Dance diary. February 2024

Russell Kerr Lecture 2024

The annual Russell Kerr Lecture for 2024 took place in Wellington on Sunday 25 February. The lecture honoured Sir Jon Trimmer, esteemed artist who made a huge contribution to ballet in New Zealand, and who died last year. I was to give a short talk in which I planned, by focusing on images including some costume designs, to show how Jonty, as he was familiarly known, was able to inhabit a role so magnificently. Unfortunately there was an issue with the plane that was taking me to Wellington from Sydney late on Saturday. The issue was not so much the plane itself but the weather in Wellington as we attempted to land. We were in fact diverted to Auckland (at around midnight) and a situation developed where we were told to wait in the transit lounge until the plane could take off to Wellington (the next morning). Well, without going into the highly unpleasant details, I ended up flying back to Sydney on the Sunday thus missing the lecture!

One of the most interesting parts of the proposed talk, at least for me, concerned a work called Tell Me a Tale choreographed by Gray Veredon in 1988 in which Jonty played the role of the Teller of Tales. In an interview I did with Jonty in 2018 he told me he was ‘a really “outback” character’ in the work. In a earlier interview (2012) with Royal New Zealand Ballet’s former wardrobe manager, Andrew Pfeiffer, I heard that ‘Jon was dressed in a Driza-Bone with a bit of silver fern wrapped through his hat and that emblem printed all over the top of his Driza-Bone.’ Below is Kristian Fredrikson’s design for the Teller of Tales alongside a photo of Jonty dressed in that outfit.

Andrew Pfeiffer also gave a very succinct outline of the story saying, ‘It was basically a storyteller telling a young boy the story of New Zealand in terms of the relationships between the Māori people and the colonists. Jonty was often just standing there with a young boy sitting at his feet. He was miming to the boy throughout the ballet with the ballet taking place on the side.’

And another aspect of that part of my talk was Veredon’s discussion of how the work came to be called Tell Me a Tale. Here is the audio link:

I was really disappointed not to have been able to give the talk and may work out later how to add the PPT to this site.

Hannah O’Neill

It is always good to hear about Hannah O’Neill’s ongoing success with Paris Opera Ballet. Here is a link to the latest news.

Lifeline Book Fair Canberra

The Lifeline Book Fair is a regular event in Canberra and has been for many years now. The most recent fair was in February 2024 and I ended up with seven dance-related items even though I had decided I have enough dance books for the rest of my life and wasn’t intending to buy anything this time. All in all the seven items cost me $27, which will go to helping Lifeline Canberra keep its crisis telephone service operating in the local area. I am currently reading the autobiographical I, Maya Plistetskaya, perhaps the most unusually written book I have ever come across. Next on the list is The Official Bolshoi Ballet Book of Swan Lake by Yuri Grigorovich and Alexander Demidov, whose chapters include ‘The Inside Story’, ‘Concerning One Delusion’, ‘A Painful Dilemma’ and other such fascinating titles. It promises to hold many matters that will be new to me I think.

Michelle Potter, 29 February 2024

Featured image: Jon Trimmer as Captain Hook in Russell Kerr’s Peter Pan. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 1999. Photo: © Maarten Holl

Jungle Book Reimagined. Akram Khan Company

23 February 2024. St James Theatre, Wellington
reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

A fascinating in-depth interview late last year on Radio New Zealand between Akram Khan and Kim Hill—(which of her interviews has not been deep and fascinating?)—is well worth accessing in RNZ archive. It’s no surprise to learn there that the bright mind and ferocious drive from Khan’s youngest days has followed through to his celebrated career as choreographer today.

We have seen other work by Khan here some Festivals back, in a program shared with French dancer Sylvie Guillem, and more recently and most memorably, in English National Ballet’s production of his Giselle in an Auckland season. That classic too was ‘re-imagined’ in a timeless setting, and a huge set was used to great effect for the dramatic dancing that nonetheless remained central to the work.

Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is a favourite among memories of childhood reading. There’s always a frisson to have old names and images recalled—Mowgli the child, Shere Khan the lurking tiger, Baloo the Bear, the Wolves of course. Its underlying theme of man in practical and ethical relation to other animal species and to nature is carried through, but is here darkly thrust into a contemporary setting of looming environmental disasters.

