Royal New Zealand Ballet with Scottish Ballet

14 March 2025. St James Theatre, Wellington

What is ballet?

In what was a joint program of four works, two from Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) and two from Scottish Ballet, I imagined there would be some curiosity from audience members (or some people anyway) about the nature of ballet. I certainly was curious. Both companies have the word ‘ballet’ in their name for a start, but the details of the program sounded unusual.

Opening the program was Schachmatt (Checkmate in English translation) from Spanish/international choreographer Cayetano Soto, who was also responsible for the set, costumes and lighting. The work was based, notes tell us, on Soto’s admiration for and interest in the songs of people such as Joan Rivers as well as the choreography of Bob Fosse.

There was an exceptional, short and shadowy opening sequence. It was attention-grabbing and at first some of the dancers towards the back of the group looked almost like shadows rather than people.

Scottish Ballet dancers in the opening section of Cayetano Soto’s *Schachmatt*. Photo: © Andy Ross

But as the lighting became less shadowy, we could see the cast dressed in light blue-grey costumes, wearing black stockings that at first looked like knee-high boots, and with black caps as head gear. They danced often with the pelvis pushed back so the spine never looked straight; with arms often making geometric shapes; and with emphasis on hands often stretched flat; and with fingers twisted and curled. The dancers’ movements were fast and furious and bodies were bent and twisted. It made me think how different the movement was from the technique we assume is balletic. It seemed like a quirky novelty rather than a ballet. In fact the whole thing looked anti-balletic to me, although nothing could take away from a powerful performance from every dancer.

Scottish Ballet dancers in Cayetano Soto’s *Schachmatt.* Photo: © Andy Ross

Schachmatt, which received an exceptional audience response at its conclusion, was a short piece, just 20 or so minutes, and was followed by a brief, spoken introduction from the stage by RNZB’s Artistic Director, Ty King-Wall, who was accompanied onstage by Director of Scottish Ballet, Christopher Hampson, dressed in a Scottish-style kilted outfit.

After thinking constantly during the unfolding of Schachmatt, especially about choreographic expression and its relationship to balletic concepts, it was an exceptional experience to watch the second item on the program, Prismatic from RNZB Choreographer in Residence, Shaun James Kelly. Kelly played with movement without removing so many balletic essentials as seemed to happen in Schachmatt. Kelly’s choreography showed fluidity; detailed interaction between dancers without that interaction being frenzied; smooth and curving shapes from the arms; lifts that were quite spectacular and that demonstrated a remarkable manner of moving through space; and a great use of the stage area, often in unexpected ways.

We were watching a particular choreographic voice, but one that was not removing what makes dance balletic. Prismatic gave me goose bumps and it was a pleasure to watch the dancers performing to an audience, to us. That’s a personalised approach and was not something I got from the first item. To me Prismatic was theatre.

Soloist Kirby Selchow, Artist Ema Takahashi, Principal Ana Gallardo Lobaina, Soloist Jemima Scott in *Prismatic*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2025. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

After interval we watched another short work, Limerence, this time from Annaliese Macdonald, former dancer with RNZB, now freelancing. Performed to music by Franz Schubert, it was made for four dancers who interacted with each other, displaying different emotions at different times.

The leading role was danced strongly by Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson but we were never completely sure of exactly where his emotions were directed. What was he thinking? What were the others thinking as well, especially when they were trying to guide him through an event? In fact, a quote from Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke was written in the program notes: ‘Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.’ That quote gave a strong indication of the nature of Limerence.

Principal, Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson and Soloist, Katherine Minor in a moment from *Limerence*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2025. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Choreographically Limerence had a beautifully strong contemporary feel but it was clearly based on an understanding of balletic technique. The bodies of all four dancers were used as expressive tools to transmit emotions.

The final work Dextera (a play on the word ‘dexterous’) came from Franco-British choreographer Sophie Laplane. It was danced by a large cast to excerpts from various compositions by Mozart. Laplane mentions in program notes that she was interested in ‘portraying the complexity of human nature through dance’ and complexity of movement (large and small, individual and group) was clearly on display.

Red gloves were a feature. In the beginning one fell through the air from the flies. Then dancers entered, all wearing red gloves. Sometimes one set of dancers ripped the gloves away from the group wearing them. The gloves were then ripped back. In the final moments a swathe of gloves fell again from the flies. I am assuming that the gloves referred to the fact that dexterity usually indicates skill involving the hands.

Scottish Ballet dancers in in Sophie Laplane’s *Dextera*. Photo: © Andy Ross

Another feature of Dextera was that red ‘handles’ had been added to some costumes and dancers (mostly the women) were picked up, (mostly by the men) using the handles, and the bodies manipulated in some way.

