Graeme Murphy was born in Melbourne
but spent much of his childhood in Tasmania
where he took dance classes from Kenneth
Gillespie in Launceston. He was accepted
into the Australian Ballet School at
the age of fourteen and spent two and
a half years at the School before joining
the Australian Ballet in 1968. He left
the company after discovering the wealth
of dance outside Australia, which he
first encountered on a tour to America
with the Australian Ballet in 1970-1971.
In Europe he danced with Les Ballets
Felix Blaska before returning to Australia
to freelance as a choreographer, which
he did during the mid 1970s.
Murphy took on the directorship of the
Dance Company (NSW) at the end of 1976,
changed the company's name to Sydney
Dance Company in 1979 and went on to
develop it as a major choreographer-led
contemporary dance company. With his
associate director Janet Vernon, Murphy
has also nurtured the work of other Australian
choreographers, including dancers from
within his own company. Choreographers
whose early works have been mentored
by Murphy included Paul Mercurio, Gideon
Obarzanek and Stephen Page.
Murphy made his first choreographic
work,
Ecco le Diavole, for an
Australian Ballet workshop presented
by the Australian Ballet Society at Melbourne's
Princess Theatre in July 1971. Created
to music by Nino Rota,
Ecco featured company dancers
Roslyn Anderson, Roma Egan, Janet Vernon
and Wendy Walker. Murphy's choreography
since then has spanned both abstract
and narrative modes. It is sometimes
large-scale and commercially popular,
at other times rewardingly intimate.
It has also always been characterised
by a collaborative approach that, during
the 1990s, has developed musically to
the point where musicians often not only
share the stage with dancers but participate
in the performance. As well as having
to his credit a substantial body of work
created on his own company, Murphy has
choreographed for a range of other dance
and opera companies including the Australian
Ballet, the Australian Ballet School,
the Canadian Opera Company, Nederlands
Dans Theater, Opera Australia, the Queensland
Ballet and White Oak Dance Project.
Murphy was inducted into the Hall of
Fame at the inaugural Australian Dance
Awards in 1997. He received further Australian
Dance Awards for outstanding achievement
in choreography for
Tivoli in 2001 and
Swan Lake in 2003. In 2006,
the year in which both he and Vernon
resigned from Sydney Dance Company, they
were joint recipients of the award for
lifetime achievement. Murphy's more recent
activities are listed on his website,
which is available as a link at the top
of this page.
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