After months of time off because of injury, surgery and convalescing, WA Ballet dancer and choreographer Tim O'Donnell has been cleared to dance again. The downtime has been well spent, however, with O'Donnell winning a major international choreographic competition.
As a finalist in the Milwaukee Ballet's Genesis International Choreography Competition, 23-year old O'Donnell found himself pitted against 31-year-old established freelance choreographer Cameron McMillan and 42-year-old Maurice Causey, ballet master with Netherlands Dance Company.
"The way that they approached their work was what really interested me the most," O'Donnell says. "Cameron was always sitting there with the video camera, while Maurice would be listening to the music. I'm more a sort of wait-until-I-get-into-the-studio sort of person."
Over the space of a few weeks, each finalist created a work using four men and four women. O'Donnell says that during this time the choreographers became close, with each sharing their daily trials and tribulations over a drink or two. But O'Donnell's biggest hurdle wouldn't appear until much later.
"I had a bit of a disaster," he says. "The week of the premiere, one of the guys was having a bit of trouble with his knee and the next morning he ended up having an operation."
After teaching a replacement male dancer from Milwaukee Ballet's junior company, O'Donnell went on to have his work judged by theatre directors from all over the US and Canada.
This week WA audiences will get to see a small section of O'Donnell's winning work, The Games We Play, as part of WA Ballet's similarly titled Genesis season at Fremantle's Fly by Night Club.
"I'm doing a tiny little section of it; one minute, 21 seconds of a 21-minute piece," he says. "It's fast; it's The Flight of the Bumblebee. So it's this fun, super-quick little thing."
Staged every two years, the Genesis season is an opportunity for WA Ballet company members to share their choreographic vision with an audience. The last season in 2007 was especially significant for O'Donnell because it was there that he made his debut as a choreographer with his work Other Affairs.
"Genesis is what got me on the road to becoming a choreographer," he says. "The work I did for Genesis was the first piece I'd choreographed as a main house work. Had it not been for Genesis, I'd probably still be waiting for an opportunity to choreograph."
The roots of O'Donnell's artistic flair reach far back to his childhood in Wagga Wagga, where, to the disdain of his older brother, he spent hours rummaging through costume boxes at his mother's ballet school. "I used to pick up my brother from school wearing half the costumes - he was often very embarrassed."
At 15, he won a place at the Australian Ballet School, where he went on to win the non-professional section of the 2002 AICD Biannual Choreographic Competition. He was also the first student to take up the Ballet School's new advanced diploma in choreography.
"I started but never finished," he says. "I was spending six or seven hours sitting and writing about what I'd done and only two hours in a studio choreographing. I think the best way to become a choreographer is to choreograph."
O'Donnell's latest choreographic win may have vindicated these views but that didn't prevent him doubting himself right up to the time he was announced the winner.
"Up until the day I was saying, 'oh, this is so embarrassing'," O'Donnell says. "I was looking at the other two works and thinking, 'they're fantastic'. And I was shocked when I won the competition."
Right now, O'Donnell is just happy to be back where he feels he belongs - in the thick of the creative process.
"Whether it's me creating or being created on, it's always been my favourite thing. That time when steps are being made up, I love that; I relish that time."
'I used to pick up my brother from school wearing half the costumes - he was often very embarrassed.' WA BALLET DANCER Tim O'Donnell
