Winter Season. Royal New Zealand Ballet

16 July 2026. St.James Theatre, Wellington
reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

This triple bill showcases the impressive versatility of Royal New Zealand Ballet dancers. Within a 90 minute time-frame, they perform Frederick Ashton’s Birthday Offering, a 70 year old work of highly demanding classical style, imported from England; Sarah Foster-Sproull’s Ultra Folly, a clever and quirky home-grown piece commissioned by the Company in 2020; and Andrea Schermoly’s Stand to Reason, a searingly powerful dramatic work, also an RNZB commission in 2018, from a South African choreographer but on a New Zealand subject. A number of the dancers perform in every work, revealing the wide range of their artistic and technical skills, as well as the heroic stamina demanded of them. There’s not a weak moment in the entire performance.

The much-esteemed Matz Skoog, former artistic director of RNZB, has died recently and this season is dedicated to his memory. Matz often spoke of the challenge an artistic director faces in assembling a triple bill. (It’s much ‘easier’ to stage a single complete work—start with Act One, continue on till you reach Act Four and then stop). So, what to commission and what to re-stage? to combine with what, the old and the new, the tried and the true? then in what sequence? (get this wrong and you can spoil the evening). Beauty, poetry, drama/comedy, abstract, narrative/traditional, modernist, political? and all within a credible budget. The choices made reveal the true measure of an artistic director, and with this program Ty King-Wall proves equal to the challenge.

Birthday Offering is a period piece from 1956 but even then was styled after a much earlier period of ballet’s classicism. Seven couples at a celebration perform défilés in several directions, then six of the women dance filigree solos, each styled with a hint of contrasting personality between them. The technical demands of these solos are intense but to the credit of each performer they are danced with great assurance, grace and meticulous timing. The male partners stand as pillars across the back of the stage for what seems like ages, but that’s the choreography so you can’t go changing it in Wellington. The lead couple, Mayu Tanigaito and Laurynas Véjalis give their exquisite pas de deux a deeply affecting quality, using port de bras in such a loving way that humanises the formal classicism of the movements involved. A pity that the Glazounov recording seems so muddy and uncelebratory—even though Robert Irving, arguably the best ballet conductor of his time, was involved in scoring the arrangements. (I once heard Irving conduct Ravel’s Tzigane at New York City Ballet, where in some kind of alchemy he merged the composition and choreography into one). Birthday Offering, staged here by England’s Royal Ballet, is meticulously faithful to the original. For some in our audience this will have been their favourite work of the evening.

Mayu Tanigaito and Laurynas Véjalis in a moment from *Birthday Offering*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2026. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

Ultra Folly, first commissioned here in 2018, was recently performed in London when RNZB was invited to participate the International Draft Works (IDW) season (see my earlier review on On Dancing…). Foster-Sproull has two couples in a bright and quirky commoedic play on manners, dancing with spoof and sauce, delivered with impeccable timing.

Jemima Scott and Kirby Selchow in a scene from Ultra Folly. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2026. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

It’s a far cry in style from the driving passion in the music, La Folie d’Espagne & Variations from 17th century chamber music here played by Jordi Savall and Hesperion XX1.

The IDW project is a heartening demonstration of how international co-operation in ballet is possible, and one wishes there could be more of that since ballet is not a sports code requiring one team to win and the other to lose. All are winners. Eight companies were invited to participate, so a source of pride for us all that RNZB was included. For some in our audience this will have been their favourite work of the evening.

Then comes the knockout—Stand to Reason. This is a powerful tribute to the courage and struggles in the pioneering suffragette movement led here by Kate Sheppard. Take your right to vote for granted by all means, don’t waste it, find a politician you can trust (good luck) but never forget that New Zealand led the world in that path to universal suffrage. Schermoly’s work has driven movement, with design and lighting faultlessly integrated, to the superbly motivating music of Marin Marais (such good dance music that baroque composers have left for choreographers of later generations to explore). Rarely is the theme of any dance work so intensely stitched in to every move by every dancer —here in the large cast, solely female. The solo created specially for Kirby Selchow is danced with stunning strength and commitment, and one can only salute and remember that. How good would it be to make a film of this work.

