Strings — A Triple Bill | Queensland Ballet

Conceptually minimal, emotionally immeasurable — Queensland Ballet's Strings is a triumph of movement, music and human expression.

Queensland Ballet opened its latest season at the Playhouse, QPAC, on Friday 22 May with Strings — A Triple Bill, a programme of three works by three of the world's most compelling choreographic voices: Edward Clug, Christian Spuck and Goyo Montero. Performed with live accompaniment by Camerata — Queensland's Chamber Orchestra, it was an evening that distilled dance to its purest, most visceral form.

I was in the audience for opening night, and what unfolded across those 95 minutes — with two intervals to breathe and reflect — was ballet at its most intentional. Elegant, disciplined and deeply felt.

Photography: David Kelly (images 1–4), Johan Persson / Birmingham Royal Ballet (image 5)

Chamber Minds — Edward Clug

The evening opened with Romanian-born choreographer Edward Clug's Chamber Minds, set to music by Milko Lazar and performed with the delicate precision of a harpsichordist and solo violinist from Camerata. As crisscrossed strings rose slowly above a spare stage, open hands appeared at either side — a quietly theatrical gesture that set the tone perfectly.

What followed was a masterclass in stylised, contemporary movement. Clug's choreography — playful, eccentric, often humorous — sees limbs act as levers, propelling dancers into surprising configurations that appear spontaneous yet demand extraordinary control. The dancers tilt, teeter and wind themselves into striking shapes, crafting a world where wit softens technical precision. It is both a charming satire of ballet's traditions and a showcase of Clug's extraordinary ability to reveal beauty through eccentricity.

The result was simply stunning — charming the audience into laughter one moment and silent awe the next. Clug, who began his training in Cluj-Napoca during the final years of Ceaușescu's Romania and has since created work for the Bolshoi, Stuttgart Ballet and La Scala, brings a richly earned vocabulary to every step.

The Seventh Blue — Christian Spuck

After a 20-minute interval, Christian Spuck's The Seventh Blue (das siebte blau) took the stage and immediately shifted the emotional register. Where Chamber Minds charmed, The Seventh Blue cut to the bone.

Drawing its emotional spine from Franz Schubert's Death and the Maiden — a quartet composed in 1822 as Schubert lived under the shadow of syphilis, intimately acquainted with his own mortality — Spuck layers the score's urgency with atmospheric textures by György Kurtág and Dieter Fenchel. The choreography strips dancers of individual identity, emphasising instead the collective human condition through rapid-fire tableaux, unison patterning and breathless, relentless movement.

Scenes of dancers lowered into mist-covered, grave-like spaces created a haunting meditation on fragility and the inevitability of death. It was classically beautiful in execution and psychologically charged — a powerful reflection on impermanence and the tension between life and loss.

Spuck, currently Artistic Director of Staatsballett Berlin and recipient of the German Dance Prize 2026, is a choreographer at the absolute peak of his powers. Brisbane audiences first encountered his work through the monumental Messa da Requiem; The Seventh Blue is more surgical, more intimate — and no less devastating.

Chacona — Goyo Montero

The final work, Goyo Montero's Chacona, arrived like a force of nature. Set to Johann Sebastian Bach's Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor — performed live by Camerata musicians including violin, guitar and piano — the choreography reflects Bach's repeating structural patterns through intricate sequences performed in canon, a ripple-like effect where movement passes seamlessly from dancer to dancer.

Montero drives his dancers to what he describes as the "tip of falling" — exploring tension, weight and momentum with relentless intensity, fusing classical technique with contemporary sensibility. As what felt like the entire company swept onto the stage, the cumulative effect was genuinely epic. This was ballet exploring life's balance through pure physical extremity: a grand, all-encompassing finale to an extraordinary night.

Born in Madrid, Montero trained with Carmen Roche — the same celebrated teacher as Queensland Ballet's Artistic Director Ivan Gil-Ortega — and completed his studies at the Cuban National Ballet School under Alicia Alonso. His international pedigree is formidable, with works created for The Royal Ballet London, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo and the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, among many others.

A Company at Its Finest

Strings is an evening that asks everything of its dancers — precision, courage, musical clarity and a willingness to take risks. Principal Artists Lucy Green and Neneka Yoshida led a company in peak form, with standout contributions across all three works from Soloists Edison Manuel and Chiara Gonzalez, First Company Artists D'Arcy Brazier, Sophie Zoricic and Libby-Rose Niederer, and the broader ensemble who brought Chacona to its powerful crescendo.

Equally essential was Camerata — Queensland's Chamber Orchestra, a two-time Helpmann Award nominated ensemble and 2024 APRA AMCOS Award recipient for Championing Australian Music. Under the musical direction of Brendan Joyce, with pianists Roger Cui and Muyu Liu anchoring each work, the live music was not accompaniment — it was the soul of the evening.

As Artistic Director Ivan Gil-Ortega wrote in his programme notes: "Ballet cannot afford to stand still — it must evolve, provoke, and speak to the present." With Strings, Queensland Ballet does exactly that.

Cover image by: Gregory Batardon

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Strings — A Triple Bill plays at the Playhouse, QPAC, until 30 May 2026. Book now at queenslandballet.com.au.