Garry Stewart (born 1962) is an Australian dancer and choreographer. He was the longest-serving artistic director of the Australian Dance Theatre, taking over from Meryl Tankard in 1999 and finishing his term at the end of 2021. He is renowned for his unusual, post-modern interpretations of classical ballets.
Garry Stewart was born in 1962.[1]
After abandoning his university studies in social work when he was 20, Stewart studied first in Sydney[2] at the Sydney City Ballet Academy (1983),[1] and then at the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne (1984–1985[1]).
He has danced with the Australian Dance Theatre (ADT), the Queensland Ballet, Expressions Dance Company and The One Extra Dance Company (Onex), and has performed in acting roles with the Sydney Theatre Company. He also worked on many independent projects, and in 1989 performed the role of Luke in production of Harold in Italy.[1][2]
He retired from professional dancing at the end of the 1980s and concentrated on choreography from 1990. In 1995 he co-founded the Melbourne dance company Chunky Move, and two or three years later founded the dance company Thwack! in Sydney,[3] which performed Plastic Space at the Melbourne Festival in October 1999.[4]
On 29 November 1999, Stewart became artistic director of the ADT,[5] based in Adelaide, South Australia, taking over from Meryl Tankard.[6][7][8] In 2000, he choreographed his first major work for ADT: Birdbrain, described as "an ironic, post-modern deconstruction" of the classical ballet Swan Lake,[5] which had an immediate impact on the dance world, with its innovative use of yoga, breakdance, gymnastics, video art and electronic music, and ran for around 200 performances around the world.[3]
Other works for ADT which also proved to be hits included The Age of Unbeauty (2002), Devolution (2006), G (2008), Be Your Self (2010), Proximity (2012), and The Beginning of Nature (2018).[3]
The Age of Unbeauty, a piece that incorporated martial arts and gymnastics within the dance performance, had its premiere in February 2002 at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Stewart said that his inspiration came from the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre, after the ADT had arrived in New York City just a few weeks after the destruction. The Age dance critic and awards panel judge Hilary Crampton said that Stewart "challenges accepted perceptions of dance performance and also of what is conceived of as a dancer or a dancer's body, so he's pushing the edge".[9]
For Devolution, Stewart collaborated with Canadian robotics expert Louise-Philippe Demers, producing a show with 30 robots on stage.[3]
In April 2006, Stewart co-produced and directed the dance gala "UNIFIED" for UNICEF Australia, to benefit the Gap Youth Centre in Alice Springs for Indigenous Australian young people and an HIV/AIDS program for children in Laos.[2]
G, a fast-paced deconstruction of the romantic ballet Giselle,[5] was first performed at the 2008 Adelaide Festival, followed by an extensive tour of Europe in 2008 and 2009.[6] The work was reprised in November 2021 in Adelaide.[10]
In 2019, to celebrate his 20 years at ADT, the company produced Anthology, a piece comprising parts of six of Stewart's most successful productions.[3]
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, the company did not tour throughout 2020 and 2021, but did perform in Adelaide, as South Australia did not have large numbers of people infected with COVID-19 and restrictions were not severe.[3] Stewart's last major original work, Supernature, premiered at the newly renovated Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide in March 2021 as part of the Adelaide Festival.[11]
His tenure at ADT ended at the end of 2021, when he handed over the reins to Daniel Riley,[12] making him the longest-serving artistic director of the company, at 22 years.[3] The last performance of G took place at Her Majesty's Theatre exactly 22 years to the day since Stewart's appointment as artistic director of the ADT.[5]
Stewart was also commissioned by the Australian Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Sydney Dance Company, Rambert Dance Company (UK),[13] Ballet du Rhin, Birmingham Royal Ballet (UK), tanzmainz (Germany), and the Royal New Zealand Ballet. [14] His intentions for the future after ADT include "opening up [his] own practices as an artist working in opera, in film, creating large site-specific projects, and working a bit more nationally and internationally".[3]
From 2020 Stewart has been professor in creative arts at Flinders University.[3][13]
He has sat on the jury for both the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in Geneva and the International Choreographic Competition Hannover.[13][15]
Stewart's works have been studied in schools and universities.[3]
He has also been recognised by a number of awards, fellowships and the like:
Other fellowships and awards include:
Nascent, a film created by Gina Czarnecki and choreographed by Stewart, was shown at the 2005 Adelaide Film Festival in February–March 2005, and later at other film festivals.[17] It earned several awards:[36][17]
In 2015 Stewart was commissioned by the Adelaide Film Festival to create Mood Machine, a short film focusing on the gestures of human emotions.[14]
In 2018, to accompany the stage production The Beginning of Nature, Stewart directed a 360-degree virtual reality project, featuring dancers performing in various natural landscapes, The Beginning of Nature in VR.[14]
In 2018–2019 he created The Circadian Cycle, a short film filmed in across contrasting landscapes in South Australia.[14]
He was choreographer for the TV series Stateless (TV series) (2020).[38] starring Cate Blanchett, Yvonne Strahovski and Dominic West