A moment from *Stand to Reason*. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2026. Photo: © Stephen A’Court

I cannot help but be reminded of Soldatenmis, by Jiří Kylián, one of the world’s leading choreographers programmed here in the 1990s by Matz Skoog. That had a large cast, solely male, unless a female (Joan of Arc) had to step up at the last minute to replace an injured player, as did, most memorably, happen here in both of the seasons Skoog staged.

(Local readers, take note of the film in the current Documentary Film Festival—Return to the Strange Land, by and about Kylian—a single screening only, Sunday 27 July, at The Roxy, in a small theatre, inexplicably not yet sold out twice over).

A young audience member quietly said after seeing this work—’That’s the first ballet I’ve seen that doesn’t sexualise a woman waiting and waiting for some man to come and put his hands around her waist and twirl her round and round on the spot. It reminds me of karate. That was amazing.’

For some in the audience this will have been their favourite work of the evening. Count me in.

Jennifer Shennan, 21 July 2026

Featured image: A moment from Stand to Reason. Royal New Zealand Ballet, 2026. Photo: © Stephen A’Court .

Return of the Peggy van Praagh and Keith Bain Fellowships

Ausdance has announced the return of two fellowships, the Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship and the Keith Bain Choreographic Travel Fellowship. Ausdance initiated the fellowships some years ago but closure was necessary during the COVID outbreak. They have just now been reinstated and, as before, are worth $10,000 each.

(Left) Peggy van Praagh teaching at the Australian Ballet, 1965. Photo: © Keith Byron, Australian News and Information Bureau; (Right) Keith Bain as the Pied Piper in a Bodenwieser Studio recital, 1954. Photo: © Eric Cuckson

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Peggy van Praagh (1910-1990) and Keith Bain (1926-2012) were major figures in many aspects of dance in Australia and their input spanned several decades. It was especially strong in the mid-20th century but continued until their respective deaths.

Van Praagh’s major contribution to dance in Australia was as founding artistic director of the Australian Ballet, a position she held from 1962 to 1974 and again in 1978. She shared the position of artistic director with Robert Helpmann from 1965 until 1974. But she was prominent in many other ways including as, briefly, artistic director of the Borovansky Ballet and as a teacher with various organisations.

Keith Bain had a distinguished career in a variety of dance areas including performance, choreography and teaching. He danced with the Bodenwieser Ballet for example, and choreographed for Ballet Australia and taught and lectured at NIDA. In his book, The Principles of Movement (2013), his approach to movement is explained in detail

The Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship
A Choreographic Fellowship of $10,000 awarded to a mid-career choreographer.

Peggy van Praagh working with Kathy Hourigan at the National Capital Ballet School, ca. 1980s. Photo: © Don Gallagher

After van Praagh’s death in 1990, the Trustees of her Estate made a donation to Ausdance National for the establishment of the Peggy van Praagh Fellowship, an initiative to support choreographers.

See the details of the award at this link.

The Keith Bain Choreographic Travel Fellowship
The Keith Bain Choreographic Travel Fellowship supports travel and experiences by emerging choreographers across any dance genre.

Keith Bain and Coralie Hinkley in a section from Gertrud Bodenwieser’s *Central Australian Suite*, 1957. Photo: © Max Dupain

See details of the award at this link.

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Guidelines and application details at these links:
Peggy van Praagh Fellwship
Keith Bain Fellowship

Applications close at 5 pm on 31 July. Don’t miss out!

Michelle Potter, 15 July 2026

Fever/Dream. Ballet Collective Aotearoa

3 July 2026. Hannah Playhouse, Wellington
reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

Fever/Dream is a program of five works performed by the current members of Ballet Collective Aotearoa. Turid Revfeim has for some years now established and directed this independent collective, offering regular classes and creating opportunities for free-lance dancers to perform and choreograph. Their work is of consistently high standard and brings much of interest to our stages.

