In 1981 Miranda Barker (Coney 1983), at the age ofjust 15 in Year 10 at Newman Siena auditioned for, and was accepted into the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School and, in 1982, entered The Australian Ballet School. David McAllister AC (1980) knew Miranda from growing up in Perth, and also from Newman, and had entered The Australian Ballet School a year ahead of Miranda, after finishing Year 12 here. He became a Principal Dancer with The Australian Ballet in 1989.
In 1991 Miranda also became a Principal Dancer and was said to light up the stage, to take flight upon it, and to bring a breadth and depth to each role she danced. She caught the eye of then Music Director Charles Barker, who trained at the Manhattan School of Music and was with The Australian Ballet from 1997 to 2001.
Charles picks up the story: ” … Let me set the scene.
“The Australian Ballet opened in Perth last night [at His Majesty’s Theatre] with a performance of the Merry Widow with Miranda in the title role. I had planned to propose to Miranda after the opening night performances in Perth, for about six weeks. She has family in Perth, she was the Widow, it all seemed to fit. I had told my plans to no one except Ross Stretton, Artistic Director of Australian Ballet, who incidentally slyly engineered some of the technical parts. Extreme secrecy had to be maintained because there are no secrets in this company!
“Just before the performance Ross and I spoke to the stage manager to alert her that she needed to make an announcement over the PA just before the final curtain to get the audience’s attention and that she had to fit me with a body microphone because I was going to ‘make a presentation’. Then we swore her to secrecy for the next 2-1/2 hours.
“After the performance finished (which, by the way, was quite good) the bows followed as usual – corps, soloists, principals, all forward and back, the Widow (Miranda) gets the conductor [Charles], all bow, curtain down, bows for principals in front of the curtain, … curtain up, all (except conductor) down and back. This is usually when the curtain falls for the last time for the evening. However, tonight, with the curtain still up and the audience still applauding, the stage manager spoke over the PA and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention’.
“The audience became quiet immediately and I walked out onto the stage, faced the audience, and spoke to them … saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Charles Barker, Music Director of the Australian Ballet. I have a question to ask tonight’s Widow.’ At which point I turned and walked a few steps toward Miranda, went down onto one knee, held out an engagement ring to her and said, ‘Miranda Coney, will you be my wife?’
“Miranda had no idea that this was about to happen and the look on her face was priceless. She was quite overcome and came to me, nodded yes, took the ring and gave me a hug and kiss. At the same moment the stage and audience erupted with a deafening ovation, a type of which I had never heard before. Men were yelling their bravos and women were shouting through their tears – especially the ballerinas on stage. An usher brought Miranda some red long stem roses I had gotten for her, more applause, then the curtain came down. It was quite a scene. I couldn’t have hoped for a better scenario. Everything went my way.
“The next morning the press began to phone at 9:30am. We gave interviews and had photos taken until about 2pm. We are both still pretty high from the evening. It was fun and perhaps most important, it was successful! The amount of media coverage after the fact was surprising. We did dozens of newspaper and radio interviews including the BBC from London. I guess people like happy endings.”
Oh, they definitely do!
Miranda concluded an extraordinary 20-year career with The Australian Ballet when she and Charles left the company at the end of 2001. They then married and moved to New York, where Miranda is now a professional ballet coach and Charles has just celebrated 30 years conducting for the American Ballet Theatre. Their sons Riley and Max are both prodigiously talented; Riley has followed Charles into music and is a collaborative pianist, composer and teaching artist, while Max has followed Miranda into dance and is a rising star with the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company.
Images above: Top left: Miranda as The Merry Widow, 2000 (after the opening night performance of which, Charles Barker proposed) Top middle: Miranda in Year 10 at Newman Siena, 1981 Top 3rd from left: Miranda and David McAllister AC (1980) after performing Coppélia, 1992 Photo courtesy Ronald G Bell and The Australian Ballet Archive. Top right: David McAllister AC (1980) and Miranda Barker (Coney 1983), Principal Dancers with The Australian Ballet Bottom middle: The Barker family, January 2025 L-R: Riley, Miranda Barker (Coney 1983), Charles and Max Barker
