Onegin

Adam Bull (photo by James Braund)

By Elissa Blake

Adam Bull is a ballet dancer with an adventurous streak almost as wide as Bear Grylls’s. He has communed with the penguins in Antarctica and is keen to check out the iguana on the Galapagos Islands. In July he plans to tackle the gorges in the Australian outback. After that, it’s Africa.

“I love adventure travel,” he says. “I love being on the water sailing and I love being out in nature. I’m a beach body. We’re inside in theatres all the time so I love getting out and having a chance to breathe. When I stop dancing, I want to travel and absorb the world.”

Bull, 30, is a principal dancer with the Australia Ballet. Standing at 193cms in ballet slippers, he is tall for a dancer and his long legs unleash jaw-dropping leaps. “I can cover the stage quite easily,” he says with a laugh. “But it’s the artistic side of ballet that excites me the most. I am a poetic dancer and I love to act.”

Bull is now rehearsing one of the most demanding male roles in ballet, Onegin. Some say Onegin is the ultimate scoundrel, the rich and world-weary young man from St Petersberg who fills his time with parties and balls. When he inherits a country estate, he toys with the feelings of the local ladies only to end up heartbroken himself.

“He’s a hard character to play. He’s bored with life. He’s had lots of women and nothing excites him anymore. He’s not a bastard, he just doesn’t care,” Bull says. “But he really gets his come-uppance. The woman he loves has to choose between the man she loves and the man she lusts after. It’s a really tragic ending.”

Created by the late John Cranko, the sweeping Russian ballet is based on the 1837 verse novel by Alexander Pushkin. Audiences can expect a lavish remount from the Australian Ballet, who first performed Onegin in 1976. The detailed costumes and set cloths are being refurbished and sent to Australia from the Royal Swedish Ballet.

Artistic Director David McAllister says Onegin and his love Tatiana are pivotal roles for dancers, ones that make their careers. “Performing this ballet will be a huge step forward for our new generation of dancers,” he says. “It will be the ballet that people talk about seeing them in, a turning point in their lives as artists. It couldn’t have come at a better time: we have a group of dancers that are really ready for this.”

Bull will dance with Amber Scott playing Tatiana. The pair has danced together in many ballets including Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake. “We have a great connection together so to be sharing this with Amber is sensational,” Bull says, adding that they will be taking Swan Lake to New York in June. “I love New York City, it has such energy and vibrancy to it.”

Africa may have to wait.

Onegin opens at the Sydney Opera House on May 1, 2012

This story was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald on April 22, 2012.