Choreographically Dextera teetered towards seeming suitable for inclusion in a program by a company with the word ‘ballet’ in its name. It was clearly pushing movement boundaries but, at least to me, the dancers looked like human beings and the choreography looked as though there was a balletic background that was being used in the ‘pushing’. But the work seemed so long, which was not made to feel shorter when many sections of the work appeared not to relate to each other. I was relieved when the work eventually concluded.

The outstanding feature of the program, over all four works, was the strength of the dancing. Whatever movement ideas the choreographers chose to investigate, the dancers rose to the challenge and performed with gusto. And all my congratulations to the staff of both companies for creating a program that put forward a challenge. In fact, as I left the theatre I had the feeling that it would be hard to find a performance that could give rise to so many varying thoughts about the nature of ballet.

.Michelle Potter, 16 March 2025

Featured image: Scottish Ballet dancers in a moment from Sophie Laplane’s Dextera. Photo: © Andy Ross

UPDATE: This post has been the subject of a series of scam messages and comments have, therefore, been closed.

The Night has a Thousand Eyes. Borderline Arts Ensemble

6 March 2025. Te Auaha, Wellington Fringe Festival

Director, choreographer, performer: Lucy Marinkovich
Composer, pianist: Lucien Johnson
Co-choreographer, performer: Michael Parmenter
Lighting: Martyn Roberts

reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

The Night has a Thousand Eyes is an hour-long work described as a ‘nocturnal dreamscape of movement and mystery’. The first image is of a vast suspended square tent of white muslin, evoking the cloth draped over a baby’s cradle, lit from within, but empty yet. Piano music is gentle, lullaby-like. Soon the dancer moves in amniotic shadow inside the tent, we glimpse a limb, the edge of her torso, her arm gesturing up, then around, and down, the palms of her hands coming forward into focus. There’s a quiet mood of questioning and waiting as the work awakens to this exploration of space and place, and the piano carries us through.

This is Lucy Marinkovich in the first in a series of vignettes shared with Michael Parmenter, mostly solos, occasionally duets, that play with shadows and silhouettes from the dark and into the light that is sourced from side or back or front, with the two dancers’ bodies, especially arms and hands, striking 1, 000 shapes that hint, suggest, tease, whisper and play in the night.

Lucy Marinkovich in a scene from *The Night has a Thousand Eyes*. Borderline Arts Ensemble, 2025. Photo: © Lucien Johnson

Impressions are suggested—to wonder at the beauty of an arm outstretched then curved then dissolved—to hold and embrace an infant, perhaps—keeping silent reverie alone beneath a dark sky that shimmers with 1,000 stars, in no specific place but here. Nights are long but the piano, in Lucien Johnson’s driving score, carries us through.

Parmenter dances alternate sections, he too is a silhouette, then moving and flowing, then held in chiselled positions. He will later be the insomniac out in the night streets of Paris, marking out fragments of old tap dance routines, or flashing a thousand tiny lights onto a dark wall, imagining he’s alone but we are watching. These are film-like dream-like sequences, and still the piano carries us through.

Lucy Marinkovich and Michael Parmenter in a scene from *The Night has a Thousand Eyes*. Borderline Arts Ensemble, 2025. Photo: © Lucien Johnson

The performers are not connected as characters, nor is any specific thematic narrative developed. They move in alternate sequences that build a sympathy and empathy between them as they share the thoughts and things that arrive in the nights—both theirs and ours. A scene comes to seem like a poem, each separate yet belonging together in a selected collection.

The hub of the work is the mesmerising Serpentine Dance reconstructed by Marinkovich after Loie Fuller moving in the earliest stagings of electric light on stage over 100 years ago. Vast swathes of white silk are held aloft with poles to extend the wings into a celestial realm. The carefully chosen moves and curves and swoops bring the silk into its own life, making invisible air now visible, eventually enveloping the dancer, and still the piano carries us through.

So the two dancers, but also the lighting design that in turn brings textiles to life, effectively make a cast of four performers. We cannot take our eyes off any of them.

My wish, although maybe not practical, would have been to see the pianist in low light side-stage, visually holding these vignettes together as indeed the music did throughout.

Jennifer Shennan, 7 March 2025

Featured image: Lucy Marinkovich in a reference to Loie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance. The Night has a Thousand Eyes, Borderline Arts Ensemble, 2025. Photo: © Lucien Johnson

Essor. Yolanda Lowatta

My review of Essor a solo performance from Yolanda Lowatta was published online on 02 March 2025 by CBR CityNews. Read it at this link.. Below is a slightly enlarged version of the review.

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01 March 2025. Gordon Darling Hall, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

There is much to admire about Essor, a 20-minute solo performance choreographed and danced at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) by Indigenous performer, Yolanda Lowatta. Lowatta is a member of Canberra’s Australian Dance Party and the Party’s leaders, Alison Plevey and Sara Black, produced Essor, which was commissioned by the NPG.

