David McAllister’s role as guest artist director at WA Ballet to be extended for a second year in 2025

Growing up in Perth during the 1970s was not the most embracing time for a young boy with big ballet dreams, but that only made David McAllister more determined. He would go on to forge a four-decade-long legacy at The Australian Ballet, both as a principal dancer before becoming the Melbourne-based company’s artistic director. While McAllister honestly believed his days working full time at a ballet company were behind him when leaving The Australian Ballet in 2020, fate had other ideas when WA Ballet found themselves without an artistic director at the end of 2023. Initially invited to oversee WA Ballet as guest artistic director for 2024, McAllister’s celebrated homecoming has been extended for a second and final year at the helm in 2025, as the hunt is on for a more permanent replacement. “I think the timing is perfect,” 60-year-old McAllister told STM, as he also reminisced about his career. “I’m delighted to be able to stay for another year and to sort of still help build the scaffolding, not necessarily to do all the imagining, but just to build the structures they can then inhabit and populate with beautiful ideas and new direction.”