(See my earlier reviews on On Dancing of their Subtle Dances with NZTrio musicians playing live on stage, touring nationally to many arts festivals on the circuit here; Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin with Orchestra Wellington; and most memorably Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night with NZ String Quartet in a Chamber Music NZ project). They do small-scale and local shows as well.

Effectively BCA is a private ballet company. It’s been a long time since Ida Rubinstein used her considerable fortune to set up one of those in Paris, and to commission choreographies in which she herself performed the central (if not too demanding) roles. Money talks but it doesn’t usually say much. But Revfeim is no Rubinstein. Quite how she keeps BCA going, with no Board and no budget is something of a mystery, probably as much to her as to the rest of us, but there it is, and we should salute them.

The opening work, Fever, choreographed by Lyndon Foley, is a small masterpiece, beautifully crafted. Remember his name and hope he can continue choreographing. A tight group of six dancers deliver a faultless phenomenon of a million movements many of them mechanical, a few of them poignant, without ever losing the central thrust. The piece echoes the themes in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, and Gertrud Bodenwieser’s The Demon Machine — so of course also resonates with the AI scenario that hovers over our heads today. One dancer is a conscientious objector for about 30 seconds but we do not miss it. Later there’s a short-lived motif of someone down on the floor swimming — for dear life, I guess. Aren’t we all?

Then follows Fever to Dream, a video by Hanna Harris and Olivia Duncan. Four dancers are caught cavorting among the roses at the local Botanical Gardens, then In Lambton Quay, then at Oriental Bay so there was no doubt what city we were in. A skilled poem, one word to a line, ran down the side of the screen — Fever, Lever, Lover, Loves, Loses, Loser, Laser … and so on till the final line, reached by a single letter change from Dread to Dream. The poem was reproduced in the printed program (hooray that there was one) and gave a spine to all the other works on the program.

Paths Cross, directed by Turid Revfeim, grew from a beginning in improvisation. Contrasting dance styles from each performer gave the work an interesting and impressive texture. Grit-S a solo performed by Zoe White, accompanied by Jefferson Chen on stage singing and playing keyboard. Unfortunately in the performance I attended the volume was very loud, which made it difficult to hear and to follow the subtleties that were obviously present.

Zoe White in a moment from *Grit*. Ballet Collective Aotearoa, 2026. Photo: © Gabriella Hawke

(D)rea(m)lity, choreographed by Zoe White, makęs a striking and dramatic final work, playing off awake and asleep states, a somewhat terrifying dream sequence, then an inspired lighting trick to assure us all is well. Then follows an ambiguous ending that could be seen as a challenge to that assurance. This is what theatre is for.

A moment from *(D)rea(m)lity*. Ballet Collective Aotearoa, 2026. Photo: © Gabriella Hawke

Postscript: Several of the pieces used a haze machine, which, next to strobe lighting, is my least favourite trick from the tech crew. If a hazy effect is required then choreograph it I say, don’t turn on a mindless machine as you risk at least some of the audience closing their eyes, which means they might miss really important and intelligent choreography.

Jennifer Shennan, 8 July 2026

Featured image: A moment from Fever. Ballet Collective Aotearoa, 2026. Photo: © Gabriella Hawke

Dance diary. June 2026

Lucy Guerin moves on

Lucy Guerin, director and founder of the Melbourne-based contemporary dance company Lucy Guerin Inc, will step down from her position at the end of 2026. Guerin established her company 25 years ago and, while 25 years is a more than commendable time to have been at the helm of a dance company, the news came as something of a shock. Guerin said of her decision:

After 25 years, I have decided to step down as Artistic Director of LGI to explore new directions in dance. I founded the company in 2002 to support the making and touring of my productions, but over the years it has become so much more than that. It is now a centre for choreography, discussion, learning, connection and ideas and there are so many who have worked incredibly hard to support this organization. I am deeply grateful to all of them

Guerin will continue to lead the company until the end of 2026 and will perform a solo work in October before relinquishing her role as director. The LGI Board will begin a search for a new director in the coming weeks. It will be interesting to see who will be selected to take on the position vacated by Guerin, and what new role Guerin will take on in the future.

