Dancer Rowena Jackson has died at the age of 98 in her home on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Jackson had an exceptional career with London’s Royal Ballet before returning to New Zealand, where she was born and where she and her husband, Philip Chatfield (1927-2021), became involved with a variety of dance activities. In 1993 Jackson and Chatfield moved to Queensland, to be closer to their family.
Jackson first came to Australia as a professional performer in 1957 to dance in Sydney and Melbourne as a guest artist with the Borovansky Ballet in a season that featured Margot Fonteyn. Her performances in Australia in 1957 were widely praised by critics with one writer remarking of Jackson and Bryan Ashbridge in the pas de deux from Don Quixote:
New Zealand can take a bow for Rowena Jackson and Bryan Ashbridge. Their pas de deux was an interlude of perfection. Two rubies in a velvet case … Precise and thrilling, their artistry was incontestable.*
Jackson returned to the southern hemisphere when the Royal Ballet toured to Australia and New Zealand in 1958-1959. Jackson and Chatfield led the company on that occasion and, during that tour, Jackson’s dancing was regarded as technically faultless. She had particular success as Swanilda in Coppélia often dancing alongside Robert Helpmann as Dr Coppélius.
Rowena Jackson died on 15 August 2024. Follow this link to read Jennifer Shennan’s obituary published in New Zealand by The Post on 2 September 2024.
Voices of the Italian Baroque
I don’t usually review music performances but circumstances were such that I ended up reviewing a one-performance-only event in Canberra by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. I really enjoyed the program, Voices of the Italian Baroque, and it was in fact the word ‘Baroque’ in the title that made me, hesitantly I have to say, volunteer to do it when no one else was available. The Baroque era, in terms of art and architecture, has long interested me, and I was curious to know whether the characteristics I associate with the art and architecture of the Baroque era were also present in music from the period. Here is a link to the review.
In the review I mention a sculpture by Bernini, which took my breath away when I saw it in real life (after paying to turn on a light so it could be seen properly!). Below is an image of that sculpture, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. It is often thought to have sexual undertones and is in a church in Rome, Santa Maria della Vittoria.
I may never review another music performance, who knows? But I am glad of the experience I had with Voices of the Italian Baroque, including being present in a relatively new theatre space in Canberra, the Snow Concert Hall, with its exceptional use of wood as the stage floor, and as a decorative item on the walls.
I am looking forward to seeing Queensland Ballet’s production of Coco Chanel. Life of a fashion icon, which takes the stage in Brisbane in October. Choreographed by Belgian-Columbian artist Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, it has already been seen, as it is a co-production, in Hong Kong and Atlanta.
As these things happen, however, Chanel’s connections with the dance world have surfaced on and off as I have continued my reading of books that have sat unread on my bookshelves for a number of years. At the moment I am reading Richard Buckle’s In the wake of Diaghilev and have discovered that Chanel subsidised the Massine revival of The Rite of Spring in 1920 when (according to Buckle) no one could remember the Nijinsky choreography. Chanel also visited Diaghilev in his hotel the day before he died in August 1929. She also donated 10,000 French francs to the effort by Boris Kochno and George Balanchine to start up a new company following Diaghilev’s death.** (10,000 French francs was a large amount of money given that with 100 French francs you could, at the time, buy around a year’s worth of milk, or butter plus sugar, or 6 months of bread—according to information found on the web).
Just how much of Chanel’s diverse career and political life will be featured in the ballet is yet to be seen. Such is the interest in the work, however, that some nights in the season are already sold out!
– ‘Review: Royal New Zealand Ballet.’ Review of Solace, Royal New Zealand Ballet. Dance Australia, 5 August 2024. Online at this link. – ‘A five-star show when dance meets music.’ Review of Silence & Rapture, Australian Chamber Orchestra & Sydney Dance Company. CBR CityNews, 18 August 2024. Online at this link. – ‘Uneasy show that pulled no punches in its message.’ Review of Jurrungu Ngan-Ga [Straight Talk], Marrugeku. CBR CityNews, 24 August 2024. Online at this link. – ‘Voices bring beauty to music of Italian Baroque.’ Review of Voices of the Italian Baroque, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. CBR City News, 25 August 2024. Online at this link.
John Neumeier choreographer. Hamburg Ballet reviewed by Jennifer Shennan
John Neumeier has been the artistic director and choreographer of Hamburg Ballet since 1973. His prolific output of numerous full-length ballets over those decades is legendary, and what’s more, all the works have stayed current in the company’s repertoire and are given regular return seasons. That is a phenomenal achievement in world ballet terms.
I was more than fortunate, when on a Goethe Institut study tour to Germany in 2005, to see many of Neumeier’s full-length ballets staged in a breathtaking single week in Hamburg—Romeo & Juliet, Lady of the Camelias, Death in Venice, Midsummer Nights Dream, Odysseus, Mahler Third Symphony. I have simply never recovered from that week and indeed have no intention of ever recovering.
Hamburg Ballet later performed in Brisbane where I saw Nijinsky Gala. Neumeier has long and often cited Vaslav Nijinsky as the formative inspiration for his own life in ballet. On a later visit to Copenhagen I was enormously impressed by the Royal Danish Ballet’s production of The Little Mermaid, which they had commissioned of Neumeier. I visited Hamburg again in 2015, to see his Bach St.Matthew Passion.
