Ballet In Preview

Queensland Ballet’s upcoming show will bring to life the medieval legend of King Arthur. It’s an original production for Brisbane, choreographed by the company’s Artistic Director Francois Klaus.
“He’s picking different sections that he’s trying to highlight; the relationship or the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot. There are also other triangles between Arthur and his half sister Morgane with whom he has a son, Mordred - that’s the character I’ll be playing,” explains dancer Blair Wood.

Wood, who’s originally from New Zealand, has been with Queensland Ballet since 2008. He’ll be sharing the part of Mordred, and playing a knight of the round table on alternating nights.
“We have two different casts and we take turns with shows… it’s to give people a break. It’s hard to perform and it also gives younger dancers like myself opportunities to do other roles. The other person who’s playing Mordred is a soloist in the company, so I’m quite lucky to have a go at that.”

Mordred is a complex character and one of the biggest roles so far in Wood’s dancing career.
“Arthur was brought up in the pagan religion, he had me (Mordred) through his half-sister so now in the court he has a Christian religion. He then disowns his son Mordred because of the way I came into the world so it’s about him resenting me and I just want my father to accept me. I’m the only son he has and will be the heir to the throne. He accepts me into the court but he does not knight me and therefore I get upset and plot and plan with my mother to dethrone him and upset his life as much as possible.”

Mordred is the villain in the story, but Wood’s says he’s not really such a bad guy.
“Imagine if your dad brought you up and then was like, ‘I don’t like what you’ve done, no, you’re not my son’. He’s just hurting, really. It would be hard to do everything right to try and make your father accept you, and for him to turn around and go, ‘you know what, you’re not my son, I don’t know you’. So yeah, that does of course make him want to attack or find Arthur’s weakness and use it against him. He’s a little bit of a bad guy but he has many reasons to be horrible.”

With such a strong character to portray, the acting is as much a part of rehearsals as the dancing.
“Yeah they do go parallel. When we start working, we focus on the dance and we work with each other. I’m working with Keian Langdon who’s playing Arthur to figure out what bits I can look at him, and what bits I can snarl. They go hand in hand. We get all the dancing down pat and then try to layer it like a cake. I’m quite lucky because I have a natural acting talent and I’ve done those roles before where I have a character to portray.”

He says when he’s performing on stage, the acting is what he focuses on.
“The dancing comes naturally. When you’ve been doing it so long you have what we call muscle memory. I concentrate more on what I’m doing with my face, or if I’m pointing my feet when I need to be, or what I should be looking at. Today we just learnt a bit of the last battle where Arthur and Mordred actually have a fight … and yeah it’s finding bits where I can look frustrated or look at him like ‘I’m going to kill you!’ - that sort of thing.”

Wood has noticed a younger audience attending ballet performances recently and acknowledges it may be thanks to the success of the movie ‘Black Swan’. “There are a lot more younger people coming, I’m 23, so around my age up to 30. You know when you say ballet, you think old ladies dressing up in their pearls, but there are quite a few young people coming and enjoying it - especially a ballet like this one which has a great storyline. It’s different from classical ballet where you know the story already; this is Francois’s take on this story. I like these ones, because the audience can really relate to the characters.”

‘KING ARTHUR AND THE TALES OF CAMELOT’ WILL BE ON AT THE PLAYHOUSE QPAC FROM OCTOBER 15 - 29.