As a guest, I found myself in a cavernous underground garage of a private patron who had generously gifted access to their home for a showing of one of the earliest developments of Phillip’s masterwork Aviary. By chance among the select crowd, I was standing next to David McAllister, artistic director of The Australian Ballet, who had made available some of his exceptionally talented dancers to work with Phillip.
Score sheets from Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux had been placed carefully on the concrete floor and a hush fell. The dancers adopted the guise of birds. Breaking the suspended silence, the elegant preening and foraging transitioned to a crescendo-blizzard of stylised courting and I found myself absorbed into the vociferously dandified posturing. At the end I was not exactly sure what I had just experienced but I could feel my heart thumping. And I was self-consciously aware that I was sweating from the excitement.
