New Zealand School of Dance: Performance Season 2023

29 & 30 November 2023. Te Whaea, Wellington
by Jennifer Shennan

NZSD offered alternating programs, one of Classical and one of Contemporary dance, across a five-day season. There was a consistently high standard of dancing from all the students across both programs, though a number of audience members admitted they would have liked to see pieces from each stream combined onto one program, since they were only able to attend a single performance. That too would have demonstrated the range of technical and aesthetic strengths that the School offers, and varied the choreographic experiences for us all.

The timing of the season makes it effectively a Graduation though it is not billed as such, so we surmise it’s the Third Years who are graduating, or Second Years who may be leaving if they have already been offered a contract somewhere. All the students deserve congratulations for staying the distance, and we wish them courage and stamina as they seek out pathways to long and fruitful dance careers. There’s a rich legacy, since the School’s beginning in 1967, of many graduates who have done just that, and that list would read as tribute to all the former and present faculty and students who have made the world a better place by dancing.

The Classical program comprised four works all by American choreographers with, unusually, all of them staged by one person, Betsy Erickson, an American visiting teacher to the School. Meistens Mozart was choreographed in 1991, by Helgi Tomasson, long-time artistic director to San Francisco Ballet (recently retired—and replaced now by the wunderkind of international ballet, Tamara Rojo—it will be of considerable interest to see how she handles the American ballet scene after ten tears at the helm of English National Ballet). The work was lively and danced with enthusiasm, to a set of songs by Mozart and contemporaries.

Tessa Cockerton Holmes and Angus O’Connell in Helgi Tomasson’s *Meistens Mozart*. New Zealand School of Dance Performance Season, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Aria, by Val Caniparoli, is a striking solo for a masked male, danced here with much aplomb by Joshua Douglas (a 2nd year student already headed for a career opportunity at Queensland Ballet). The Handel sarabande is sublime dance music and the choreography etches its way into a beautiful response to that, inviting a fine performance. It would have been fascinating to watch a Contemporary dance student, maybe a female, in a following repeat performance, to help us all see and appreciate where technique and virtuosity give way to character and emotion. Therein lies theatre.

Vivaldi Concerto Grosso, choreographed in 1981 by Lew Christensen, also of San Francisco Ballet, gave further lively opportunity to a larger cast, though had a similar choreographic structure and style to the opening work.

A piece that reflected New Zealand’s ballet legacy would have provided welcome contrast—from Bournonville, Fokine, Kerr or Veredon for example. The current NZSD faculty includes Anne Gare, Turid Revfeim, Sue Nicholls, Nadine Tyson, Vivencio Samblaceno—most of them graduates of NZSD and all of them formerly with RNZBallet, so staging something from the Company’s repertoire would have been in safe hands, and acknowledged the relationship between the two enterprises.

Another work from Val Caniparoli, made in 1980 for Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet, used the familiar and playfully percussive Schulwerk of Carl Orff for Street Songs, that captured a young and optimistic mood and fitting finale to the evening.

Classical ballet students in Val Caniparoli’s *Street Songs*. New Zealand School of Dance Performance Season, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

The following evening’s Contemporary dance program had an altogether different sense of occasion, with Vice Regal and Ambassadorial attendance, and opened with a substantial whakatau (Maori welcome) delivered by Tanemahuta Gray.

The first work, a premiere this season, Thank You, was by Felix Sampson, a graduate of NZSD, now in DanceNorth company in Townsville, Australia. The tongue-in-cheek opener with a cleverly judged tone was a spirited piece, and the large group of dancers made a well-bonded ensemble.

Outlier, also a premiere, by Kit Reilly, a recent NZSD graduate, was a standout choreography with reflections of sounds, rhythms and forms in natural surrounds. At times there were poetic echoes of the kinds of creatures that David Attenborough brings to our attention, and that is high praise from me. We can look forward to more dance-making from Reilly since he clearly has what it takes to shape movement into ideas, and vice versa.

Contemporary dance students in Kit Reilly’s *Outlier*. New Zealand School of Dance Performance Season, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Excerpts from The Beginning of Nature by Australian choreographer Garry Stewart, to music by Brendan Woithe, used solos and duos as well as group work that made for intriguing counterpoint. It’s hard to know from these excerpts what the complete work is like, the program note reads that it ‘…delves into territoriality, senescence and symbiosis, offering a glimpse into life’s beauty.’ A solo danced by Mārie Jones will stay with me a long time however. (A second-year student but leaving NZSD and heading for Canada, I’m guessing she will make waves wherever she dances).

