Dance Art

‘He changed the landscape’: Garry Stewart’s swan song arrives for the Australian Dance Theatre

“I had this very palpable sense of fate that, for some reason, I knew I was going to get the job.”

That is how dance choreographer Garry Stewart felt in 1999 after a job interview with the national outfit, Australian Dance Theatre (ADT).

Twenty-two years later, with 25 works with the troupe under his belt and having turned contemporary dance on its head, on Thursday night he opened his final ADT show, simply titled G,  in Adelaide.

“Maybe everyone that applies for a job believes they’re going to get it, but for some reason, I had this really strong belief,” Stewart said.

His name has since become synonymous with contemporary dance theatre, with a string of hits toured around Australia and the world from ADT’s base in Adelaide.

These include The Age of Unbeauty (2002), Devolution (2006), G (2008), Be Your Self (2010), Proximity (2012), the Beginning of Nature (2018) and Stewart’s first ADT feature, Birdbrain, which rocked the boat immediately on its release in 2000.

Two dancers wearing green leap into the air on a stage
G is showing in Adelaide as Garry Stewart’s last show with the ADT.(Supplied: Ashley De Prazer/ADT)

Birdbrain kicks open doors

Utilising contemporary dance, breakdance, yoga, gymnastics, video art and electronic music, Birdbrain was a dismantling of the narrative behind the classic, Swan Lake.

Dances in white shirts either stand or lie on a black stage
Birdbrain premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 2000, going on to tour worldwide to critical acclaim.(Supplied: Alex Makayev/ADT )

“I was very lucky because it was my first work for the company and we performed it well over 200 times in quite a number of continents, so it was great for the company to have that success very early,” Stewart said.

“That opened a lot of doors and was really interesting.”

Considering it a career highlight, he said the creative process behind Birdbrain “felt like a vomit”.

“It felt like the result of a whole range of intuitive feelings about dance that had been gestating inside me for some time,” Stewart said.

“And when it landed it was really interesting.”

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Robotic innovation

Another highlight was Devolution, a collaboration in 2006 with Canadian roboticist Louise-Philippe Demers.

“It was probably one of the biggest dance productions of its kind at that time in the world,” Stewart said.

“It was an epic project, with 30 robotic machines on stage and prostheses on the dancers’ bodies.”

It also went on to win two Helpmann Awards for both Stewart and Demers, an SA Ruby Award for innovation, and one of several Australian Dance Awards and Green Room Awards that Garry Stewart and the ADT would ultimately win under his tenure.

After receiving a Centenary Award from the Australian government for services to the arts in 2001, Stewart was also awarded the inaugural 2015 Australia Council Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance.

Dancers with prosthetic and mechanical attachments on a stage.
Garry Stewart collaborated with Canadian roboticist Louise-Philippe Demers forin 2006 for Devolution.(Supplied: Georg Meyer Weil via ADT )

From Sydney beginnings

Prior to his tenure at the ADT, Stewart was living in his home town of Sydney where he had been choreographing as a freelancer.

Having retired as a professional dancer at the end of the 1980s, he had made the decision to pursue choreography while on a trip to Madrid in 1990.

“I had the acting bug, but I also had more plans to be a choreographer, so I came back and pursued it,” Stewart said.

A man watches over three dancers
Garry Stewart’s choreography has inspired dancers to push their limits.(Supplied: ADT)

In 1995 he was invited to create a double bill program with another Australian choreographer, Gideon Obarzanek, which led to the launch of Chunky Move, a highly successful dance company based in Victoria.

He also launched a small, project-based company called Thwack! in 1998

Meanwhile, the ADT had been building on its international reputation under the artistic direction of Meryl Tankard with innovative shows like Furiosa and Aurora.

After Tankard retired in 1999, Stewart successfully applied to take over and went on to become the longest-serving artistic director in the history of the company, with 19 stage works and six film and video works to his name.

“Twenty-two years is extraordinary, for any organisation, and is probably testament to how few artistic director positions there are in the country,” Stewart said.

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Giving a part of yourself

Stewart said each work was like creating a part of yourself that is subsequently given to the world, only to inspire another part of yourself that “wants to speak and enter the world”.

“But no work really fulfils this total picture of yourself, or who you are as an artist,” he said.

“It’s really a body of work that will do that, a discourse of sorts between a whole range of works that can say something about an artist.”

The facade of a theatre advertising Supernature
Supernature premiered in March as Garry Stewart’s final original work for Australian Dance Theatre.(Supplied: Paul Doherty)

To celebrate his 20th year with the ADT, in 2019 the company produced Anthology, a program filled with highlights from Stewart’s six most successful shows.

Since 2020 and the onset of COVID-19 restrictions, however, the company has operated very differently, postponing its touring program, and presenting its shows to South Australian audiences only.

These included Supernature, Stewart’s final original work, which premiered at the renovated Her Majesty’s Theatre during March in 2021.

“The upside is we’ve done a lot in Adelaide,” he said.

“I’ve been very fortunate as an artist to be working in Adelaide during the pandemic where we’ve been able to perform all though the year.”

A man holds his hand out while mirrors in the background show rehearsing dancers
Garry Stewart during rehearsals for 2016’s Objeckt, which ADT presented in Adelaide this year.  (Supplied: ADT)

The final act

Stewart has spent much of the past two years as professor in creative arts at Flinders University, and his works with the ADT have been studied as part of dance curriculums in schools and universities.

“It’s humbling and gratifying to know that what I’ve done has actually altered and made some contribution to the cultural landscape in Australia and that my time with the company has actually meant something,” he said.

For his final act, the ADT is performing G at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Adelaide, a 2008 production that has a similar approach to Birdbrain by dismantling a classical ballet, Giselle.

He has no plans to stop creating after he steps aside for incoming artistic director Daniel Riley, who takes the reins from January 1.

“I’m looking forward to just sort of opening up my own practices as an artist working in opera, in film, creating large site-specific projects, and working a bit more nationally and internationally,” Stewart said.

A woman in green on a stage flips up her red hair
Like Birdbrain before it, G also referenced an iconic ballet, Giselle.(Supplied: Ashley De Prazer/ADT)

He will be missed at the ADT, however, with associate artistic director Sarah-Jayne Howard — who has worked with Stewart since his pre-ADT days — describing him as “the most tenacious person I know”.

She said his impact had simply “changed the complete landscape of dance everywhere” with a “crazy, physical, sweeping vocabulary”.

“We toured the whole world and people hadn’t seen anything quite like it.”

G is showing at Her Majesty’s Theatre until November 29.

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