Latest news with #WesternAustralianAcademyofPerformingArts
The Age
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen
It was the dawn of the new millennium and 22-year-old Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts dance graduate Floeur Alder was on top of the world. Alder had just returned from a dream four-month study trip to Europe that she hoped would set her up for a brilliant career and was tripping lightly down Mary Street to her Highgate home in June, 2000. Then, without any rhyme or reason, a man emerged from the darkness and plunged a knife deep into her face. He said nothing and disappeared back into the night. Alder managed to make it to her home and pull out the knife before dragging herself to a Greek restaurant in Beaufort Street, blood spurting from her neck. The owner called an ambulance and Alder was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital where she endured six hours of surgery and two blood transfusions, with the knife narrowly missing her jugular. While a skilled plastic surgeon managed to repair the surface damage, Alder spent the better part of the decade dealing with the trauma and healing a body that should have been gracing Australian and European stages. 'I was full of anger and rage,' says Alder. 'I was looking at people coming out of WAAPA and comparing myself to them. 'It made me mad. Their lives and careers were progressing while I wasn't going anywhere.' Adding insult to injury was the fact that Alder is the daughter of Perth dance legends Lucette Aldous and Alan Alder. Hanging over her entire life was the expectation she would match her parents' achievements. In particular, Alder was constantly compared to her mother, the New Zealand-born, Perth-raised prima ballerina who was the resident dancer of the Australian Ballet and who achieved icon status performing with Rudolph Nureyev in his famed production of Don Quixote. 'When mum was 21 she was at the Royal Ballet doing Sleeping Beauty with Margot Fonteyn. When I was her age I was in a hospital bed recovering from the attack. It was so ironic and painful,' Alder says. 'All my life I was dealing with people expecting so much of me. And I had those expectations of myself. 'So when I was recovering from the attack and barely able to move it was very hard for me to take. I was angry all the time.' That frustration and rage, and her gradual understanding that those emotions were not just because of the stabbing incident but spewed up from a deeper, darker place, is the central to a new documentary by Perth filmmaker Dawn Jackson, En Pointe: Dancing on a Knife, which is premiering this month at the CinefestOZ film festival in WA's South West. What began as a modest hour-long account of the trauma suffered by a young dancer and the way in which she used dance to rebuild, blossomed into a deeply moving feature-length documentary about a high-profile artistic family and the impact of fame on its youngest member. 'People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest.' Floeur Alder Jackson moves between Aldous dancing in Sleeping Beauty and her daughter's convalescence during what should have been her golden years, weaving a tale in which Alder gradually comes back to life as a dancer and a choreographer, culminating in her directing her parents in a piece called Rare Earth (2004). The making of the documentary became a significant part of the recovery process, something which both surprised and unnerved Alder. 'I was much more involved in the film than I ever thought I would be. I certainly didn't think I would be narrating it,' Alder says. Jackson says there were plans for others to narrate the film, 'but we realised it had to be Floeur'. 'It was her story. We had to have her voice.' Loading The reason for the closeness of Alder to the film is that Jackson herself was training as a dancer in the mid-1980s at WAAPA while Aldous and Alan were teaching at the celebrated West Australian 'Fame' school. 'I remember Floeur being there [at WAAPA] all the time, sitting on the floor and eating snakes,' Jackson says. 'All of the students became really close to her. Her parents were busy teaching and she was an only child so we became her family. I even used to babysit for Floeur.' Around the time Jackson pivoted from dance to filmmaking, she caught a performance of Rare Earth and realised she had a great story to tell, one that had the appalling attack at its heart but opened up into other issues, such as Alder's struggle to come out from her parents' shadow. 'I was struck by Floeur's willingness to embrace her legacy after spending so much of her life grappling with it,' Jackson says. 'When she was at WAAPA the gossip was that she was getting all these great parts because of her parents. But she was getting them simply because she was bloody good.' Financing the film proved difficult and dragged the process over a decade. But it meant Jackson was able to document closely Alder's physical and emotional healing and renaissance as an artist, with her subject playing a greater role than normal for this kind of project. 'The long process gave me time to record my mother's history and her work, which became part of the film. This is not just a film. It is part of the story' says Alder. Her parents are both interviewed extensively in the documentary but did not live long enough to see its completion. While Pointe: On a Knife's Edge has all the stuff of an edge-of-the-seat crime series or podcast — we even get to an emotional meeting with the policeman who dealt with the case back in 2000 — Jackson says it is different because the story is told from the point of view of the survivor. 'So often when we watch these crime series it is about the perpetrator or the police trying to track them down,' she says. 'This deals with what Floeur went through — the attack and her healing and her fight to re-establish a career that was derailed when a random stranger decided to take out his anger on her.' Jackson also sees her film as an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge of trauma. 'Trauma was not as well understood when Floeur was attacked as it is today. It separates you from yourself,' Jackson says. For Alder, the documentary has allowed her to finally tell her story. 'It is my truth. It is nobody else's. People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest. This is my story,' she says.
