Premier of Butterfly follows young dancer’s own metamorphosis

AS A young girl, Bonnie Grice drove with her parents four hours south from her hometown in Taree to see the Australian Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty in the Sydney Opera House.

Mesmerised by the movement of the dancers, she knew then that was what she wanted to do.

“They looked so free and beautiful,” Miss Grice said. “I wanted to be able to emulate that, become that.”
Miss Grice went home and joined her local ballet school.

Five years later, her teacher suggested she audition for the Australian Ballet School (ABS).

A trip to Sydney for an audition and a few months later, Miss Grice, along with her parents and younger sister, had packed up their northern NSW home and moved to Melbourne so she could pursue her dream of dancing.

More than a decade later, the now 20-year-old is performing in her post-graduate year with the ABS.
In November, the ABS On Tour performed in Horsham and Geelong.

In both performances, Miss Grice danced in Tim Harbor’s Aurora and Simon Dow’s Counterpoint and played The Pink Butterfly in Butterfly Suite, a 30-minute collection of excerpts from Lucas Jervies’ two-act ballet Butterfly.

The ABS will premiere the full two-hour production of Butterfly at Arts Centre Melbourne on December 10, 11 and 12.

Director of The Australian Ballet School Lisa Pavane said the students were thrilled to be back on stage and performing again after a tumultuous two years.

“Our students have shown extraordinary commitment throughout the past two years, and they were so excited to return to the stage to perform Butterfly Suite in Geelong,” Ms Pavane said

“The butterfly is the perfect metaphor to be explored and performed by our transforming young artists-in-training.

“We can’t wait to premiere the full production of Butterfly at Arts Centre Melbourne in December.”

Butterfly is a modern fairytale, following a group of students on a school excursion to the butterfly enclosure at the zoo, where they find tensions and transformations into a new and colourful world.

“It felt amazing to be back on stage, to just be able to perform for a live audience again,” Miss Grice said.

“It was a beautiful feeling to feel again.

“You could just feel everyone’s energy and the adrenaline kicking in and it was just a very exciting moment.

“It was quite euphoric because we hadn’t experienced it in a while.”

Miss Grice said she is looking forward to finally premiering the full production of Butterfly in December.

“It’s a two-hour ballet, so it’s going to create more of a storyline, and there’s more characters,” she said.

“It’s been a big lead-up of organising casts, costumes, choreography, constant rehearsals.

“It’s going to be really exciting.”

Miss Grice’s own metamorphosis has not been without dedication and hard work.

Her passion for dance has not faded, but from moving states to having years of rigorous practise and dancing experience behind her, the cost of following her dreams is more real now than it was when she began.

“I’m so lucky that my family just up and left and moved from NSW to Victoria for me.

“They’re so supportive, they’ve done everything I could possibly imagine to get me where I am.”

Miss Grice’s family is now Torquay-based, and she visits from school in Melbourne as much as possible.

“It definitely reminds us a lot of up north, our home,” she said.

The dedication required for a performance is also much more real to Miss Grice now, as she has spent the past six months practising and perfecting Butterfly through sweat, sacrifice and many pointe shoes.

“The dancers are always in the studio with the choreographers and our teachers, constantly trying to perfect things,” she said.

“We go through about two pointe per week, and for a performance it’s good to have different pairs just depending on what repertoire we’re doing.

“Usually I have about three or four different pointe shoes for a performance.

“For Simon Dow’s Counterpoint, a lot of us typically had quite soft shoes, because of the fast pointe work you don’t want to have really hard pointe shoes.

“Counterpoint is classical ballet, but it’s a modern classical ballet, so it’s not your typical Swan Lake movement. It’s very abstract, sharp and fierce.

“So the fast footwork comes through in Counterpoint.

“Whereas Butterfly is very smooth, moving through the movement and creating round shapes.

“For Butterfly you want something that can actually support you when you’re dancing because it’s classical ballet.”

The ABS is performing Butterfly at the Arts Centre Melbourne on December 10, 11 and 12. Tickets are between $70 and $90.

To find out more about upcoming ABS performances and purchasing tickets visit https://www.australianballetschool.com.au/pages/abs-performances.