As has been the case whenever a dance performance has been commissioned by the NPG (and there have been quite a few such commissions over the past several years), Essor was created in response to photographic material currently on display in the Gallery—in this case to Some Lads, a series of portraits by renowned Australian photographer, Tracey Moffatt. The images are of dancers connected with the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Development Centre who had influenced Lowatta in some way and include Russell Page, Graham Blanco, Matthew Doyle, and Gary Lang. The name of the work, Essor, is an Indigenous word meaning ‘thank you’ and the work is Lowatta’s recognition of the impact those lads have had on her.

It was a real pleasure to watch Lowatta’s sense of movement as displayed in her choreography. There was a beautiful overall fluidity in her manner of moving, especially in the arms and upper body. But within this fluidity there were many moments of detail especially in the fingers and in the positions taken by the feet. There were moments, too, when a smile crossed her face suggesting that she was recalling a particular moment in relation to one of her mentors.

Yolanda Lowatta in the Gordon Darling Hall, 2025. Photo: © Creswick Collective

But what was remarkable was the way in which Lowatta referenced different styles of dance, all of which must have influenced her current, personal movement style. Some movements seemed to come straight from the dance style seen in clan performances from Indigenous women; some referenced Western contemporary dance, especially those grounded movements that were interspersed throughout; some, such as the leaps with a leg held in arabesque, were quite balletic.

This stylistic diversity, which never looked jarring or lacking in harmony, was reflected in an exceptional soundscape from Indigenous multi-artist Bindimu. It contained sounds of water; the playing of Indigenous instruments; sounds from nature, including bird calls; human voices; and a range of other audio items. Just as Lowatta’s choreography referenced different dance styles, Bindimu’s soundscape took us, potentially, from venue to venue, that is to a selection of places where dance might been seen.

Bindimu was also responsible for Lowatta’s costume—a dark purple ‘grass’ skirt and top worn over a Western style close fitting pair of black shorts with a separate top. Again, there was a strong reference to more than one aspect of Lowatta’s career.

The work was structured around a circle of audience members, seated on the floor in the centre of the Gordon Darling Hall, with a few regular seats, placed outside the circle, for older people. Lowatta moved this way and that and often traversed the circular space occupied by the seated audience. But as the soundscape came to an end, Lowatta led the audience from the Hall to the Gallery where the Moffatt portraits were hanging. She left us there, after well-deserved and loudly expressed applause, to admire the photographs and, as a result, to reflect further on Essor.

Michelle Potter, 02 March 2025

Featured image: Yolanda Lowatta in the Gordon Darling Hall, 2025. Photo: © Creswick Collective

Dance diary. February 2025

New initiative from Sydney Dance Company

Ever on the move in the development of dance, Sydney Dance Company just recently announced a new initiative—a teacher training program ‘dedicated to the art and practice of dance education’. Led by Linda Gamblin, Head of Training at Sydney Dance Company, the course will begin in July 2025.

This is an exciting initiative from Sydney Dance Company. Teaching is an art in my opinion and dance teachers need specialised teacher training in addition to having danced themselves. Follow this link for a detailed look at what the course will encompass.

Miracle in the Gorbals

In February I was drawn yet again to the Lifeline Book Fair, which has now become a huge Canberra event, and which these days is held more than once a year. My most interesting purchase was a somewhat battered copy of a book by Arnold Haskell that gave a detailed analysis of Robert Helpmann’s early work Miracle in the Gorbals. I saw this work in London in 2014 when it was produced for Birmingham Royal Ballet by Gillian Lynne, who performed in the original 1944 cast as one of the inhabitants of the Gorbals. My review of the Birmingham production is at this link.

The book was published in Edinburgh in 1946, just two years after the premiere of the ballet. It was a more than interesting read, especially the section entitled ‘5. Interpretation’, which I wish I had read prior to seeing the work when I did. But it is hard to know what actually was Haskell’s opinion of the work. Haskell spoke of Helpmann as being ‘a man of the theatre’, which he believed (I think?) was the reason Miracle in the Gorbals was successful. But in ‘Epilogue: A Warning’ Haskell wrote:

Ballet must return to the way of Fokine, who rescued it from decay. His works are not merely beautiful in themselves, they are object lessons in choreography and no one so far has proved himself to have so thorough an understanding of the medium.

Ballet does not need ideas to survive, it needs beauty of line and movement. If ideas can be incorporated at no loss, then well and good. Ballet is not a treatise on current affairs. BALLET MUST APPEAL TO THE EYE. [Haskell’s capitalisation]

All in all a very interesting purchase.

Li Cunxin honoured

Former artistic director of Queensland Ballet, Li Cunxin AO, has been presented with the Prix de Lausanne 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognises his exceptional career from overcoming adversity early in life, to his rise as a celebrated dancer before leading Queensland Ballet to global success.

