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Dance Academy: TV dancing gets classical

On the set of the ABC’s new teen dance drama, Dance Academy, Laine Lister discovered that a love of ballet, weak ankles and chance meetings combine to create a very sweet series.

If you believe in fate, then the uncanny development of ABC teen drama Dance Academy is absolutely a case for it, according to producer Joanna Werner.

It began five years ago when Melbourne-based Werner relocated to the Gold Coast to produce children’s television program H2O: Just Add Water.

Enjoying a pre-shoot tipple, Werner met Sam Strauss – who was working in the casting department of H20 at the time – and the two instantly hit it off.  Hours later Strauss quizzed Werner about her dream job.

“I said I’d make a show about a girl from the country who gets into the elite dance school; a teen drama. She thought I was joking,” says Werner laughing as she recalls the fateful conversation.

The following day Strauss presented Werner with a script that she’d been working at for years; a strikingly similar concept to the one described by Werner the previous night.

“It was absolutely meant to be,” she says of the script, which she describes as the best in teen drama she had read.

The pair stayed in touch, meeting at weekends to conceptualise characters, story and script before pitching a pilot episode to the networks.

ABC immediately jumped at the opportunity, as did Germany’s public broadcaster ZDF, and together with funds from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF), a further three episodes of Dance Academy were scripted.

The program’s roots throw much further back in history, however. For Werner, a country kid from Victoria, dreams of joining an elite ballet school of her own were shattered thanks to her “weak ankles”.

“I did ballet at my local ballet school for 15 years. I was never good enough and had terrible ankles, so this is a bit of a fantasy show,” she says.

DANCING INTO SYDNEY

Originally slated for production in Victoria, Dance Academy was ultimately set and (partially) shot at the wharves on Sydney’s Darling Harbour.

One half of the series, including the dance scenes, was filmed at the ABC’s Artarmon studios in Sydney’s Northern Suburbs. Other scenes were shot on location in areas as spectacular as the exterior of the Sydney Opera House – NIDA’s theatre doubled as the interior of Opera House – Circular Quay, and atop the Harbour Bridge during a ‘bridge climb’ scene.

Asked why she chose Sydney over her hometown to produce the series – particularly given Victoria’s prior success in long form drama – Werner admits that Victoria was her first preference.

“But to be able to get that extra something to make the show stand out, Sydney is just so beautiful, you can’t go past it,” she says.

Werner also cites the city’s film-friendly policy as a drawcard to shoot in Sydney.

“When I first moved to Sydney and had all these ideas about where to set it I must have sounded very naïve and outside of the Sydney world to think we could shoot at the Opera House, but it’s all been possible,” she says.

Screen NSW did have a hand in luring the project to the harbour city, of course. The agency, along with principal investor Screen Australia, ABC, ZDF Enterprises and ACTF funded the series. Film Victoria also provided funding for post-production, which took place at Melbourne’s Digital Pictures.

GOING PRO

The Werner Film Productions (Werner’s newly established production company) team ventured further afield than simply Sydney and Melbourne in its approach to casting. Thousands of dancers auditioned nation-wide during March and April 2009. Casting director for stage musical Billy Elliot, Lynn Ruthven, was hired to help scour the country in search of teenagers with both acting and dance talent.

“It is always challenging casting any series, and casting a kid’s series is very challenging because you are often dealing with actors who haven’t had much experience. We upped the difficulty level again by wanting to find actors who could actually dance, we didn’t want to fake that,” says Werner.

Along the way there were plenty of ‘oh what are you thinking’ moments during the auditions, with enough laughs and cringe-worthy material to have produced a behind-the-scenes documentary, she adds.

“I was in every audition, it was like having your own personal So You Think You Can Dance series,” she laughs.

Further casting suggestions and technical advice was sought from The Australian Ballet School, as Werner and her team were keen to accurately depict the ballet world and dispel any myths about health, particularly eating disorders, that were once associated with dance.

As a result, the series investigates the science of dance including sports psychology, which is now integral to professional ballet. It was important for Werner and Ruthven to strictly hire only healthy-looking actors for the program.

