chose me as the lead in a dance he choreographed…he allows input from the dancers, which was good for me as a budding choreographer.”

Knobloch sought King out later and asked if there were a position in his company.

One thing he says he’ll be grateful for in San Francisco is the English-speaking. “It was a big culture shock for me when I went to Lausanne,” he tells me.

And talking of culture shock, the process of braving the tough US regulations to get his visa was “absolutely incredible…I nearly gave up..I had to get references and reviews and I had to answer the question why do they need me? Why wasn’t some other tall, local ballet dancer good enough?”

Knobloch, who, before joining the Australian Ballet School was the star pupil of Jackie Hallahan at Canberra Dance Development Centre, is not one to knock his origins. “I know Australia is my home and will always be so,” he says.

Recently Knobloch choreographed a work for Ballet Victoria in British Columbia that toured Canada, to good reviews.

“I worked on it in Lausanne with a girl who was there from Canada…that was a great experience, although I couldn’t get there to see it,” he said.

It’s a sign of the future, “I’d like to start my own company in Australia…I will bring back to Australia what I’ve learned.”

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Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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