Triple Bill

As most of my work is, it's quite cinematic and it's very visual is there's always something to buy into beyond what's happening as movement. 

What unites my work at the moment is worldbuilding. I like to do the world building. 

I've always been quite inspired by Dvorak’s 9th Symphony or the New World Symphony, which it's known as. It's beautiful, it's epic, it's grand, and there's a lot of familiar strains within the score that a lot of pop culture has stolen from. 

So I wanted to do something that wasn't like, recomposition per se, but I wanted to use it as a jumping off collateral. When the project with Queensland Ballet came on the table, I wanted to work with Louis the composer again. I asked him to sort of go inside how they made the work at the turn of the 19th century and what the inspirations were then. 

Where we've ended up, though, is conceptually the New World Symphony felt like I was left with a fork in the road with the work and the New World. Kind of like, do I have to depict a utopia or a future?

Gemini is a counterpoint. A subterranean world. We’re not going into space. We're not going into the future. We're not going into the stars, but we're going just beneath the surface. It's a world that's built very aesthetically but has sort of, through the music, been able to draw out a lot of different emotive places and a lot of different feelings and energies within the work. 

I felt compelled to make something quite large. I was just sort of drawn to the concept of bringing everybody together in a room and creating a large piece of dance, but within that, it's sort of finding the best way to nuance 22 people. And needing to say a lot and not much can also be said for how you treat the movement. 

We recently sat down with Jack’s Music Producer, Louis Frere-Harvey, to learn more about what the process of creating this groundbreaking production.

4Seasons is inspired by the music of Vivaldi and excerpts of the reimagined score ‘The Four Seasons’ by Max Richter. The music is a driving force of the work. 

We see four couples at different stages in their lives together, symbolically life’s journey-the freshness and eternal youth of Spring; the stormy shades of Summer; the brittleness and longing of Autumn and the peace and wisdom of Winter, with subtle remnants of youth. It could be one couple, or different couples during their life span. The ensemble are interconnected, bringing shades, reflections and emotions of these varying seasons, and are a powerful force of humanity reinforcing the four couples of each season.

At the heart of a dancer’s daily life is the ballet barre - a seemingly simple tool that represents years of discipline and dedication. It is here that dancers build the technical foundation required to achieve the freedom necessary for genuine artistic expression. The first movement of the ballet pays homage to this formative relationship between dancer and barre, capturing the rigor, focus, and repetition that shape classical technique.

The second movement shifts inward, highlighting the dancer’s capacity for emotional expression - how feeling informs and transforms movement. 

Finally, the third movement celebrates the harmony of technique and artistry, culminating in the exhilaration of performance and the shared joy between dancer and audience.