You could say the contemporary ballet triple bill Strings is a slice of Ivan Gil-Ortega’s history. Gil-Ortega joined Queensland Ballet as Artistic Director last year and 2026 is the first season he has programmed.

It’s not surprising that Strings features the work of European choreographers he has worked with frequently or knows well.

Alison Pukkinen and Taron Geyl in Chamber Minds, one of the works in Queensland Ballet’s triple bill Strings. Photo © David Kelly

Christian Spuck, Artistic Director of Staatsballett Berlin, returns to Brisbane with The Seventh Blue following his monumental Messa da Requiem, which was the first production staged in Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s new Glasshouse Theatre in March this year. (It featured QB’s dancers and was a big get for Gil-Ortega.)

Also on the Strings program is Goyo Montero’s Chacona from 2003, in which Gil-Ortega danced decades ago (the two are compatriots who hail from Spain). Romanian choreographer Edward Clug’s Chamber Minds opens the QB triple bill. Choreographed in 2015, it was commissioned by Spuck, who was then Artistic Director of Ballett Zürich, for a triple bill called, yes, Strings. (The Seventh Blue was also on that Zürich bill.)

QB’s Strings is therefore something of a hymn to sleek European contemporary ballet and a solid introduction to Gil-Ortega’s strong network of important dancemakers.

Another binding force for the triple bill is its pared-back music, played on stage by members of Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra and QB keyboardists Roger Cui and Muyu Liu.

Sitting in the middle of the program, Spuck’s The Seventh Blue is centred around Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet and takes from it intimations of impermanence. Seven couples (seven women and seven men in conventional pairings) often dance in unison in a repeated image that evokes conflicting responses. The first is that they are a community, the second that each of the 14 has only one person on whom they can rely in an impersonal, regimented world.

The Seventh Blue in Queensland Ballet’s triple bill Strings. Photo © David Kelly

Several times, the group stands in a line at the back of the stage in casual poses, possibly suggesting that as they are all in this thing together they will have to make the best of it. The intrusion into the score of whispered mutterings (the work of sound engineer Dieter Fenchel) and some György Kurtág supports the notion.

A marvellous, repeated image has men lowering their partner to the floor in a gesture of release. I gather there is supposed to be enough mist to obscure most of the women’s bodies so they seem to be being buried. This wasn’t apparent at the performance I saw, which is a shame.

The opening work, Chamber Minds, is danced to a delicate work by Slovenian composer Milko Lazar played on violin and harpsichord. It’s lovely, as is the stage design that partly gives the triple bill its name. Thick criss-crossed lines (set design by Marko Japeli) are raised and lowered as dancers dash in to have brief physical interactions with one another, many of them a bit wacky, and then dash off again.

Shape and style are the goals. Clug has his 10 dancers look serious while making jumpy, twitchy moves that border on the zany. There’s a fair bit of the unexpected, but with not a lot to say other than bodies can do these things, Chamber Minds outstays its welcome.

Lucy Green and Edison Manuel in The Seventh Blue, one of the works in Queensland Ballet’s triple bill Strings. Photo © David Kelly

Montoya’s Chacona closes the program with 16 dancers energetically on the move to a version of Bach’s Chaconne passed from violin to guitar to piano. The performance I saw was beguiling although the work looked a little untidy. The QB dancers have clearly committed strongly to the work – all of it, not just Chacona – but there’s another level of speed, articulation and polish in work like this that isn’t embedded in all their bodies. Gil-Ortega will doubtless be working on that.

Montoya’s piece is a good way to end the program but The Seventh Blue is the clear highlight, especially the work of principal artist Lucy Green with soloist Edison Manuel.

Green is also very strong in Chamber Minds (she gets the trifecta by appearing in Chacona too) and first company artist Sophie Zoricic throws out megawatts of glamour in Chamber Minds.

Essentially though these are company pieces that stretch everyone. That’s always good to see.

Queensland Ballet presents Strings – A Triple Bill at the Playhouse, QPAC until 30 May. More information here.