Graeme Murphy

Ballet dancer, choreographer, and ballet director, born in Melbourne, Victoria, SE Australia. He trained at the Australian Ballet School in New York City, and at Sadler's Wells in London, then worked as a freelance choreographer before rejoining the Australian Ballet Company as dancer and resident choreographer. Appointed director of the Sydney Dance Company in 1976, he gained international stardom by creating dances which feature a sexy, eclectic range of subjects and styles, all rooted in the classical idiom, one of the best known being Poppy (1978), based on the life of Jean Cocteau. In 1988 he created Vast, an Australian bicentennial performance featuring many Australian dance companies. He later directed Turandot (1990) and Salome (1993) for the Australian Opera Company.

Graeme Murphy (born Melbourne, November 1950) is regarded as one of Australia's best dance choreographers. Together, with fellow dancer and collaborator Janet Vernon, he has guided Sydney Dance Company to become one of Australia's most successful and well-known dance companies. He toured America with the Australian Ballet in 1970-1971 and created his first ballet, Ecco le Diavole (Ecco), to music by Nino Rota, for a choreographic workshop in 1971. He later danced with the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (now Birmingham Royal Ballet), and Les Ballets Félix Blaska in France.

Murphy has been compared to the dancer and choreographer Jerome Robbins because of the way he and his company has marketed dance to a wider audience, and brought contemporary dance into a more commercial arena.

Choreographies include (in rough chronological order) Ecco, Poppy, Boxes, After Venice, Daphnis and Chloe, Shining, Nearly Beloved, Beyond Twelve, The Nutcracker (for the Australian Ballet), Synergy, Beauty and the Beast, Free Radicals, Air and other Invisible forces, Swan Lake (for The Australian Ballet), Ellipse, and Turandot (for Opera Australia).