When I asked ballet dancer David Hallberg during an interview a few years ago to name the one thing people wouldn’t know about him, the man described as the ‘Nureyev of his generation’ gave a secret smile.
He revealed that, as a lanky 15-year-old, he would climb out of his Phoenix Arizona bedroom at midnight to slink off and dance the night away at warehouse techno raves.
He said it was a desperately needed release from the “soldier-like training at ballet school … I needed that mphh-mphh-mphh of the Techno beat!”
After a life at the top of the international ballet world, David is now the artistic director of the Australian Ballet, and when I recalled this seemingly contradictory anecdote with one of his colleagues, she shrugged knowingly: “Ah, the enigma that is David Hallberg.”
David Hallberg leading rehearsals for Swan Lake. (Supplied: Australian Ballet/Edita Knowler)
“It is a great thing to dance on the stage,” David tells me now, on the final episode of Creative Types, “but it’s also a thing of absolute sacrifice and devotion.
“The stage is a sacred space. It is a space that is almost holy in a way to many. And I think it takes that kind of commitment to be able to really have great experience and success on a great stage.”
I have known David Hallberg since he was first anointed in Australia in 2021 as the inheritor of our much-loved company, but he indeed remains one of the great enigmas of Australia’s creative world.
He is a man who was relentlessly bullied as a child but retains an astonishing open-heartedness and optimism; a dancer who demanded, and attained, absolute perfection from himself, but walked onstage every time almost crippled by self-doubt.
He took incredible care of his extraordinary body — long elegant limbs, and feet that were described as the most beautiful of his peers — and yet he pushed himself to such a point that those feet broke down, almost irreparably.
Watch Creative Types with Virginia Trioli: David Hallberg on ABC iview
David takes us deep into the company that he has reshaped into a barnstorming group of classical and contemporary dancers. According to many in the industry, he has lifted the Australian Ballet to new heights.
“I think the company dance with such a beautiful elegance now,” says David McAllister, the previous Australian Ballet artistic director who anointed David.
“He just has a way of being able to get that sense of his own dancing through the dancers, but they find it in their own bodies — not trying to just mimic David.
“When I saw the company do Swan Lake, I was like, oh my God, this looks like a fully grown-up company.”
David Hallberg performing Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux” at the New York State Theatre in 2008. (Supplied: Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)
Staying ‘open and curious’
David Hallberg was an unlikely dancer.
A kid who revered tap and worshipped Fred Astaire, he was schooled in the US before being accepted to the Paris Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre.
Then, in a decision that was described at the time as a “reverse defection”, he was invited to join the uncompromising Bolshoi Ballet in Russia. No other American had ever been asked to do that before.
Flora brings together 16 dancers from Bangarra Dance Theatre with 19 from the Australian Ballet. (Supplied: Australian Ballet/Daniel Boud)
“I understood the weight of it. I understood the enormity of a move like that,” he tells me. “The Bolshoi style is big and brassy, and I was more subdued, lyrical, and I thought — ‘That’s why I have to do this.’
“I knew it would change my life. I knew I would be moving to a city that I didn’t connect with, that I would be alone in. And I knew I was making an enormous sacrifice if I said yes.”
Australian Ballet and Bangarra unite
He became the most in-demand male dancer of his time, in one year flying 75,000 air miles to dance with every major company, including Australia.
Now, David sees an opportunity to expand the diversity of both dancers and repertoire at the Australian Ballet. He recently collaborated with Bangarra Dance Theatre and artistic director Frances Rings on Flora, a First Nations-led piece of contemporary dance.
He is also actively recruiting dancers who may not have traditionally fit the ballet norm. He sees it as an extension of what Australian audiences love.
David Hallberg directed the 2023 Australian Ballet production of Swan Lake. (Supplied: Australian Ballet/Kate Longley )
“I’ve always found Australian audiences to be very open and curious,” David says. “They don’t really wear the history — there’s an openness to new experiences.
“I think what I’ve been able to do is present new repertoire to audiences that maybe they have no idea what they’re going to watch, but there’s a sense of openness for them to experience something new.”
Stream Creative Types with Virginia Trioli  on ABC iview.