The Prix de Lausanne has, since 2017, presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to a dancer or choreographer who has made an outstanding contribution to the ballet world. The recent award to Li is such a well deserved recognition of his contribution to dance! Other notable recipients include Wayne McGregor and Alessandra Ferri.

Portrait of Li Cunxin, 2023. Photo: © David Kelly

Alice Topp and Houston Ballet

Houston Ballet, directed by Stanton Welch since 2003, has recently announced its 2025-2026 season. Among the works to be presented will be a world premiere from Australian choreographer Alice Topp as part of a triple bill called An Evening with the Stars. The triple bill opens in late May 2026. Neither Topp’s work nor its accompanying music has been named as yet but Topp’s choreographic career clearly continues to grow internationally. Read more about her work and career to date at this link.

An oral history I recorded with Topp for the National Library of Australia in November 2024 is now available online at this link.

News from Mirramu Creative Arts Centre

Vivienne Rogis, co-founder with Elizabeth Cameron Dalman of Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, has recently returned to Canberra from Melbourne, to rejoin Dalman at Mirramu as assistant director. The Mirramu website records:

Viv Rogis is a pilates and movement practitioner with 30 years experience. She believes in the power of movement as medicine for the body and mind. She is interested in movement as art, as fun, as medicine, as community.

Her practice incudes performance, choreography, teaching, curating, researching, & writing about dance. Most recently she has been focused on pilates to help people reach their movement goals including pain reduction, prehab and rehab, as well as strength and capacity building for athletes and dancers.

Vivienne Rogis in *All my trials*, Mirramu Dance Company, 2015. Photo: © Barbie Robinson

Rogis performed in Canberra on many occasions before moving to Melbourne. Read about some of those performances at this link.

Coming up …

I am looking forward to seeing Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet as staged by Queensland Ballet, which opens towards the end of March. Watch this brief clip in which ballet master Matthew Lawrence talks about staging the production. It is especially interesting to hear him discuss making the production ‘three dimensional’.

Michelle Potter, 28 February 2025

Coralie Hinkley at Fort Street Girls’ High School

The extraordinary Coralie Hinkley, passionately involved in so many dance-related activities, died in September 2021. An obituary is at this link. After her death her collection of papers, photographs, writings and so many other items were donated to the National Library of Australia by her daughter. The collection, Papers of Coralie Hinkley, has since been processed, and a finding aid is available for viewing online at this link.

The collection is extensive and covers Hinkley’s life and career, including her time spent abroad as well as in Australia. Given that I, in my long-past youth, was a pupil at Fort Street Girls’ High School in Sydney, I have started my investigation of the material in the collection by looking at the photos and other material relating to Hinkley’s teaching project at that school (which unfortunately did not coincide with my time there).

Hinkley began her project at Fort Street in 1963 when she was appointed to the school with the encouragement of the then Principal, Alma Hamilton. While eventually there was a performing group as part of the project, every student across the six years of the secondary school curriculum received a dance lesson every week.

Coralie Hinkley teaching and rehearsing in the gymnasium at Fort Street Girls’ High School, 1970s. Papers of Coralie Hinkley, MS 10753, box 8. National Library of Australia. Photos: © Robert Walker

Amongst the various materials relating to Fort Street are reading lists, class notes, notes on specific works being created and Hinkley’s views on the aim of dance in education. On the latter she wrote:

Dance in education should contribute to the growth of the individual and this study is based on a scientific understanding of their needs and capacities. The modern dance provides an emotional release, an increased sensibility to the environment, skill in working creatively. The vital energy for artistic creation is fostered and nurtured; the child is developed physically, mentally and spiritually and the aesthetic side of her values is encouraged to flower.

There are also numerous photographs in the Hinkley collection showing the diversity of works created on the Fort Street students. Something of a surprise are images showing dancers performing/posing next to the sails of the Sydney Opera House, as in the header image and an image below. The photos were taken in 1970 although the Opera House did not open until 1973.

Fort Street dancers in a variety of roles. Papers of Coralie Hinkley, MS 10753, box 8. National Library of Australia. Photos: © Robert Walker

There are two oral history interviews with Hinkley in the National Library, one which I recorded in 1997-1998 and which is available online at this link, and one recorded in 2013 by Alex and Annette Hood, which is available at this link.

More to come on the Hinkley collection in due course.

Michelle Potter, 21 February 2025

Featured image (detail): Dancers from the Fort Street Dance Group posing next to the sails of the (unfinished) Sydney Opera House, 1970. Papers of Coralie Hinkley, MS 10753, box 8. National Library of Australia. Photo: © Robert Walker

Note on photographs: All photos are published with the permission of the Estate of Robert Walker.