“The artistic director of the Australian Ballet Company was really supportive of the show, giving us casting suggestions and now that we are casting for professional dancers the Australian Ballet is releasing some of its artists to come film with us, which is really exciting,” she adds.

A POINTE OF DIFFERENCE

Entering a film and television market already saturated with the dance genre – So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, Australia’s Got Talent, along with their international counterparts that air here – finding a point of difference was critical for the success of the series.

“We’re the only drama series that I know of that’s purely dance, so it’s not acting and singing and lots of performing arts. This is an elite dance school with a classical focus,” says Werner.

However, it is this very point of difference that has proven the greatest challenge in producing the series, according to Werner.

The specialised dance sequences required intensive choreography, performance and rehearsal to please a dance-savvy audience. Those scenes then had to be shot in an interesting visual style.

“For our young actors it has to be one of the most demanding shows you could do; if they aren’t on set acting, they are in dance classes or at training sessions and then trying to finish off their studies as well,” says Werner.

As for the crew, a typical day on set was at least 10 hours and filming took place over 26 weeks, in blocks of four episodes, to produce 26 half-hour episodes of drama.

Set-up director Jeff Walker, who is also directing scenes from episodes 1 and 2 during Encore’s visit to the set, is fantastically energetic and young.

It’s a reunion of sorts for Walker, Werner and Strauss, who met on the set of H2O, but the three join an unfamiliar crew in Sydney.

“Because I hadn’t worked in Sydney before I was introducing myself to a whole new crew, but I have been blown away by the crew that we’ve been able to attract,” says Werner, adding that due to a lack of long-form TV drama in Sydney a huge talent pool was available for the series.

CAPTURING THE EMOTION

Shot on two Vericam cameras using DVC Pro Fuji tapes, DOP Martin McGrath and Walker aim to create a ‘cinematic’ feel for the dance scenes.

“We have the option to shoot in slow motion, which is very handy during our dance sequences because we are really trying to highlight the emotion and drama of the dance,” says Walker.

McGrath adds: “I have tried to keep a lighter-than-air feel to the images”.

“Putting space around the characters, keeping an energy to the show without forcing it. Consequently, no extreme close-ups (are used) unless necessary and we’re picking up on emotional cues for camera movement,” he says.

Much of the look of the show McGrath attributes to the two camera operators, Marc Spicer and Simon Harding.

“I have been blessed in this regard with two of the best in the business and their great work means we have a lot of creative freedom,” he says.

Ben Dugard and his team have given the lighting a strong multi-sourced feel, says McGrath: “never theatrical, but not quite naturalism either”.

As for the colour palette, production designer Murray Picknett was largely responsible, and opted for a bright and warm scheme.

Originally Picknett opted for a cooler blue palette, modelled on the Sydney Theatre Company, which appeared washed out when shot in HD. He later added texture with wall panelling and warmed the palette with richer hues.

“The trouble with HD cameras is that if you paint a wall in certain tones it looks as bland as anything. When I saw some of the original rushes I thought ‘oh god what happened to all that dressing?” says Picknett.

The AFI Award winner (for 2000’s Bootmen) had the opportunity to experiment with new materials for the set of Dance Academy.

Picknett consulted specialist ballet-flooring professionals before building the regulation Tarkett dance floor.

“That whole studio has a sprung dance floor, there’s a sub frame and then there’s timber with the Tarkett on top,” he says crouched down inspecting the studio floor.

“We also had special mirrors made and dance bars – I’ve learned quite a lot about ballet,” he laughs.

Standing in the custom-built set, it’s easy to imagine you’re inside one of the many dance studios of the Sydney Theatre Company.

Werner is spot on; everything about this series feels very natural. Should the on-set atmosphere transcend to the screen, then the series is sure to appeal.

Werner and her team certainly have their fingers crossed for the success of this series, and have their sights set on a second instalment – she and Strauss have already mapped character arcs for their much-adored dancers.

“You kind of fall in love with your characters and the kids are certainly keen for more,” she says.

Perhaps fate will again play a role.

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