The show opens with giant animated images of desperate refugees on boats struggling to reach the shores of new lands, but there’s disaster on all sides and many do not make it. Sound familiar? Mowgli the girl child is a casualty, separated from her family, and she ends up in a wild place, a jungle where the wolves will discuss who’s to care for her. Sound familiar? How prescient was Kipling, how sharp is Khan.

Throughout the show many other large-scale images are projected onto several gauze curtains layered across the stage … herds of giraffes stampeding, huge elephants pondering with dread on the state of the natural environment. An atmospheric sound track is loud and throbbing, but to my disappointment prevents us from hearing the numerous excerpts of dialogue that are no doubt bringing further dimension to the work. As there is no printed program available that opportunity to quote from these excerpts is also lost.

Baloo the Bear is an entertaining comic, the girl-cub is central, and a number of mesmerising group dances bring further urgency to the performance. Readers wanting further detail about the cast and choreography may find it online.

I know there are arguments these days against printed programs—’Audiences don’t want to be told what to think’ … ‘Too much historical information we don’t need’ … ‘Save trees and protect the environment’ etc. I personally think that’s a pity—printed programs don’t need to be lavish and glossy (though I agree they sometimes are). They can be simple and modest but still packed with a wealth of information and profiles of performers. Without them we will soon move to a scenario without archives, memoirs, biographies, histories of the performing arts—nothing to store in the attic for decades—nothing to trigger and relish memory, to show and share with friends, and with grandchildren to encourage them to go to the theatre, and to read Kipling… and probably many fewer reviews to share thoughts and opinions, to help document an enduring but ephemeral art.

Jennifer Shennan, 29 February 2024

Featured image: The elephants from Jungle Book Reimagined. Photo: Supplied

Tutus on Tour. Royal New Zealand Ballet

24 February 2024. Te Raukura, Kapiti
reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

The two recently appointed directors at RNZB, Tobias Perkins and Ty King-Wall, express in the program’s introduction their hope that the national Tutus on Tour production will leave the audience captivated, moved and wanting more. It did and we do.

The program opens with a set of excerpts from Swan Lake, staged after Russell Kerr’s treasured production from 1996. Usually we see either the complete four act ballet (which RNZB will perform in May this year), or just Act II as a stand-alone piece. Here however is a totally new experience—the full four acts reduced to a 40 minute abridged version, so it’s the classic story but without the trimmings, and on a tiny budget. Far from reducing the impact of the mighty original, this in an unexpected way brings out a poignancy and intimacy in the interactions between the characters, in what is effectively a chamber version of the choreography. And with soloists of this calibre, we lose nothing of the quality.

Turid Revfeim has staged the piece with care—but she swiftly credits David McAllister (who has been Interim Artistic Director at RNZB this past year) with the actual choice and sequence of excerpts. There’s no von Rothbart on stage for example but his evil presence is caught in the orchestral overture (in very good amplification in this excellent venue). The performance is danced to a 2013 recording of Nigel Gaynor conducting the NZSO, back in that memorable era when RNZB retained their own conductor on the staff, and he’d be the best ballet conductor, music advisor and arranger that you could want. We’re off to a very good start indeed, bathing in sumptuous Tchaikovsky.

The cygnets are the pert little favourites and do very well. Laurynas Vejalis, a brooding Siegfried, dances powerful allegro legwork with adagio arms (that’s a whole lot harder to do than it sounds, and the results affect our pulse and breathing). Then he and Mayu Tanigaito as Odette develop an exquisite rapport in the pas de deux from Act II. This was a revelation and may have to do with the smaller proportions of the venue? In a full-sized theatre all the dancers have to project a larger-than-life scale to reach the back of the Gods. Here there’s little distance from stage to audience and that means the pair can dance solely to, with and for each other. Neither of them looks at the audience, we are merely voyeurs of their love-making. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

There’s a charming pas de trois danced by Calum Gray, Catarina Estévez Collins and Cadence Barrack. Calum has a new strength and presence which is a pleasure to see. Then follows a smashing Neopolitan number by Ema Takahashi and Dane Head that sizzles the stage. Wow.

