Q&A: Jack Lister, choreographer of
A Brief Nostalgia

Jack Lister is a renowned choreographer and performer. He is a former member of Queensland Ballet and joined the Australasian Dance Collective (ADC) as a Company Artist in 2020. In the same year, her was appointed as Queensland Ballet's Associate Choreographer and we are delighted to present the Australian première of his work A Brief Nostalgia as part of our 2023 triple bill, Trilogy. This piece is a co-production with the Birmingham Royal Ballet and it was first performed in Birmingham and London in 2019. 

What is A Brief Nostalgia about and what was your inspiration?  

When I was creating the work for Birmingham Royal Ballet, the dancers and I didn't know each other so I wanted to find something that we could all relate to. I thought nostalgia and memory would be a great place to start because that is something we can all gravitate to. 

I like that the work can feel depressing and sad to some [or] can feel like it's got a yearning and a longing in it. It’s full of images and ideas of feeling something, knowing something, then letting it drift away again - that's what I really want to try and explore with the work.  

It's a stark work visually. It's heavy and it's brutal, but it's also very beautiful. How we contrast that is trying to find lightness and really letting the movement do its thing, but also [incorporating a] stillness to just watch dancers feel. We're not watching dance, we're watching humans. 

Can you describe the style of dance you’ve used?  

How I work and create with the dancers is super collaboratively. The movement vocab' is often a mishmash of myself, my lineage, where I'm at creatively, and then of course the people I'm working with.  

With this work, we found a beautiful line where I'm able to bring some of my contemporary sensibilities with my lineage as a ballet dancer and then of course the incredible technique [of] these dancers who are just out of control.  

Yes, there is beautiful dancing, but I've made a conscious decision to strip a lot of dancing out of this piece. A lot of it relies on feeling and emotion, it's not a display. 

What do you enjoy about choreographing and the choreographic process? 

My creative process is always shifting and conversely, every time I come back [to Queensland Ballet] it's not just me that's shifted. I see a shift in [the dancers], as humans. Each time we come and work on a very different piece, we meet each other at a beautiful spot that really dictates what ends up on stage.  

I'm super collaborative, so I often come in with a lot of material as the base to then let the dancers go off and create. We will keep refining, creating, refining. It's a back-and-forth conversation. I love having people challenge me and ask me things. I also have the privilege of working with my friends and people who I trust artistically here [at Queensland Ballet].  

Your works are known for their interesting staging, lighting and costuming, can you tell us how these elements contribute to telling the story in A Brief Nostalgia

When I was invited to make the work for Birmingham Royal Ballet, I was also fortunate enough to bring some amazing collaborators with me [including the] incredible costume and set designer Thomas Mika, Oprah Birmingham, to stage the work [and] Alexander Berlage, who works as a director and a lighting designer.  

A Brief Nostalgia is staged [in] two parts. A brutal semi constructed room of very high concrete walls, which are projected with beautiful lights and shadows. [This] catches the dancers and amplifies the intimacy of what's going on stage, which is quite stunning and a brilliant stroke of genius from Alexander Berlage.  

When these walls lift, we feel the space [go] from something so stark and heavy to this lightness and airiness. And then we finish the work with one last nod to [part one by] letting it rain with fake concrete. I would call them fragments of memories. If we look at the walls as these hard, nostalgic triggers, these are just the many different little things that wash over us. 

Can you tell us about your connection with Queensland Ballet and how it has shaped your career? 

I am a Queenslander. I was born in Brisbane and grew up watching the Queensland Ballet and doing the junior programs. After spending some time in Melbourne training [I] returned and worked with the company for seven years.  

I danced here but started to create very soon into joining the company [through] a program called ‘Dance Dialogs’. From that I was able to work on other seasons like Bespoke and then of course the co-production with Birmingham Royal Ballet. 

In 2020, I moved to the Australasian Dance Collective, where I'm still a dancer and The Creative Associate. I am loving the shift and feel inspired to bring these interesting processes, ideas and ways of moving and thinking into the studio when I come back to Queensland Ballet. It's lovely to have this attachment with Queensland Ballet as an Associate Choreographer because it does mean I get to work with the dancers. That's paramount for me because they just rock.  

This piece is all about nostalgia, what kind of feelings does it evoke to return to Queensland Ballet as a choreographer? 

I kind of laugh that I come back here to work in this capacity because on paper it sounds so professional, but in reality it's so intimate. I suppose it's always nostalgic coming back to work with Queensland Ballet. There's always pieces of music going on in other studios that make you go, “Oh, yeah, I did that ballet and that show”, which feels like a lifetime ago but in a nice way.  

There's a new generation of dancers in the company that I'm not familiar with and a beautiful handful of artists who I'm very familiar with. It's nice to watch this growth. You often start this career as a kid so you don't realize that everyone's growing up around you [which] is quite cool. 

You’ve successfully premièred this work in London, how does it feel to have the opportunity to bring this piece home back to Australia? 

It's really nice to revisit this work four years later and with a very different set of people. It's beautiful to see the world sort of come to life but I wouldn't say it's exactly the same ballet. We've made a lot of new material for very different dancers, and I think that's okay. I've got a set of ideas and a set of things that I wish to achieve in the work, [which are] emotive more than anything. The movement was always second fiddle to that. It's exciting to bring it home [as] it's the first work that I've been able to stage at the Playhouse, which [has] been a stage that we've all grown up on.  

What else are you working on this year? 

I'm super fortunate to be able to work as a dancer, a choreographer and work in many other creative capacities for lots of different people. This year is jam packed with very cool projects [including] a new work for another company that will happen at the end of this year, which is a huge undertaking and a real departure from how I've been working these past two weeks with Queensland Ballet. It's good to be busy and I'm really happy to be working with so many amazing people.