October 07, 2004
"STICK to your night job" is one thing the dancers of the Australian Ballet don't want to hear tomorrow evening.
Most nights of the year they are on stage performing, and the company's heavy touring schedule means there is little time between training, rehearsing and performing to pursue other interests.
But soloist Annabel Bronner Reid finds time to draw while on tour � she uses sketching as a meditative break from the world of dance.
On showing some of her drawings to principal dancer Steven Heathcote, Bronner Reid discovered she was not the only dancer keenly involved in another off-stage artistic pursuit.
Coryphee Paul Knobloch likes to paint big acrylic works on canvas, principal Lucinda Dunn designs greeting cards, and senior artist Madeleine Eastoe dabbles in photography.
"Steven mentioned that quite a number of people in the company draw or paint or do something like that, and we talked about what it would be like to do an exhibition," Bronner Reid said. "It was an idea I couldn't let go."
The opportunity to pursue the plan came up when the company's US tour, planned for this month, was cancelled, leaving the dancers with four relatively free weeks at home.
They have spent much of that time putting together an exhibition and organising a silent auction of their artwork, which will be held in Melbourne tomorrow night.
"The reserves will be around $50 � we're not pretending to be full-time visual artists," Bronner Reid said.
Knobloch, who will show seven of his paintings in the exhibition, said there were obvious parallels between his two creative outlets.
"I am a perfectionist in dancing and also in painting, so I find things are often not quite right � I'm always touching my works up, or painting over them if I don't like something," he said.
The event is the first of what the dancers hope could become an annual event. Part of the proceeds from the evening will go towards the AB's dancers retraining fund for help with life after dance.