When Bendigo dancer Alice Topp was 13, she left home to pursue her passion for ballet.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It was the start of a journey that took her from Bendigo to the Victorian College of the Arts, and from a dancer with the Australian Ballet to a choreographer.
Since then she has also enjoyed the thrill and terror that comes with creating original work.
Later this month her work, Aurum – based around kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing ceramics with gold lacquer – will debut as part of Australian Ballet’s new contemporary season.
“My journey as choreographer has been so eye opening because you feel so exposed. It's your ideas, thoughts and stories that you’re sharing with world,” she said.
“Often the work is something you’ve sat with for 18 months and thought about every day. You finally get to opening night to share it with the world and it’s terrifying and thrilling.
“But it’s the most rewarding process and feel lucky to create work for the company I have danced with for my whole career.”
Topp’s journey to becoming a professional ballet dancer started when she took up dance at age three.
At age 13 Topp travelled to Melbourne and lived in a hostel while she studied at the VCA.
“For a year I was incredibly homesick. It was a whole new world that I found excruciatingly difficult,” she said.
“But at the end-of-year concert, I remember thinking it was all worth it for the moments on stage. It meant the world to me. That resonated with me. I thought if I’m willing to endure that heartache at 13, (I can) make a go of this.”
Topp joined the Australian Ballet in 2007. She first turned to choreography in 2010 before presenting her debut mainstage work – Little Atlas – in 2016.
“I never anticipated this was my next choice of career. It came very out of the blue,” Topp said.
“I have been fortunate to create a few works now and every work is a new experience that teaches me about how I want to create.”
Aurum will make it’s premiere as part of the Australian Ballet’s upcoming contemporary program Verve.
Topp took the philosophy behind kintsugi and used it to create Aurum with a focus on the fractures in humans.
“The idea behind kintsugi is that by repairing (ceramics) with gold, it illuminates the fractures rather than disguising them,” she said.
“It honours the history of the object and I thought it is just thought the most beautiful thing.”
Topp said her work reflects on how people consider their own imperfections as a blemish rather than something to celebrate.
“So often we are about filtering, air brushing or photoshopping that we are diluting ourselves and not being true,” she said.
“I wanted to celebrate human form in its vulnerability and look at it in same sense of transformation and illumination that the Japanese do with kintsugi. I really like the idea of translating that philosophy to the human body.”
Aurum is part of the Australian Ballet’s program Verve. It is on from June 21 to 30 at the Arts Centre in Melbourne.