“I think it is a really beautiful story to tell."
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Jade Wood is speaking about Giselle, a ballet to be performed in Taree by The Australian Ballet on October 18 and 19, and for which she plays the title role.
“I love telling a story, and bringing the audience with us on that journey is really special.”
Giselle is the 26-year-old’s second leading role with The Australian Ballet, after she was promoted to soloist this year.
She most recently appeared as Alice in Alice in Wonderland.
The regional tour of Giselle started in early October and Jade said she enjoys performing for regional communities.
“The audience is always so enthusiastic and its lovely to meet people after the show.
“It’s great bringing ballet to regional towns where they might not get many live dance performances at the theatre and it might be someone’s first time seeing ballet live.”
This is Jade’s third regional tour, with her first two as a student where she visited many communities across Australia.
Jade started dancing when she was three and joined The Australian Ballet School’s Interstate Junior Programme when she was 10, travelling to Melbourne from Cairns a few times per year.
In 2004 she moved to Melbourne to attend The Australian Ballet School, toured with The Dancers Company in 2009 and 2010 and joined The Australian Ballet in 2011. She has toured internationally with the company to New York, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Beijing, Shanghai and London.
She was promoted to coryphée (a leading dancer in a corps de ballet) in 2015 and to soloist in 2017.
“I’ve been with the company seven years now and we’re always pretty much about to go somewhere.
“We do a lot of touring and each year usually visit each capital city and international and regional areas.”
One of the aspects of touring is the need to adapt to different theatres and the space available to perform and tweaking the performance to suit the space.
“When on regional tour you might get there and have bump-in, class, rehearsal and then a performance that night.”
Jade said this is different to when dancing with the main company when they can perform at the same venue for a week, two weeks or six weeks at a time.
Giselle first premiered in 1841 in Paris and is a tragic story of love, madness and betrayal played out in secret trysts and ghostly visions across two acts.
The story focuses on a village girl who falls in love with a man who is not all he seems. When she discovers his deception, she dies of a broken heart.
Transformed into a spirit, she is reunited with her lover in a forest haunted by the ghosts of jilted women, and must dance with him until dawn to save his life.
Jade really enjoys the contrast between the first and second halves. “The first half is light and breezy and the second half is really serene and a lot slower, it’s nice to do that….dancing light and fast and then slow.”
During rehearsals the cast works hard on the choreography, technique and their characters.
When it comes to performing on stage, Jade said she enjoys many things about it.
“Having those really special moments with your partner and the people on stage, catching their eyes and feeling like you are all working towards bringing a show to an audience.
“I also love telling the story, getting lost in the character and finding new ways to explore things.
“So the moments we have on stage, the enjoyment of telling a story and being able to share that is something really special.”
When asked what a typical day on tour looks like, Jade said that every day for a dancer, except for Sundays, is pretty much the same.
“In the morning we have a ballet class which is a chance to get in tune with ourselves, focus on our technique and warm up.
“Then we have a few hours of rehearsal where we look at spacing and work on where on stage every dancer will be and go over any notes and corrections, try anything out and tweak things.
“We have a couple of hours break and go an have a meal or a nap and then we are back at the theatre at 5pm to do hair and makeup, have a warm up at the barre and get the body moving and then do the show.
“If it is the last night of the show then we bump-out which means packing up all our makeup and shoes and the tech crews take down the sets and they get put on a truck.”
In addition to the two performances of Giselle in Taree, The Australian Ballet is giving the Manning community a chance to see more of their world.
A masterclass is being run for ballet students, where the dancers have a chance to attend a class with a teacher from The Australian Ballet.
People can also watch while they take a class on stage and fine-tune their technique in preparation for a performance.
The Australian Ballet will present Giselle at the Manning Entertainment Centre on October 18 and 19.