By Annabel Ross
A squad of ballerinas sprint on the spot, dressed in neon track and field crop tops and briefs and colourful runners.
A posse of dancers in white quilted leotards thrust and parry like fencers, and a team of male dancers approximate dribbling basketballs and shooting hoops in what are surely the baggiest shorts ever worn by members of the Australian Ballet on stage.
Good sports: The Australian Ballet's dress rehearsal for its new production Faster.Credit: Justin McManus
Created to coincide with the 2012 London Olympics by David Bintley for the Birmingham Royal Ballet, Faster, is a modern ballet that plays out like an MGM musical with a Hitchcockian soundtrack.
Bintley's choreography sees dancers imitate the movements of athletes competing in various events, from swimming – where the dancers line up on the blocks, dive into an imaginary pool and perform impossibly graceful strokes – to high jump, the bar formed by two male dancers who catch the ballerina "vaulting" over the top.
The ballet was created to coincide with the London Olympics.Credit: Justin McManus
Australian Ballet artistic director David McAllister says the choreography is every bit as challenging as it looks.
"It's a really physical program; they're going to look even more toned," he says.
"They're very fit at the moment, but by the end of it I think they'll be Olympic specimens."
It's a different sort of fitness that's required in contemporary ballet.
Dancers imitate the movements of athletes competing in various events.Credit: Justin McManus
"In the classics you might have a big minute of dancing, and then five minutes of standing and miming and walking," says McAllister.
"Sometimes the classical stuff can be very sustained, so it's a different sort of strength you need for that. This is very cardiovascular."
Australian composer Matthew Hindson's booming score lends the piece cinematic portent, while there's no set to speak of bar a blue screen used to illustrate a pool.
Faster will be performed as a suite along with two other works: Infra by British choreographer Wayne McGregor and Squander and Glory by Tim Harbour, a resident choreographer of the Australian Ballet. All are dynamic, visceral ballets.
"They've all got that quite strong physicality; that's what ties the pieces together," says McAllister. "The sporting analogy isn't there in the others, but there's a lot of unison – arms, legs, heads, everything's working at the same time."
Infra, McAllister says, was loosely in response to the 2005 London bombings and how the world keeps turning even in the face of devastation. British artist Julian Opie has designed an 18-metre-long LED screen stretched above the dancers, populated by animated figures strolling in a quotidian fashion, carrying briefcases as if on their way to work.
In a video for London's Royal Opera House on YouTube, McGregor explains that the show's title is from the Latin vide infra, meaning "see below", referring to both the dancers performing under Opie's screen, and to "seeing beneath the surface of things."
Faster opens at the Sydney Opera House on April 7