A bespoke item is one made specially for a person. It’s tailored to suit and fit. That’s what the word means, full stop.

But that’s only half the picture for Queensland Ballet’s annual Bespoke program. There are expectations that go significantly beyond a great fit.

In 2023, for instance, the promise was that Bespoke would be “challenging and always thought-provoking”. (Only one of the three pieces that year could lay claim to that description.)

Last year new QB artistic director Ivan Gil-Ortega put out a call to choreographers, designers, costumiers, animators, visual artists, composers and music producers to pitch ideas to him for Bespoke 2026 (his first curation of the event). It sounded exciting. Gil-Ortega wanted “bold collaboration, fresh perspectives, and boundary-pushing art-making. We can’t wait to see what comes through.”

What came through is a thoroughly watchable trio of contemporary one-act ballets, each about 25 minutes in length, each with well-executed high points and each quite a way from being a jolt to the system.

Queensland Ballet’s Bespoke: Where the Water Once Was (Rian Thompson, Lucy Green and Ivan Surodeev). Photo © David Kelly

Where the Water Once Was comes out of Claire Voss’s concern for the shrinking of the world’s water supply. It’s a big issue given underpowered treatment. The prevailing mood was sorrow rather than existential distress as water imagery (blue-clad dancers huddling then splitting off like molecules) gave way to personal interactions. A big central pas de trois was effective but could have fitted in to any number of contemporary ballets. More specific was a pas de deux of death that evoked Manon’s desert scene in Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet of that name.

It was good to learn that costumes by Michelle Potts – little blue tunics and minimal white trunks and tops – were made from existing stock in keeping with the environmental theme. Less good was the design element of hanging fronds of what appeared to be bits of sparkly tinsel. They triggered unwanted thoughts of an underwater Disney film.

Queensland Ballet’s Bespoke: Between the Line (Neneka Yohida). Photo © David KellyBetween the lines

The second work, Paul Knobloch’s Between the Line, addressed the need to break free of crippling conformity. The final piece, Victor Zarallo’s What Remains, occupied a related space, that of the individual needing to find their place within the group without being overwhelmed. Both were clear and strong in achieving their goals without breaking new ground.

Knobloch is widely experienced and it showed in his super-confident, punchy piece. The dancers looked great in body-hugging purple tops and black briefs (no designer was named). Unison, repetition and canon got a workout as the idea of faceless conformity got up a head of steam.

Knobloch got his group of 14 working hard and fast, although could lose some of the bravura ballet moves that shouted “19th-century classics”. They seemed a backward-looking way of demonstrating a break from the pack. Everyone looked better when being absolutely of the here and now.

Like Voss, Knobloch had a powerful pas de trois for a woman and two men. A splendid pas de deux too.

Queensland Ballet’s Bespoke: What Remains (Ruby Day and Frederick Montgomery). Photo © David Kelly

Zarallo has an illustrious background in top-flight contemporary dance (Voss and Knobloch are steeped in ballet) and put it to good use in What Remains. Zarallo began with a trio for a woman and two men, happily quite different in nature to the others already seen, to introduce a sense of protectiveness before the woman was sucked into the hurly-burly of a crowd she would later escape.

Costume designer Bethany Cordwell put Zarallo’s central woman into a bright gold shift and the anonymous group into funky grey fringes to give an immediate visual clue to Zarallo’s theme. The piece petered out slightly at the end but the group work was bracingly dynamic.

Composers Connor D’Netto (for Voss), Matej Perunicic (Knobloch) and Brady Watkins (Zarallo) created new scores that showed fruitful collaboration with the choreographers, as did lighting by Anthony Lee (Where the Water Once Was and What Remains) and Matthew Allan (Between the Line).

As far as the dancers are concerned, let’s not name names. The company looked in fine fettle right through the ranks, as they should in work made on them.

Nevertheless, every year at Bespoke time – and this is its 10th year (although because of the pandemic not Bespoke’s 10th iteration) – I can’t help thinking of that great dance disrupter, Sergei Diaghilev, telling the young Jean Cocteau to “astonish me”. That was more than a century ago and there’s never been a more succinct expression of what’s needed.

Queensland Ballet presents Bespoke in the Talbot Theatre, Thomas Dixon Centre, Brisbane until 17 October.