There’s a new Siegfried now, the sharp and spirited Kihiro Kusukami, to dance with Odile, Katherine Minor—and here’s another triumph, again I think in part due to the intimate scale of the venue. Siegfried looks only at his ‘love’ (but it’s ‘the wrong woman’, you fool), while she, the beautiful brazen two-faced prostitute, looks at him just often enough to keep him mesmerised, but also at times at us, not with a smile exactly, more of a sneer and a wink, as if to say ‘Aren’t I clever to seduce a prince like this and do my father’s bidding at the same time?’ It’s a very skilled performance indeed, and cadences a miniature ballet we will long remember.

After the interval comes Alice Topp’s Clay, a pas de deux from her Logos, to music by Einaudi, seen here in 2023. Performed by Mayu Tanigaito and Levi Teachout, this is in extreme contrast of movement style and vocabulary from the previous work and Mayu reveals the great range of her performing ability. With tightly focussed tension, the drama of their pas de deux recalls the choreography of the full work.

Shaun James Kelly has re-worked Prismatic (from the larger cast first seen in last year’s Platinum season). The bright and energised piece pays homage to the neo-classical gem, Prismatic Variations, co-choregraphed by Russell Kerr and Poul Gnatt in 1959. The ascetic aura of that talisman work cannot be easily imitated, but I do wonder if the dancers’ facial expressions and smiles could be reined in and at least in parts replaced by the meditative neutrality that gave the original work such a celestial aura and mana. There are striking sequences and shapes throughout the choreography, with a final triumphant sculpture of the group of twelve dancers that suggests the crow’s nest or bowsprit of a ship sailing on the high seas.

I very much value the printed program for its thoughtful and detailed content. The Company is entering a new era, and one can only wish them all safe travels and happy dancing in this tour around the country. Half the Company does the North and half the South Island, which gives valuable access for younger dancers to try new roles. Audiences in twelve centres will be thrilled to have them back. Some in those audiences will remember the tours of 156 towns that Poul Gnatt took New Zealand Ballet to in 1950s. He persuaded them to enrol as Friends of the Ballet and their 5-shillings subs paid for the petrol to drive to the next town. The rest is history.

Jennifer Shennan, 26 February 2024

Featured image: Front cover image for the program for Tutus on Tour showing Mayu Tanigaito as Odile in Swan Lake. Photo: © Ross Brown

Hatupatu Kurungaituku—A Forbidden Love. Taki Rua Productions

Artistic Direction: Tānemahuta Gray
Kapa Haka choreography: Wētini Mītai-Ngãtai
at Tawhiri in Wellington. 20 – 24 February 2024 and following tour to Auckland, Christchurch & Rotorua
reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

It’s always a special moment for an audience when the poster image for a production is revealed in the course of play—only fleetingly, there it was, but we recognise it instantly since we have been looking forward to this show for some time and wondering how the combination of its many threads might weave together. And what an image it is, also on the program cover—a Maori man, Hatupatu, wearing a fine piupiu (woven fibre skirt), stands looking at us, his left fist strongly clenched, his right arm lifted to embrace the Maori bird-woman, Kurungaituku, who is suspended upside-down beside him, their cheeks adjacent, faces wreathed in red feathers and foliage, her bird body marked with feather shapes. It speaks of love and tragedy, of what is possible and what’s not, a man and a woman together but who can never be united, and one of them will die. The cryptic mystery of the legend of Hatupatu and the Bird-Woman is told in dialogue, all of it in te reo (Maori language), four males, gun performers of haka and taiaha. Female aerial artists are the birds, their urgent calls screeching out as they soar and sway overhead.

It is a courageous and innovative opening performance of the Aotearoa New Zealand Arts Festival, in a new venue that Wellington will see more of.

