Australia Dancing - Weir, Natalie (1967

Weir, Natalie (1967 - )

Darren Jew: Portrait of Natalie Weir, 1994

Born in Townsville, Far North Queensland, Natalie Weir began her dance training with Ann Roberts and performed with Roberts' North Queensland Ballet Company, the precursor to Dance North. It was with North Queensland Ballet Company that the seeds of her choreographic career were planted. There she had the opportunity of dancing in works created especially for the company by a range of Australian choreographers. Weir continued her dance education at Kelvin Grove College in Brisbane, now Queensland University of Technology, and began her professional career with Maggi Sietsma's Expressions Dance Company. Weir was briefly a dancer with Expressions and received her first choreographic commission from Sietsma.

As an independent artist Weir has choreographed works for most major Australian dance companies including the Australian Ballet, the Dancers Company, Dance North, Expressions Dance Company, the Queensland Ballet, and West Australian Ballet, and for tertiary dance student ensembles across the country. In 2000, Weir was appointed a resident choreographer with the Australia Ballet. For the flagship company she has made Dark Lullaby (1998), Mirror, Mirror (2000) and Carmina Burana (2001), working on the latter production with director Lindy Hume.

Weir has worked extensively with companies outside Australia creating works for American Ballet Theatre, American Ballet Theatre's studio company, Houston Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet and others. For companies outside Australia her works include In a Whisper for Houston Ballet danced to music by Schubert (2000), Heaven, danced to John Adams' Harmonium, for American Ballet Theatre as the first part of a two act work called HereAfter (2003), and Turandot with designs by Bill Haycock and lighting by Kim Lee for Hong Kong Ballet (2003). Weir also restaged her Dark Lullaby, made in response to etchings by Goya, The Sleep of Reason Begets Monsters, for Singapore Dance Theatre in December 2003. She is currently choreographing two new works: The Insider, which takes its inspiration in part from the work of British installation artist Anthony Gormley, for Expressions Dance Theatre, and a new work for Houston Ballet to premiere in September.

Weir draws on an eclectic rage of movement sources in her choreography and her vocabulary most commonly blends both modern dance and ballet.

Bibliography:

Extracts from Natalie Weir's oral history interview for the National Library of Australia, and a list of her choreography to 1996, have been published as 'Textures and Layers' in Michelle Potter, A Passion for Dance (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1997).

Research Materials

Ephemera | Moving picture | Oral history | Picture | All

Other resources

Find more about Weir, Natalie in:

Internet - Google
Collection - OzLife
Articles - New York Public Library Dance Collection
Pictures - Picture Australia