For posts about Lucy Guerin on this website follow this link.

Adelaide College of the Arts

I had the pleasure of being in Adelaide recently where I saw a performance by dance and design students from Years 2 and 3 at the Adelaide College of the Arts. The evening consisted of two original dance works, Made to_ by Singaporean guest choreographer Ru Ma, along with there & gone by Peter Sheedy, lecturer and course co-ordinator for the dance program at the College.

The students performed exceptionally well in both works although I especially admired the Sheedy work. It was a thoroughly abstract work making great use of onstage objects that were moved around the stage at various times. It also had the dancers constantly regrouping in various ways and was in fact an exceptional way of introducing students to the various possibilities of choreography. A great training piece although the dancers performed like professionals rather than students in training.

News from Loughlan Prior

Loughlan Prior’s production of Hansel Gretel, made originally for Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2019, has just recently been performed in Las Vegas by Nevada Ballet Theatre. It was really well received there and was described in one review as a ‘spectacular, surreal imagining’ of the well-known story with ‘stunning visual design’ and ‘high energy choreography’.

Read Jennifer Shennan’s review of the work as seen in Wellington in 2019 at this link, and also her review of the 2023 return season at this link.

Prior is currently working in London on a new show, The McRae/Vassiliev Project, in collaboration with director Natalie Abrahami, dancer and choreographer Steven McRae, musician Vasko Vassilev, and dancer Sarah Lamb. Inspired by the work of violinist Niccolo Paganinit, it will premiere in September in the Linbury Theatre at London’s Royal Opera House.

See more about The McRae/Vassiiev Project at this link.

Loughlan Prior and Laura Saxon-Jones performing with artists from the New Zealand School of Music, 2019. Photo: © Stephen Gibbs

Beth Dean

I quite accidentally came across a small manuscript collection of material about Beth Dean held in the National Library in Canberra (MS 10011, received 2004). I was always under the impression that her collection was held in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales, and indeed there is a substantial collection there. But somehow a small number of items found their way to Canberra. It was a thrill to find some early photographs of Dean, which I had never seen before.

Beth Dean in Cleveland, Ohio, 1935. Photo: © Harry A Cole

But especially interesting, given that several years ago now (and without being aware of the NLA material), I had given a paper on dance in Australia in the 1950s. My talk focused on Australian themes and my mention of Dean included a brief discussion of her choreography for an Australia focused work called G’day Digger danced to a score by John Antill. So, I was especially interested in Dean’s writings in the NLA collection regarding her extensive research for her production of Corroboree, also danced to an Antill score and created especially for presentation during a visit to Australia in 1954 by Queen Elizabeth II. Of her approach to the story of her Corroboree Dean wrote:

The story of my “Corroboree” was about a young boy and his initiation, and his facing of himself and of the chimeras of our fears and our imagination. The Dreamtime stories of his ancestors are shown to him, as they were when we sat in the red dust with those people during all their ceremonies.

And of her background research she wrote:

For my version of the ballet I had spent those months [on which she elaborates at length elsewhere in the papers] living with the Aboriginal people studying their mythology, but even more finding the beauty and the depth of their discipline.

It is totally fascinating material, provided we look at it as coming from the 1950s.

Press for June 2026

– ‘Opera Gala (Snow Concert Hall ).’ Review of Opera Gala. Limelight Magazine, 1 June 2026. Online at this link.

– ‘Physicality fuels Sydney Dance Company’s engine.’ Review of Engine, Sydney Dance Company. CBR CityNews, 25 June 2026. Online at this link

Michelle Potter, 30 June 2026

Engine. Sydney Dance Company

My review of Engine was published online by Canberra City News on 25 June 2026, following its opening performance in Sydney on 24 June. The review below is a slightly enlarged version of the City News post. Follow this link to the City News review.