You’d have to be a visionary to even attempt such a production but if anyone can do it that would be Tānemahuta Gray in tandem with Taki Rua theatre enterprise. Tāne has been thinking for years about creating this show, let’s call it an aerial dance-play, drawn from a legend of Te Arawa Maori. It’s a remarkable project but he would be swift to credit the team of collaborators. Principal among those is Wētini Mītai-Ngatai, (of the leading cultural group in Rotorua, Te Mātārae I Ōrehu), who choreographed the kapa haka and taiaha sequences which Hatupatu and his three brothers deliver with power, precision and grace. There is contrasting humour when they goof around sparring with each other, to the great delight of the capacity audience which is seated or standing either side of the long thrust-stage. The Bird-Woman and her fellow creatures fly and soar above us, but without indulging in virtuosity merely to impress us. We are the more impressed by that.

Another stage at one end is backed by a drop screen with projected stunning images, stylised from the natural world phenomena around Rotorua. (Lucky me, I visited there by coincidence just last week so was thrilled to be reminded here of the wondrous dancing sands at Hamurana, the deafeningly wonderful waterfall at Okere, the fuming Pohutu geyser, the glorious soaring trees and exquisite bird life in the bush at Maungatautari). A trap door opens and recreates Pohutu geyser, and another trapdoor opens to reveal a mammoth cage in which the Bird Woman traps her man. These are all special effects that could go wrong 100 different ways. Nothing went wrong.

Paddy Free’s supportive sound score incorporated taonga puoro (traditional Maori music instruments) played by Alistair Fraser. John Verryt’s set design, Jo Kilgour’s lighting, Elizabeth Whiting’s and Amy Macaskill’s costume design are all faultless.

I specially appreciated the illuminated taniko weaving patterns that replaced a proscenium arch. That personified the title Taki Rua, the long-standing theatre company that presented this work. (Former director of Taki Rua, playwright Hone Kouka says of the name, ‘Taki Rua is a weaving pattern and means to go in twos—signifying the bi-cultural aspect of the theatre.’) This is an assembled tribe of Aotearoa New Zealand’s premier theatre artists all at their stunning best. Eds Eramiha as Hatupatu, a magnetic presence, is a natural performer across several genres without a cliché anywhere. Kasina Campbell as Kurungaituku is the compelling Bird Woman, every one of her gestures finely chiselled. Both are experienced in film, theatre and kapa haka so not a shred of performance nerves near them. Others in the cast include graduates from Toi Whakaari Drama School, Whitireia Performing Arts, Unitec, UCol, University of Auckland, New Zealand School of Dance, which accounts for a refreshing combination of performance styles.

Tāne Gray is himself a graduate of New Zealand School Dance and still maintains a presence for Maori tikanga there. This production carries further echo back to the 2001 season of Royal New Zealand Ballet’s Ihi FreNZy, which combined Mark Baldwin’s choreography to songs of Split Enz, and the kapa haka group of Te Mātārae I Ōrehu, led by Wētini Mītai-Ngātai. This production brings the promises from that early season to fruition here, 23 years later.

The production will now tour to Auckland, Christchurch and Rotorua—where I imagine the roof will lift off the venue, the audience rise in haka to applaud them, then everyone will be flying on high-wires.

Ka mua ka muri. Look back to look forwards.

Jennifer Shennan, 22 February 2024

Featured image: Hatupatu, played by Eds Eramiha, and Kurungaituku the Bird Woman played by Kasina Campbell. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Hilary Trotter (1933–2024)

Hilary Trotter, whose influence on the role of dance in society, especially in Australia, is almost without measure, has died in Canberra in her 91st year. From a personal point of view, she helped me for several years with the establishment of Brolga. An Australian Journal About Dance. And from the point of view of the growth of professional dance in the ACT, her input was remarkable. Below is an outline of Hilary’s career in dance written by her close colleague Julie Dyson, and published here with her permission.

Hilary Trotter, dance writer, advocate and activist
b. 13 June 1933; d. 18 February 2024

Hilary and her family moved to Canberra in the 1960s, where she was dance critic for the Canberra Times from 1972–90. She was an early advocate for dance in the ACT as a writer and parent of young children at the then Bryan Lawrence School of Ballet where she herself—determined to learn the intricacies of ballet—joined the classes as an adult beginner. In 1977 she became a founding member of the Australian Association for Dance Education (now the Australian Dance Council—Ausdance), and was its first ACT President from 1977–1981, and National President from 1981–84.