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen
It was the dawn of the new millennium and 22-year-old Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts dance graduate Floeur Alder was on top of the world. Alder had just returned from a dream four-month study trip to Europe that she hoped would set her up for a brilliant career and was tripping lightly down Mary Street to her Highgate home in June, 2000. Then, without any rhyme or reason, a man emerged from the darkness and plunged a knife deep into her face. He said nothing and disappeared back into the night. Alder managed to make it to her home and pull out the knife before dragging herself to a Greek restaurant in Beaufort Street, blood spurting from her neck. The owner called an ambulance and Alder was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital where she endured six hours of surgery and two blood transfusions, with the knife narrowly missing her jugular. While a skilled plastic surgeon managed to repair the surface damage, Alder spent the better part of the decade dealing with the trauma and healing a body that should have been gracing Australian and European stages. 'I was full of anger and rage,' says Alder. 'I was looking at people coming out of WAAPA and comparing myself to them. 'It made me mad. Their lives and careers were progressing while I wasn't going anywhere.' Adding insult to injury was the fact that Alder is the daughter of Perth dance legends Lucette Aldous and Alan Alder. Hanging over her entire life was the expectation she would match her parents' achievements. In particular, Alder was constantly compared to her mother, the New Zealand-born, Perth-raised prima ballerina who was the resident dancer of the Australian Ballet and who achieved icon status performing with Rudolph Nureyev in his famed production of Don Quixote. 'When mum was 21 she was at the Royal Ballet doing Sleeping Beauty with Margot Fonteyn. When I was her age I was in a hospital bed recovering from the attack. It was so ironic and painful,' Alder says. 'All my life I was dealing with people expecting so much of me. And I had those expectations of myself. 'So when I was recovering from the attack and barely able to move it was very hard for me to take. I was angry all the time.' That frustration and rage, and her gradual understanding that those emotions were not just because of the stabbing incident but spewed up from a deeper, darker place, is the central to a new documentary by Perth filmmaker Dawn Jackson, En Pointe: Dancing on a Knife, which is premiering this month at the CinefestOZ film festival in WA's South West. What began as a modest hour-long account of the trauma suffered by a young dancer and the way in which she used dance to rebuild, blossomed into a deeply moving feature-length documentary about a high-profile artistic family and the impact of fame on its youngest member. 'People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest.' Floeur Alder Jackson moves between Aldous dancing in Sleeping Beauty and her daughter's convalescence during what should have been her golden years, weaving a tale in which Alder gradually comes back to life as a dancer and a choreographer, culminating in her directing her parents in a piece called Rare Earth (2004). The making of the documentary became a significant part of the recovery process, something which both surprised and unnerved Alder. 'I was much more involved in the film than I ever thought I would be. I certainly didn't think I would be narrating it,' Alder says. Jackson says there were plans for others to narrate the film, 'but we realised it had to be Floeur'. 'It was her story. We had to have her voice.' Loading The reason for the closeness of Alder to the film is that Jackson herself was training as a dancer in the mid-1980s at WAAPA while Aldous and Alan were teaching at the celebrated West Australian 'Fame' school. 'I remember Floeur being there [at WAAPA] all the time, sitting on the floor and eating snakes,' Jackson says. 'All of the students became really close to her. Her parents were busy teaching and she was an only child so we became her family. I even used to babysit for Floeur.' Around the time Jackson pivoted from dance to filmmaking, she caught a performance of Rare Earth and realised she had a great story to tell, one that had the appalling attack at its heart but opened up into other issues, such as Alder's struggle to come out from her parents' shadow. 'I was struck by Floeur's willingness to embrace her legacy after spending so much of her life grappling with it,' Jackson says. 