Ballet pays homage to Canberra Members of the Australian Ballet perform in Monument at the Canberra Theatre. Picture: Ray Strange Source: The Australian MANY a distinguished artist has come a cropper when making to order for a special occasion, whether they be a poet laureate, a painter or, in this case, a choreographer. Being handed weighty, worthy subject matter can have a limiting effect it seems. The work of Garry Stewart, the celebrated artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre, has never looked as tame as it does in Monument. Monument pays homage to Parliament House as part of the Centenary of Canberra festival (and marks the building's 25th anniversary). The idea isn't as odd as it may at first sound. Choreographers are expert builders. Using dancers as material they make a piece of architecture that, despite its evanescence, exists moment by moment in three-dimensional form. The architecture, however, needs to be animated by some vital force, such as is seen in George Balanchine's modernist masterpiece The Four Temperaments, which opened this Canberra-only program. Stewart's building blocks, expertly assembled though they are, are beautiful but inert. Nineteen dancers clad in anonymous, body-hugging white industriously come and go. Angled arms and hands, super-fast supported pirouettes and rippled torsos suggest thoughts of work, construction, lines, planes, spaces. There are projections of ever-more detailed and attention-grabbing 3D computer graphics of Parliament House. A set of mirrored actions gives a hint of parliamentary disputation and it's all extremely busy, but mostly the human element is quite missing. When Andrew Killian holds Lana Jones's leg to her ear as she strikes a perfect six o'clock position, one imagines we are seeing Parliament House's flagpole. It's so impersonal. Surely the story of Parliament House is what it represents, not the nuts and bolts of how it was built? Or that it was built? Stewart knows this, of course, as his final, quiet, simple and eloquent image shows. Those last few seconds were worth more than any of the 25 minutes or so that went before. I suspect Monument is unlikely to have a life beyond the occasion for which it was created. The Four Temperaments (1947) comes to Canberra well-honed from its Sydney outing in the Vanguard program and is in excellent shape. On Thursday night the highlight was Lucinda Dunn's luxurious Sanguinic pas de deux with Ty King-Wall. Dunn's dancing was full of juice as she filled every phrase fully, at the same time carving the small, fast movements of foot and lower leg with forensic precision. She is a wonder. The Canberra Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Nicolette Fraillon, played nobly given the Canberra Theatre's less than glowing acoustic. The pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain (2008) is a favourite with ballet companies the world over. As with the 4Ts it has a rigorously stripped-back form but where Balanchine invites a cerebral response, Wheeldon's piece is all emotion, albeit held chastely in check. The music, Arvo Part's luminous Spiegel im Spiegel (The mirror in the mirror), is simultaneously transparent and mysterious as it flows up and down the scale, the violin melody floating above repeated triads on the piano. The serene legato of the music is a pillow on which the dancers float, their relationship one of endless, unrevealed possibilities. On Thursday Lana Jones's undertow of erotic abandon was barely veiled while Adam Bull partnered with superlative strength and ease. Ten minutes of bliss. Symmetries: Monument, The Four Temperaments, After the Rain The Australian Ballet, Canberra Theatre, May 23 Tickets: $77-$109. Bookings: 02 6275 2700 or online. Ends Saturday