Connor Dowling, a senior dancer with Sydney Dance Company, reflects on 2007 – a year that saw him farewell Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon as co-artistic directors, and meet iOTA.

The first image is the poster for Ever After Ever, which contains every dancer in the company as well as Graeme and Janet in a micro-organism-type aesthetic. This was a gala performance consisting of Graeme and Janet’s favourite pieces from their 31-year directorship of Sydney Dance Company.

We performed this work in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney, where it was filmed for television and is currently shown on the ABC and Foxtel’s Ovation channel. I was also nominated for a 2007 Green Room Award for my performance, and the company was nominated for a 2007 Australian Dance Award.

Being involved in this show was an incredible experience, as I had only worked with Graeme and Janet for the past two years but was getting the rare opportunity to perform works from the past 30 years of Sydney Dance Company, including the chance to sing ‘Beautiful Aussie Girl’ from Tivoli, which is the show that I watched as a student at The Australian Ballet School – I had made up my mind then and there that I would be in Sydney Dance Company one day. However the most moving moment in the show belonged to Graeme and Janet as they performed a dance together towards the end, and there was not a dry eye in the house – or on stage, side stage or back stage for that matter. It was a unique moment and I am very proud to have been there for. Also in the show were excerpts from Berlin, a reworking of one of Graeme Murphy’s most popular works featuring the ultra-fabulous rocker iOTA from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and more recently as Frank n Furter in The Rocky Horror Show.

This brings me to the second poster image for Berlin, which we performed from October 2007 in Sydney and Brisbane. In this image from the top down is: iOTA, who sung all of the songs in the show as a guardian angel to the ‘street girl’, performed by Chylie Cooper, whose doomed relationship with the ‘Alien’, played by myself, is the catalyst for the events that transpire in the show.

Of all the roles I have ever performed on stage this would have to be my all-time favourite. The character is a tormented Jewish intellectual trapped in a collapsed apartment building in the city of Berlin during World War II with a community of people from all walks of life, including cabaret artistes, circus performers, and Nazi soldiers. Of course, his fascination with the ‘street girl’ got him in even more hot water.

As well as enjoying the role I was playing, I enjoyed the opportunity to meet and work with iOTA, who is completely divine to watch as a performer and a genuinely adorable guy to work with.

So that was the year 2007 in a nut shell at Sydney Dance Company. I know these two images will be forever etched in my memory because of the emotional connection I have to the shows, but also because of the joy I got from working with Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon for a short but incredibly fulfilling amount of time.

I hope that those of you who saw one or both of these shows feel similarly.