Graeme Murphy AFTER VENICE (Scene 1 - The Arrival)

The first scene of this haunting dance theatre work which opened at the Sydney Opera House in December… 1984.

What better way to explain it than quoting Graeme Murphy’s choreographer’s note: ‘After Venice’ is not a literal re-telling of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice; that story serves as the theme into which variations on ‘reality’ are interwoven. The outline of that story is alluded to and the essential familiar characters retained but rather as a new mosaic patterned from existing elements. Venice, the city, did not exist in this dance of love and death. It is a state of mind, the place to which the artist comes for the replenishment of the creative spirit, a place where past, present and future are examined in the struggle to find the reason for existence. As the blackness of death shuts down the imagination forever, Aschenbach (Garth Welch) is permitted to depart, eyes witnessing the ‘pure’ beauty of his Tadzio (Paul Mercurio). In After Venice, it is we who glimpse the flaws in the marble from which Aschenbach has sculpted his idol.

See Scene 2:    • Graeme Murphy AFTER VENICE (Scene 2)  

A video by Philippe Charluet

Technical note: this was originally formatted to fit into a 4:3 square format. For more impact, we have blown it up to fill a full widescreen format (slight blurriness can occur)