Contemporary dance students in Garry Stewarts’s *The Beginning of Nature*. New Zealand School of Dance Performance Season, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Re:Action, by Ross McCormack, to a combination of musics, is a series of responses by the dancers to a large rock-like prop, designed by Max Deroy, and named ‘the force’. The deliberately slow pace of movement did not seem to aim for any denouement or cadence to help us in our own response to the choreography.

The final work, Incant—summoning the lost magic of intuition, by Amber Haines, of DanceNorth, is an attractive set of large and smaller group pieces, with some effective sculptural shapes caught in a series of arm movements.

All of the students in both programs gave completely committed performances and they should know we wish every one of them a long and wonderful career.

A note on strobe lighting: A warning in the foyer that there will be strobe, and also loud music, during the performance is a bit like the road sign ‘Beware of falling rocks.’ Not a lot you can do about it except close your eyes—which is what I always do when strobe starts. Not an ideal way to review a dance performance I admit, but I’m not prepared to compromise on that.

And a comment in retrospect—that Classical and Contemporary dance training share much more similarity than difference. The profession needs dancers who can do everything a choreographer asks, so a combination of works from both NZSD programs would help us to celebrate what dance in the theatre can do for us all.

Jennifer Shennan, 5 December 2023

Featured image: Joshua Douglas in Val Caniparoli’s Aria. New Zealand School of Dance Performance-Season, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Dance diary. November 2023

Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards 2023: Dance

In November the Canberra Critics’ Circle announced its awards for 2023. This year five dance awards were presented:

Ruth Osborne, outgoing director of QL2 Dance, which Osborne has led since 1999.
Osborne’s award recognised in particular her outstanding input into James Batchelor’s production Shortcuts to Familiar Places, which was presented at Canberra’s Playhouse in April 2023. My review of Shortcuts is at this link.

Natsuko Yonezwa and Itazura Co for the film Kiku.
Kiku and its accompanying documentary explored dance and the ageing body through the experiences of six Canberra women. My review is at this link.

The six dancers in *Kiku*. Photo: © Lorna Sim

Australian Dance Party for Culture Cruise.
Culture cruise gave those who joined the cruise an innovative experience over land and water, which fused the performing arts, fine dining and Canberra’s cultural institutions. Read my review at this link.

Yolanda Lowatta in a scene from *Culture Cruise*. Photo: © Michelle Potter

Gretel Burgess for A Stroke of Luck.
A Stroke of Luck gave Gretel Burgess the opportunity to produce and direct her lived experience as a stroke survivor. Bill Stephens’ review is at this link.

Caitlin Schilg for her choreography for the Canberra Philharmonic Society Production of Cats.
Caitlin Schilg drew on a diverse range of dance styles to create a series of brilliantly staged production numbers for the musical Cats. Read a review by Bill Stephens at this link.

Oral history interview with Alice Topp

In November I had the pleasure, and honour, of recording an oral history interview for the National Library of Australia with Alice Topp, outgoing resident choreographer with the Australian Ballet.

Alice Topp during an oral history recording, 2023. Photo: © National Library of Australia/Michelle Potter

Alice was most forthcoming about her life and career to date and the interview contains some detailed material about her choreographic process and the establishment of Project Animo, her joint initiative with lighting designer Jon Buswell. The interview is currently undergoing accessioning but cataloguing details will be available in due course.

For more about Alice Topp on this website follow this link.

News from Queensland Ballet

Queensland Ballet has announced details of changes to its line-up of dancers for 2024 including the news that principal dancers Mia Heathcote and Victor Estévez will leave the company at the end of 2023 to join the Australian Ballet in 2024. Heathcote and Estévez have made a remarkable contribution to Queensland Ballet over the past several years. Each has given me much pleasure (Heathcote from as far back as 2013 before she even joined Queensland Ballet) and I hope they will be given every opportunity with the Australian Ballet.

(left) Victor Estévez in *Elite Syncopations*. Queensland Ballet, 2022; (right) Mia Heathcote in *Giselle* Act I. Queensland Ballet, 2023. Photos: © David Kelly

In other news from Queensland Ballet, the company recently announced the establishment of the Van Norton Li Community Health Institute with the goal of sustaining and expanding its Dance Health programs across socioeconomic, age and geographic boundaries and all abilities. For more about the program, including information about the donors to this project, follow this link.

Michelle Potter, 30 November 2023

Featured image: Ruth Osborne (left) receiving her award from Dianne Fogwell, 2021 City News Artist of the Year. Photo: © Len Power

Hot to Trot. QL2 Dance (2023)

26 November 2023. QL2 Theatre, Gorman Arts Centre, Canberra

Hot to Trot, the annual program for young choreographers from QL2 Dance, is always varied in what is presented to us, the audience. The 2023 season began with a film documenting the relationship (now twenty years old) between QL2 Dance in Canberra and Thailand’s Bangkok Dance Academy. We were introduced to the varied activities that have been part of that relationship from both a Thai and an Australian point of view.

