Conan as a Ballet Dancer with Sydney Dance Company

Conan as a Ballet Dancer? With Sydney Dance Company? Really? A professional dancer?  Yes, here it is... the long awaited video clip proving this fantastic, but true, claim....

Conan met Graeme Murphy, world reknown choreographer and director of Sydney Dance Company, at a popular restaurant/bar in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs.

From that initial meeting an idea was born and Graeme went on to design an entire modern dance performance from this chance encounter. 

Standing Ovations For Sydney Dance Company's "Berlin"

The ballet performance was called Berlin and it proved wildly successful. Six return seasons at the prestigious Sydney Opera House, located practically under Sydney Harbour Bridge - one of Australia's cultural icons.

Sydney Opera House / Sydney Harbour Bridge

The music in the ballet was performed live by Iva Davies and the band Icehouse with accompaniment by Max Lambert on piano. The album from this piece went platinum in Australia and Germany with a hit single in Australia was  followed by several top 40 entries from the album.

The Berlin Tapes CD Cover 

And I was a part of that - it was one of the best times of my life and it is one of the more unusual entries on my CV.

Watch Video: Berlin - Sydney Dance Company

In fact later when I did the audtion for Marvel's Man-Thing they called for a 6' 8"+ athletic build with professional dance training (as the monster was to express emotion through movement). When I was told this I told my acting agent to tell them I would be in for my part. My agent looked at me and said what dance training do you have? I told her Q-bar 3am on Sunday morning and proceeded to give a demonstration of a drunk partygoer. She was not impressed to say the least, then I broke out of that character and reminded her that I had worked in the Ballet with Sydney Dance Company - now she was impressed - she did indeed call the Casting Director and say that Conan would be in for his role on Monday morning - what time would suit ?

Arrogance? Maybe some, but in a small market like Australia there are not so many actors who fit the description, in fact I knew there was only myself that fit the casting specifications perfectly.

Needless to say I got the role, but that is another Manthing  blog article