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| Floeur Alder performing DJILBA: A Moment in Time |
Choreographer and performer: Floeur Alder
Costume design: Virginia Ward and Verity Wyllie
Poems: Virginia Ward -Producer: Kiri Morcombe
Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, 2 May 2026 - Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS
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| Floeur Alder performing DJILBA: A Moment in Time at Mirramu Creative Arts Centre |
One of the many highlights of the Ausdance ACT 2026 Dance Week program was the participation of West Australian dance artist Floeur Alder.
Following a preview screening in Canberra in October 2025 of the
extraordinary dance film POINTE: Dancing on a Knife’s Edge, Ausdance ACT
Executive Director Cathy Adamek invited Alder to return in 2026. The return
visit included an encore screening of the film at the National Film and Sound
Archive during Dance Week.
POINTE: Dancing on a Knife’s Edge powerfully
documents Alder’s journey of recovery after a brutal knife attack that
threatened to end her dancing career. While the film focuses on Floeur’s
personal story, it also contains compelling archival footage of her parents at
the height of their performing careers, as well as glimpses of their later
lives.
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| Floeur Alder performing DJILBA: A Moment in Time at Mirramu |
Although raised in Perth, Alder has a strong connection to Canberra. Her parents, Alan Alder and Lucette Auldous, were internationally celebrated dancers who both became Principal Artists with The Australian Ballet after distinguished careers with the Royal Ballet and other major companies. Their performances during the years when The Australian Ballet toured annually to the Canberra Theatre remain vivid memories. Equally memorable is the afternoon when I joined the crowd outside St Andrew’s Church in Canberra to watch them emerge after their wedding in 1972.
After retiring from the stage, both Alan and Lucette taught at the
Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). Their only child,
Floeur, followed in their footsteps, studying and graduating from WAAPA with
the expectation of matching her parents’ illustrious achievements.
Alder’s visit to Canberra was not limited to the film screening. Adamek
also invited her to present a workshop on the Floorebarre technique, of which
she is one of only a small number of practitioners worldwide. Perhaps most
significant, however, was the opportunity for Alder to perform her dance work DJILBA,
A Moment in Time.
Created just one month after her father’s death, DJILBA draws
inspiration from the landscape of the Rainbow Coast in the Albany region of
Western Australia, along with the Indigenous histories of the Menang people and
the season of Djilba, or ‘Emergence’. Through this work, Alder seeks to
understand her parents’ lives and her own place within that lineage, connecting
with them not as they once were, but through nature and memory as part of her
process of grief and healing.
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| Floeur Alder performing DJILBA: A Moment in Time at Mirramu |
Canberra holds particular resonance in this context. It is the city where Alder’s father was born and where he began his dance journey, performing Highland dance and tap before discovering ballet. A scholarship to The Royal Ballet School followed. His sister, Joy, still lives in Canberra and continues to teach at the Joy Reiher School of Scottish Dancing. Her presence, along with her family, at this performance added a deeply personal emotional layer for Alder.
“Mirramu is a great, mysterious place,” Elizabeth Cameron Dalman
reminded the audience in her introduction to the performance. With Lake
George—known to the Ngunnawal people as Weereewa—forming a brooding backdrop,
the setting provided an ideal atmosphere for this work.
Because the performance took place outdoors in mid-afternoon, the
projections originally designed for DJILBA could not be used. Instead,
they were presented separately as a studio display at Mirramu. Alder embraced
the possibilities of the outdoor setting, introducing several new elements
unique to this presentation. For the first time, she performed on a rectangle
of white sand bordered with gum leaves, with a vessel of smouldering foliage
placed at its centre.
Anticipating the biting winds that often sweep in from Lake George
during Canberra’s autumn, Alder commissioned a new costume for the performance.
Fortunately, the weather proved kind on this occasion.
The work began in near silence, accompanied only by the sounds of birds
settling in the surrounding trees. Gradually, an evocative soundscape emerged,
threaded with whispered poems written by Virginia Ward. Alder responded with
movement that expressed a profound connection to Country, blending
Indigenous-inspired motifs suggesting animal forms with contemporary dance
language and, at moments, exquisitely executed balletic jumps and extensions.
The result was a performance that was both mesmerising and deeply heartfelt.
In a brief address following the performance, Alder dedicated DJILBA,
A Moment in Time to the memory of her father.
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| Elizabeth Cameron Dalmand and Floeur Alder following her performance of DJILBA. Images by MODE IMAGERY. This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.com.au |