Graeme Murphy & Janet Vernon - Our World

GRAEME MURPHY AM has been at the forefront of Australian and international dance as a choreographer and director for nearly four decades and has received critical acclaim globally.

In 2007, he and his muse, wife and creative associate, JANET VERNON, departed Australia’s ﬂagship contemporary dance company, Sydney Dance Company, after three decades as Artistic Directors. Side by side, Graeme and Janet created a remarkable repertoire, including over thirty five full evening productions and a diverse range of short works. As well and to this day, Graeme has been commissioned to create several ballets for The Australian Ballet and has made works for international companies such as The Royal New Zealand Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theatre, Baryshnikov’s White Oak Project, Canadian Opera Company, Shanghai Song and Dance Ensemble, The Shanghai Ballet and the Bavarian State Ballet.

Graeme has directed for Opera Australia and created choreography for The Metropolitan Opera in New York. He also worked extensively with gold medal winning ice-skaters Torvill and Dean. In 2008, he choreographed the dance sequences for the movie directed by Bruce Beresford ‘Mao’s Last Dancer’ which is now screening around the world. ‘Firebird’, commissioned in 2009 by the Australian Ballet, won Best Choreography from the Green Room Awards.

Graeme Murphy’s body of work reflects boundless curiosity about people, life, identity, sexuality, ambiguity, love, power, desire, seduction and death...

WORKS 2011 (see calendar for dates)
Under Construction

- The Australian Ballet
ROMEO AND JULIET
Romeo & Juliet is perhaps the greatest love story ever told
Graeme audaciously reinvents this much-anticipated Ballet. Over 400 years old, the tale of Romeo & Juliet is as timeless as it is heartbreaking. Young passion smoulders at its core, but in this ballet Graeme also tackles the consequences of greed, war, factionalism, and what happens to humanity when love dies. Of course, a grand story demands grand surrounds, and who better to create the costumes than Australian fashion luminary Akira Isogawa.

CREDITS Choreography - Graeme Murphy Creative associate - Janet Vernon Music - Sergei Prokofiev Costume design - Akira Isogawa Set design - Gerard Manion Lighting design - Damien Cooper

Stay tuned for Art Breaks (mini-docos on the making of ‘Romeo and Juliet’) - screening later in the year on STVDIO (Foxtel)

NOW IN CINEMAS AROUND THE WORLD:
Bruce Beresford’s MAO’S LAST DANCER
A drama based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin. At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao’s cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange in Texas, he fell in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform for the Houston Ballet and as Principal Artist of the Australian Ballet. Click here for official website

Mao's Last Dancer continues to win Audience Awards wherever it screens, following its World Premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. It has won Audience Awards most recently at the Provincetown Film Festival, the Maine International Film Festival and the Asian Film Festival of Dallas. It also won at the San Paulo Film Festival and was runner for Best Film at the Seattle Film Festival.

WORKS 2010

WORKS 2009

GRAEME & JANET

“We embrace challenges. We are now doing as we have always done - follow passion, encourage talent, be creatively opportunistic and continue to believe in Australian artists and their importance globally.”

Photograph Paul Empson