'When she was at WAAPA the gossip was that she was getting all these great parts because of her parents. But she was getting them simply because she was bloody good.' Financing the film proved difficult and dragged the process over a decade. But it meant Jackson was able to document closely Alder's physical and emotional healing and renaissance as an artist, with her subject playing a greater role than normal for this kind of project. 'The long process gave me time to record my mother's history and her work, which became part of the film. This is not just a film. It is part of the story' says Alder. Her parents are both interviewed extensively in the documentary but did not live long enough to see its completion. While Pointe: On a Knife's Edge has all the stuff of an edge-of-the-seat crime series or podcast — we even get to an emotional meeting with the policeman who dealt with the case back in 2000 — Jackson says it is different because the story is told from the point of view of the survivor. 'So often when we watch these crime series it is about the perpetrator or the police trying to track them down,' she says. 'This deals with what Floeur went through — the attack and her healing and her fight to re-establish a career that was derailed when a random stranger decided to take out his anger on her.' Jackson also sees her film as an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge of trauma. 'Trauma was not as well understood when Floeur was attacked as it is today. It separates you from yourself,' Jackson says. For Alder, the documentary has allowed her to finally tell her story. 'It is my truth. It is nobody else's. People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest. This is my story,' she says.
West Australian
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Actor hailing from regional WA reflects on journey from bush childhood to Shakespearean plays
Spending his childhood in regional Australia gave actor-turned-director Myles Pollard the confidence to succeed in the industry. It was the 'quiet confidence that you get from getting lost in the bush, falling down and dusting yourself off and having another crack,' he told the 2025 Leadership Conference, hosted by Bunbury-Geographe Chamber of Commerce and Industry. At the conference, Pollard shared his journey of how a kid from rural Australia got to be on stage for Shakespearean plays and then on the big screen, before taking to the director's chair. Growing up in Port Hedland, Karratha and Onslow honed that confidence, a value he said was 'more about presence and consistencies than about your title'. 'They are built not in theory, but they are forged in the fire of lived experience, of falling down, dusting yourself off and having another crack,' Pollard said. After finishing high school and then completing a bachelors degree in teaching, he worked as a teacher before working in the mines. Pollard soon realised his career was definitely not in drilling. 'My theory was, I did not want to be tied down to one predictable career path and I wanted to play everything, and an actor gets to do that,' Mr Pollard said. He then finished an acting degree at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and soon got into theatre. If what he learnt from the bush was confidence that came with a lot of freedom, being in a Shakespearean play in theatre he found something different. 'The type of pressure and unpredictability, every single night and sometimes twice a day, you've got 800 people staring at you, and they are all scrutinising you, they are all judging you, and you have to stay sharp, you have got to recall a lot of content,' he said. 'There are so many words and so many ideas and so many discoveries, and you're having to do that all in flow, publicly with all that scrutiny and it takes a lot of rehearsal, and it takes a lot of self-management.' Despite his many successes, Pollard shared an audition mishap he said should be used as an example of what not to do when selected as one of the 10 people shortlisted for a franchise like Lord of the Rings. 'I was up against actors like Val Kilmer, Ethan Hawke, Ewan McGregor, Richard Roxburgh and David Wenham,' he said. 'I rocked up, I am in this casting room and there is Peter Jackson, who is the writer, director and producer of the franchise and another reader. Then he said, 'So Myles, what do you think about the books?'' Pollard's response was: 'I have not read it mate, but if I get the gig, I will give it a crack for sure.' Pollard said he knew right away he was not getting a call back.
