The sweetest swoon
The final reviews have been published and Malcolm’s original ballet-opera Fade Not that premiered at Sydney Theatre last month has proved to critics just how well ballet and opera can unite on the stage. Journalists in Sydney wrote that the ballet used ”a poignant theme” (Sydney Morning Herald) to create “a moving piece in which the dance rose and fell with the tide of feeling” (The Daily Telegraph). National daily The Australian compared Remi Wörtmeyer’s choreography with that of Kenneth MacMillan while the Australian Stage praised ”librettist and eminent director Malcolm Rock” for his words and Lisa Cheney for her score that was “the sweetest swoon, enchanting”. It also asserted that Fade Not was “the most unexpected, non-conformist” work of the 2009 Bodytorque programme. Michelle Potter of the Canberra Times summed it up best as “a courageous experiment in linking dancer and singer, movement and voice” with “an innate sense of clarity and harmony”. She wrote that the ballet-opera was able to “grab the audience’s attention from the opening moment and hold it throughout … with a strongly focussed approach”. Many thanks to those critics who took the time to write about the show.
