Choreographic Mentor Alice Topp

Alice Topp was born and raised in Bendigo and started dancing at the age of four. After two years with Royal New Zealand Ballet, she joined The Australian Ballet in 2007.

Her passion for choreography began when she created her first work, Trace, for the 2010 season of Bodytorque, The Australian Ballet company’s choreographic showcase. From 2011 to 2014, she made three further works for the Bodytorque seasons; in 2016 she choreographed Little Atlas, which appeared in the company’s mainstage program Symphony in C in both 2016 and 2017. In 2018 her work Aurum, which was created with the support of a Rudolf Nureyev Prize for New Dance, had its world premiere as part of The Australian Ballet’s Verve program. It was her first main stage one-act work and had its international debut the following year at New York’s leading contemporary dance venue, The Joyce Theater.

In 2019, Alice and the creative team won a Helpmann Award for Best Ballet for Aurum and Alice was also nominated for an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography for the same work. She has been nominated for a Green Room Award (Little Atlas, 2017) and for three Australian Dance Awards (Aurum, 2018, Same Vein, 2014, Trace, 2010). She has choreographed music videos for artists including Megan Washington, LANKS and Ben Folds, and has been invited to create works for Houston Ballet II and Queensland Ballet. In 2018, Alice was appointed one of The Australian Ballet’s Resident Choreographers. She was invited to spend a month with Studio Wayne McGregor in the UK in 2019, creating a piece for The Grange Festival. The duet she created on the company, Clay, went on to form a larger work, Logos, for the Australian Ballet’s Volt season alongside two McGregor works, premiering in March 2020. The year also saw the Royal New Zealand Ballet restage her work Aurum.

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