The film was followed by six short works from choreographers Jahna Lugnan (Hazy Misconceptions), Julia Villaflor (Coloration), Emily Smith (You did this), Calypso Efkarpidis (Polarised Light), Arshiya Abhishree and Maya Wille Bellchambers in a joint production (Parasitic Waves), and Charlie Thomson (Humanchine). None of the choreographers had had extensive choreographic experience and for five it was their first effort. All the choreographers, in an introductory short statement about the work each was presenting, stressed the collaborative nature of the process and expressed the pride and pleasure they felt working closely with the dancers.

What was most striking for me was the way in which each of the choreographers managed the small black box space of the QL2 Theatre. There was no misunderstanding of the size and layout of the space in which they were working, and the movement spread beautifully up and down, across and around the space available. In addition I was impressed with many of the groupings that we saw, which were often a surprise and sometimes intertwined and layered in a quite special way (even if some reminded me of well-known images from past, well-documented productions).

Scene from *Coloration* in Hot to Trot, 2023. Photo: © O&J Wikner Photography

The final piece, Charlie Thomson’s Humanchine, was certainly the most entertaining to watch. It dealt with technology and its effect on human beings. ‘At what point are our thoughts our own and how much of it is informed by the machine,’ Thomson wrote in the printed program. The five dancers were dressed as individuals and showed themselves as having individual thoughts through facial and bodily expression. But they often performed together—often in a line, sometimes looking slightly mechanical. There was a point where the machine and the individual merged (if ever so slightly).

Scene from *Humanchine* in Hot to Trot, 2023. Photo: © O&J Wikner Photography

I also especially enjoyed Calypso Efkarpidis’ Polarised Light. Made on just three dancers it sought to explore the notion that some colours are visible to some creatures but not others, as discussed in a David Attenborough documentary called Life in Colour. The choreography was simple but strong and beautifully performed.

Scene from *Polarised Light* in Hot to Trot, 2023. Photo: © O&J Wikner Photography

Hot to Trot is a great initiative and the courage of those who take up the role of choreographer in the shows is remarkable. But the idea of expressing concepts that are often quite abstract has always bothered me when watching Hot to Trot shows. Even when explained in words, both verbally and in printed form, the ideas are not always visible as strongly as is needed. l often think that emerging choreographers need to consider in greater depth how the body can make concepts visible. I’m sure they do think along those lines but It isn’t an easy task to turn thoughts into movement. The works that always stand out most strongly in Hot to Trot are those where ideas and movement speak as one.

Nevertheless, the 2023 Hot to Trot was a remarkable event. Every work was outstanding in terms of the stagecraft and dancing that emerged.

Michelle Potter, 27 November 2023

Featured image: A moment from Emily Smith’s You did this in Hot to Trot, 2023. Photo: © O&J Wikner Photography

Hansel & Gretel. Royal New Zealand Ballet (2023)

10 November 2023. Regent on Broadway, Palmerston North, Manawatū
reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

This return season of Hansel & Gretel, from choreographer Loughlan Prior and composer Claire Cowan, is a colourful riot of a pantomime romp that the dancers milk to the max. There are some very skilled comic performers among the soloists who use every moment and centimetre of opportunity to entertain us.

I have come to Palmerston North for the performance in Regent on Broadway, a venue that always offers a sense of occasion. The 1400 seat grand theatre, converted and beautifully restored from the original cinema house built in 1930, is a source of local pride and rightly so. The opening to this production of Hansel & Gretel, designed by Kate Hawley, is cleverly styled as a silent movie, so it’s an echo to the days of Busby Berkeley, Whoopee! and Flying High! I don’t suppose there’s anyone in the audience tonight who saw those movies here first time round, but hey, who’s to say there isn’t?

The folktale as we’ve known it from the Brothers Grimm is not the narrative adopted for this choreography. Instead the opening has fashionable well-to-do folk and their snobbish children striding about, flaunting their wealth and casting scorn on the poor little Hansel and Gretel who have nothing much except a toy rabbit to cling to. Their wicked Stepmother is instead recast here as simply the poor wife of the poor husband whose mischievous children are always hungry, so leave home in search of food. The danger of a cruel Stepmother within the family is thus replaced by two worlds of ‘those who have’ and ’those who have not’ as the scenario.