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24 June 2026. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Sydney Dance Company’s latest production, Engine, is a triple bill with works from Canberra-trained Melanie Lane, with a return of her acclaimed work Love Lock; Berlin-based, Spanish choreographer Fran Diaz, with the Australian premiere of The Mass Ornament; and Rafael Bonachela, artistic director of Sydney Dance Company, with a new work, The Journey Itself is Home.

The evening opened with Love Lock, which I first saw back in 2024 when it was part of Sydney Dance Company’s Twofold program. Then I was transfixed by the notion and nature of the love lock (a padlock that represents everlasting love), and its role in people’s connections with those who share their life. This time I was able to focus more on the choreography, which was like nothing I have seen from any other choreographer. Lane’s approach to movement was quite eccentric with its angularity from individual dancers set beside unity of groupings of bodies.

Costumes were by Akira Isogawa. He started out with plain black pants and tops in various lengths and shapes, but his exceptional additions made across the course of Love Lock eventually contributed to the individuality that characterised the work. A pounding score from [Chris] Clark, which he describes as ‘a dense collage of percussion/cello/synthesisers/voices/flutes’, and atmospheric lighting from Damien Cooper, also made exceptional contributions to the production.

Dancers from Sydney Dance Company in a scene from *Love Lock*, 2026. Photo: © Wendell Teodoro

After a brief pause while the stage was being reset, Fran Diaz’s The Mass Ornament, with very plain costumes in dark green satin-like material, also designed by Diaz, took us into a world that focused on a new look at, or changed approach to, popular music hall entertainment. With its relatively simplistic use of movement and groupings, it reflected a certain unison characteristic of early popular entertainment. But it nevertheless embodied an individuality from the dancers and suggested we look beyond superficiality at inherent emotional connections. The Mass Ornament was not my favourite work on the program, but was interesting as perhaps an example of an early German Expressionist approach to art? Then, after some thought, I accepted the title of the work, especially the Ornament aspect of that title, as being a subtle comment on the nature of popular entertainment.

Dancers from Sydney Dance Company in a scene from *The Mass Ornament*, 2026. Photo: © Wendell Teodoro

The evening concluded with Bonachela’s brand new The Journey Itself is Home danced to a score by Bryce Dessner and lit by Damien Cooper. Compared with the other two works, Bonachela’s choreography looked quite unusual, or at least more like Western contemporary dance as we tend to know it. The work certainly showed Bonachela’s choreographic fluidity and approach to connections between dancers. A section that was basically a series of duets, one duet replacing the previous one, was admirable.

Dancers from Sydney Dance Company in a duet from *The Journey Itself is Home*, 2026. Photo: © Wendell Teodoro

But what stood out for me in this work was the manner in which Bonachela had used unison dancing and had made it quite fast-paced. It carried the work forward in an unexpected manner.

Before the show began, I wondered why the program had the somewhat unusual title of Engine. It was quite clear, however, from Lane’s opening piece that the title referred to an intensity of movement seen in the full-on, engine-like physicality that characterised all three works. The triple bill format is always an intriguing arrangement and opens up a wealth of possibilities. This program opened up one very clear aspect of the evening’s presentation: the powerful manner in which dance can deliver its inherent physicality and connectivity.

But an engine-like visual effect was just one aspect of what we saw onstage. For a start, the dancers were breathtakingly brilliant in every work. Then the costumes and lighting were outstanding in the way in which they contributed to the different approaches of each of the three choreographers—from the idiosyncratic nature of Lane’s work, through the hard-core expression from Diaz, and on to the more gentle and predictable nature of Bonachela’s contribution.

Engine was a stunning show and well deserving of the standing ovation and loud cheers and exclamations that concluded the evening.

Michelle Potter, 28 June 2026

Featured image: Dancers from Sydney Dance Company in a scene from Love Lock, 2026, with a view of some of Akira Isolgawa’s additions to the costumes. Photo: © Wendell Teodoro

I was a guest of Sydney Dance Company at this performance.

The comment from Clark about the music for Love Lock comes his notes on the work as published in the program for Engine.