LIFE OF BOLD MOVES
BALLET GREAT GRAEME MURPHY HAS ALWAYS REJECTED ‘THE BEIGE’
The arc of a dancer’s life is beautifully revealed in photographs. Perhaps none more so than that of Australia’s top choreographer Graeme Murphy whose career and electric character are welldocumented, from imagery of his sculpted body to production shots of his most acclaimed works. Then there are the candid pictures of Murphy at work and play at rehearsals, opening night parties and media call-outs.
In each, there’s a hint of the insouciance and charm of a man who has always pursued his passions, even as a child who loved to dance in the 1950s and ’60s in Tasmania’s North-East.
“I was the only boy at my [ballet] school for the entire three years I was there but, strangely enough, I never felt selfconscious, bullied or threatened,” says Murphy, whose 50-year career with The Australian Ballet is being celebrated in a tribute program Murphy, which opens the company’s 2018 season in Melbourne and will showcase some of Murphy’s greatest works.
“I think people were bemused by the uniqueness of the situation. In the high-school environment, at Deloraine, I was a great asset in competitions because I could do a Cossack dance. Somehow, I never felt I was remotely abnormal. I think my confidence and my self-belief convinced other people.”
Murphy, who joined The Australian Ballet’s corps de ballet aged 14, believes his art and approach to life is still informed by his early experiences in Tasmania, where his parents worked as teachers. Though now Sydney-based with his wife and creative partner, former dancer Janet Vernon, he visits regularly to rejuvenate at a family holiday home in the Tamar Valley, and to work on creative projects.
Murphy, the patron of Tasdance, was in Tasmania for an extended period last year to produce The Frock with Vernon and the Mature Artist Dance Experience (MADE) for the Ten Days on the Island festival. The Frock, one of his most ambitious projects to date, featured women aged 50 to 70 who were not professional dancers and, unusually for Murphy, dialogue. He choreographed the work, wrote the script and provided a voiceover for one of the main characters.
“Janet and I are in a stage where we love challenge,” Murphy tells TasWeekend on a recent visit. “We are working with dialogues, we are working with actors doing films, and we are at a stage where we are more courageous.
“I hope we can take advantage of some of the strange and different options that come our way. The Frock was a departure from my mute world and I felt liberated. It was a wonderful gig with the MADE company and having an excuse to be in Tasmania and working was a dream come true. Normally we come here to collapse and regain our stability. We work very hard and coming here is a real tonic.”
Unlike many aspiring ballet dancers who begin formal training at pre-school age, Murphy, who was born in Melbourne, spent his formative years free-ranging in the Tasmanian countryside at Mathinna and, later, Meander and dancing at home and school for pleasure.
His mother, a piano teacher, and father, a schoolteacher, encouraged him in his love of music and dance, eventually agreeing to let him take ballet lessons in Launceston when he was 11 and quit high school and move to Melbourne at 14 after being accepted into The Australian Ballet school.
“I’m sure my parents were bemused by their son insisting or demanding or wishing to dance, but at the same time they understood,” Murphy says. “As vocational teachers I think they always thought doing what you love is a huge asset and they knew I was doing what I love. My parents used to drive hours and miles and miles each week to get me [to lessons in Launces- ton] and back. I did three solid years at Deloraine High School before going to The Australian Ballet school. It was amazing that my parents were prepared to let me forfeit my education because they knew I was besotted with dancing,” he says.
It was a prescient decision – though surely Murphy’s parents didn’t anticipate just how acclaimed their son would become. At 26, he was appointed artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company “and put contemporary dance on the map”.
“It changed our lives completely,” Murphy says of his 31 years at the helm of Australia’s leading contemporary dance company with Vernon, whom he first met and danced with in the corps de ballet.
“My life became a blur of bright lights. The Sydney Dance Company was a beautiful vehicle for creativity. It was essentially a clean canvas because there was so little contemporary dance in Australia. From the beginning, it was a battle [financially] and continued to be. We were ambitious. That’s how we managed to survive 31 years. It wasn’t a luxury life in terms of money. But it was a luxury life in terms of our creativity. We had freedom to do what we did. It was an extraordinary time.”
The accolades mounted after Murphy was awarded an Order of Australia for his Services to Dance in 1982. By 1999 he had donned the mantle of National Living Treasure, and in 2005 he was deemed one of Australia’s 50 Most Glamorous Exports.
The Australian Ballet’s artistic director David McAllister describes him as an “Australian icon” whose contribution to the arts is vast and multifaceted. “Graeme has not just been a part of The Australian Ballet,” McAllister says. “He ran the Sydney Dance Company, he’s created opera, he’s made programs for musicals and films, he’s worked internationally. As an Australian Ballet alumni, it seemed like a great opportunity to celebrate his whole career.