A moment from the opening scene in *Hansel & Gretel*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

(I sensed here a poignant hint of Katherine Mansfield’s story, The Doll’s House—where the magnanimous Burnell children allow the working-class kids, the Kelveys, a brief visit to see their prized possession. There’s extra resonance in that, since Prior’s recent choreography, Woman of Words, was made as a tribute to the illustrious KM in her centenary year, though has seen only one performance in an arts festival town in the distant south. Many would love to see that work presented on a national scale, and it would further convert to a film of considerable international interest. Now there’s a gauntlet to the recently welcome new Artistic Director of the Company).

Luke Cooper as the Transformed Witch in *Hansel & Gretel*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

There are fetching scenes of Bird-children, Dew fairies and a Sandman who guide the siblings’ journey, and the gingerbread house of Act Two opens up to fill the stage with the aromas of candy floss, toffee apples and soft-serve ice cream, though with danger lurking in the spokes of a punk-steam bicycle. The role of Hansel was danced with great spirit and comic timing by Shaun James Kelly, and Gretel was fetchingly played by Ella Chambers. Sarah Garbowski dances with a lovely lyricism so the role of gentle Mother suited her well. Ana Gallardo Lobaina, a stunning performer with a magnetic quality that claims your eye whenever she is on stage, was an outrageous Ice Cream Witch, but Luke Cooper as The Transformed Witch probably shares the prize for his high camp and wickedly funny performance, OTT but never out of time.

Ella Chambers as Gretel in *Hansel & Gretel*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court.

I like trying to imagine the reinstatement of Hansel and Gretel’s cruel stepmother into a ballet, since that is a trope society still has to deal with, and would bring stronger drama to the somewhat lengthy divertissements in several scenes. But having said that I can also admit to being swept along by a madcap ballet that throws comic opportunities at numerous dancers who relish moving to Claire Cowan’s terrific and lively score. The redoubtable Hamish McKeich conducts three different orchestras for the seasons in the main centres, but it is a recording of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra that we hear in this performance. It is inspired music that truly motivates the dancers, but has also achieved recognition in its own right.

There’s a new and happy energy in the excellent printed program, with essays from all the main contributors in the team that created this production.

Jennifer Shennan, 15 November 2023

Featured image: Ana Gallardo Lobaina as the Ice Cream Witch in Hansel & Gretel. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2023. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

The Dream and Marguerite and Armand. The Australian Ballet

15 November 2023 (matinee). Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House

This double bill of works by Frederick Ashton was an entertaining two hours of ballet. I enjoyed in particular the opening work, Marguerite and Armand, for its episodic structure that gave a strong focus to specific moments of love between Marguerite and Armand, and later the moment of Marguerite’s death from tuberculosis. I enjoyed too the minimal set and its semi-circular nature (design Cecil Beaton) that went well with the general structure of the work.

Valerie Tereschenko danced nicely as Marguerite and made her characterisation reasonably clear. But Maxim Zenin as Armand didn’t offer quite enough of Armand’s emotional state to make his character stand out. So the partnership was not as powerful as it needs to be in this work.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for me), I clearly remember Sylvie Guillem dancing the female lead in Marguerite and Armand in Sydney and Melbourne way back in 2002 when the Royal Ballet, then under the direction of Ross Stretton, visited from London.* More recently (2018) I also saw Alessandra Ferri and Federico Bonelli give a stunning performance with the Royal Ballet in London. So I had high expectations, which I’m sad to say weren’t met. I get the feeling that the Australia Ballet currently concentrates more on technical action at the expense of the need for a powerful dramatic essence.

As for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bendicte Bemet as Titania and Joseph Caley as Oberon danced well but again I felt they lacked strength of characterisation. Were they King and Queen? Did they rule over the Fairies? Were they really arguing over the Changeling? And so on.

Of the other characters, Bottom (Luke Marchant) dancing on pointe is always a highlight in the Ashton production and Marchant looked very comfortable as he hopped and skipped around on pointe. But again he needed stronger characterisation, especially after he had returned to his role as a Rustic and tried to remember what had happened while under the spell cast on him by Puck.

Unfortunately (again) in terms of how I saw the Ashton production and the Australian Ballet’s performance of it, I had just seen Liam Scarlett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed by Queensland Ballet. Scarlett’s take on the story has so much more to offer than does the Ashton production. And in performing it the dancers of Queensland Ballet demonstrated not only their truly exceptional technical and production values but also the manner in which they have been coached to inhabit a role. It was completely engaging rather than simply entertaining.

While I can say the Australian Ballet’s season of the two Ashton works was entertaining, it did leave me a little cold. I hope there might be more focus soon on dramatic and emotional input. Please!

Michelle Potter, 16 November 2023.

*The Australian Ballet’s website mentions that Marguerite and Armand is having its premiere season in Australia. It might be the premiere for the Australian Ballet, but it’s not the premiere for Australia, the country.