In its 2019 season – dubbed A Year of Enchantment – The Australian Ballet will perform two new full-length ballets by Australian choreographers Graeme Murphy and Stanton Welch, while Alice Topp has been appointed as the company’s new Resident Choreographer.

TAB principal dancer Ako Kondo. Photograph supplied

In 2018, TAB paid tribute to Murphy with a program of works selected from across his 50-year career simply called Murphy. For the 2019 season, he creates a new full-length ballet based on Oscar Wilde’s famous story The Happy Prince about a golden statue who is moved by the suffering he sees across the city. Befriending a swallow, lost on its way south for the winter, the Prince and the bird give the jewels and gold from the statue to the poor. Murphy will work with theatre director and designer Kim Carpenter to bring a modern twist to the classical tale. Carpenter has previously staged an acclaimed theatre production for children, which his company Theatre of Image premiered in 1993.

TAB Artistic Director David McAllister says that the production has been in development since 2015. Murphy is creating “gorgeous...