David McAllister AM and Wesley Enoch AM have been together for more than a decade, but have always lived in separate cities. McAllister was the Australian Ballet's artistic director and lived in Melbourne; Enoch was in either Sydney or Brisbane, lately as the director of the Sydney Festival, and as the director of the Queensland Theatre Company before that. But they maintained a policy of phoning one another daily, and of never going more than three weeks without seeing each other – somewhere. The 2021 Sydney Festival marked the end of Enoch's tenure as festival director, while McAllister left the Australian Ballet in late 2020 after almost 40 years with the company. He's unphased by the change. 'I have Wesley by my side,' McAllister says, 'and I'm looking forward to us becoming old men together'.
Peter Brew-Bevan wanted this portrait to capture the together-but-apart aspect of the relationship, and chose a retro hotel room setting to signify lives spent on the road. Enoch's t-shirt shows his pride as a Noonuccal Ngugi man and his uncompromising advocacy for his culture; the esky represents McAllister's 'hard physical commitment to dance, spending pretty much every night with his feet in ice'. Their joined hands, meanwhile, point to the coexistence of distance with togetherness and quiet intimacy.
Purchased with funds provided by Alan Dodge AM and Neil Archibald 2021
© Peter Brew-Bevan
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