Hilary helped to draft Ausdance’s first Constitution in 1978, wrote its monthly newsletter Dance Action, managed ACT dance projects such as Sunday in the Park, initiated the annual ACT Summer School of Dance, the ACT Dance Festival, and then successfully lobbied for the establishment of the ACT’s first professional dance company, Human Veins Dance Theatre (HVDT).

In the early 1980s she was elected to the Gorman House establishment committee, ensuring that there would be workable and accessible dance spaces there with sprung floors, high ceilings and adequate office and green room spaces. Since then there have been permanent professional dance companies in residence in Gorman House [now Gorman Arts Centre]: HVDT, the Meryl Tankard Company, Sue Healey’s Vis-à-vis Dance Canberra, the Australian Choreographic Centre, and now QL2.

Funding for all Ausdance ACT projects were the direct result of Hilary’s skills as a grant application writer and advocate. When Ausdance National received its first Australia Council funding in 1984, Hilary became its co-director until her retirement in 1991, co-managing many projects for Ausdance National including the establishment of a national dance database, partnerships with the Media Arts & Entertainment Alliance (MEAA) to produce the Dancers’ Transition Report (1989), and the National Arts Industry Training Council to produce the first Safe Dance Report (1990) as its skilled project designer and editor, and inventing the now internationally-recognised term ‘Safe Dance’, with implications for dance practice world-wide. She also designed Brolga—an Australian Journal About Dance and Asia-Pacific Channels for many years, and was the writer, editor and designer of all Ausdance National publications throughout the 1990s.

Hilary’s vision for Ausdance was to see a network of funded Ausdance organisations throughout the country, and her work to realise that vision led to a real growth in Australians’ understanding of dance as an art form, as a vital part of every child’s education, as a health imperative and as a serious area of tertiary study. The national coordinators toured the country every year throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, visiting each Ausdance office, holding meetings with companies, studio teachers, students, tertiary institutions, local arts councils and funding bodies, and endeavouring to link all their activities to meaningfully connect the industry with a voice that would be heard by decisions makers at all levels, but most particularly in the federal Parliament.

Hilary’s passing sees the end of an advocacy era, where leadership that provides action and a national overview is respected, validated and acted upon by all in the greater interest of dance across political and state boundaries. Recent national and state funding decisions have greatly undermined this effort, a situation that saddened Hilary in her later years.

Hilary’s approach was gently persuasive, always backed by written evidence and supported by others with whom she worked. Hilary was made an Honorary Life Member of Ausdance in 1991, and was further honoured at the 2018 Australian Dance Awards for Services to Dance.

Vale Hilary!

—Julie Dyson, 18/2/24

Julie Dyson has reminded me also of an oral history that Hilary Trotter recorded in 1988 with Don Asker director of Human Veins Dance Theatre at the time, which is part of the oral history collection of the National Library of Australia. She also reminded me of a series of articles (five to be exact) regarding a 1982 tour made by Adelaide-based Australian Dance Theatre (ADT), then led by Jonathan Taylor. The articles, with the title ‘Dustbins and Taffeta’, appeared in Brolga, issues 10–14 (1999–2001). Looking back at them they provide an exceptional record of that tour, which started at Sadler’s Wells in London and then continued at a range of festivals in Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece. I randomly opened up the first article and read the following paragraph, which concerns Taylor’s work While we watched:

The deep impression made by the high energy level of the dancing is a hallmark of the piece. But the rake and small size of the Sadler’s Wells stage have caused problems of pace and timing in rehearsal. In Adelaide the dancers had to run at full speed to make their stage crossings in time, but here people keep finding themselves arriving at designated points in the pattern too early. Nevertheless I hear the stagehands behind me talking in low voices, ‘See the energy—it’s staggering—people zipping about all over the place—God, what stamina!

All five articles are well worth reading. (Brolga is unfortunately no longer in production but it is held in print form in most major state libraries around Australia.)

Vale Hilary indeed!

Michelle Potter, 19 February 2024

Featured image: Hilary Trotter receiving her Honorary Life Membership from Ausdance President Keith Bain in Perth in 1991. Photographer not identified