I’d have to say deep and lasting gratitude was the word for all these choreographic riches, but you can’t have too much of a good thing so when recently I noticed Dona Nobis Pacem, to JS Bach’s B Minor Mass, was to be Neumeier’s prayer for peace in the world and his swan song choreography as he prepares to retire from Hamburg Ballet, I was tempted to treat myself to a final trip to Europe. Would I, wouldn’t I get there?
Measure my delight then to notice that the local Arts TV channel was about to screen film of Dona Nobis Pacem right here in my front room! So I didn’t have to fly to Europe after all but just to cancel all commitments for a day and a night and sit glued to the screen for two airings of the work that proves among the of most poignant, exquisite, sad and uplifting of ballets ever made.
Do check Youtube for a 5 minute excerpt of the work. There you will see the superb ensemble dancing of the blessed spirits, as well as of the shell-shocked soldier-victims of war. The lead performer, Spanish born dancer Aleix Martinez, brilliantly portrays the central role of—shall we call him the Unknown Soldier, or Everyman. He would and should outdance warmongers everywhere—but that’s not the way the world works of course.
One of several excerpts from Dona Nobis Pacem available on YouTube
A few days later the same Arts Channel broadcast the documentary—The Life and Work of John Neumeier. All manner of insights are offered, as to how the boy from Milwaukee ended up as arguably Europe’s finest ballet choreographer who rates the music he selects as highly as the dances he sets to them. You don’t work with French pianist David Fray unless you mean business. Clearly these films exist somewhere in the world. Please hunt them down and watch them, then tell your grandchildren what you saw.
If we had to pick our three favourite choreographers in the whole world, and thank goodness we don’t, my votes would go to John Neumeier, and to New Zealand’s Gray Veredon (more on him later), and the remarkable Douglas Wright. Both Neumeier and Wright shared the magnetic inspiration of Nijinsky, of dancer and of choreographer in their own calling, and I was more than once made mindful of Wright by this choreography of Neumeier and by the performance of Martinez, which is about the finest compliment I can offer to them all.
Tributes from Michelle Potter and Jennifer Shennan
From Michelle: It is with immense sadness that I pass on the news that esteemed dance writer, Joan Acocella, has died in New York City aged 78. She was one of the best dance writers I have come across. Why? Her writing style was always eloquent, elegant and engaging. Her research for her writing seemed to know no bounds. And her way of thinking about dance was profoundly different from most dance writers.
In the introduction to her book, Twenty-eight artists and two saints, a collection of essays written initially for other printed sources (largely but not exclusively for The New Yorker), she explains her point of view in relation to the essays included in the book. Her approach addresses what she calls ‘the pain that came with the art-making, interfering with it, and how the artist dealt with this’ rather than what she sees as a common belief that artists endure ‘a miserable childhood and then, in their adult work, to weave that straw into gold’.1
Her 1993 publication Mark Morris also has a beautiful slant on the idea of biography. In her Author’s Note that precedes the biography itself she writes:
My goal was to provide an account of [Morris’] life and a guide to his work, but what I wanted most was to give a portrait of his imagination—an idea of how he thinks, or how he thinks the thoughts that lead to his dances.2
Elsewhere on this site I have written about Mark Morris with the words:
Acocella knew Morris’ background, sexual, emotional, family and otherwise, but didn’t dwell on it as such. Instead she showed us so clearly how that background could give us an insight into his works. I especially enjoyed her chapter on Morris’ time in Brussels. True, she mentioned the dramas, but also the successes so that it became a balanced account of that time. She also set it within a context of European approaches to viewing dance and contrasted these approaches with those she thought were more typical of American thoughts. Her biography of Morris is so worth reading.
Then there is her fabulous editing of Nijinsky’s diaries in which she gives us the real thing, not an expurgated version as did Nijinsky’s wife, Romola.
But I have one personal memory that has always stayed, and always will stay with me. While working in New York I was giving a media introduction to a New York Public Library Dance Division exhibition INVENTION. Merce Cunningham and collaborators. I was about to use a quote from an article by Acocella on the Cunningham production Split Sides. As I looked up and out to the audience, there was Joan Acocella smiling beatifically as her name was mentioned and somehow seeming to stand out from the others in the auditorium. A shining moment and a special memory of an exceptional lover of dance.
From Jennifer: In 2000 Wellington’s International Festival of the Arts proposed an Arts Writing initiative in which the British High Commission brought out Michael Billington, long-time theatre critic for The Guardian, and Fulbright New Zealand brought Joan Acocella, dance critic from New York.
(At first the invitation had gone Deborah Jowitt but, as the deadline for her book on Antony Tudor was approaching, she declined. Jenny Gill of Fulbright asked me to suggest an alternative. I had met Joan Acocella in 1980s while studying in New York and many of us were delighted when she accepted the invitation).
I requested that Joan first be taken to Dunedin where RNZBallet were performing a season including halo by Douglas Wright, and Mark Morris’ Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes, and her resulting review was full of interest. Then in Wellington Joan conducted a weekend dance-writing workshop—some dozen of us attended NDT’s Mozart program, wrote a review overnight, delivered those to Joan at her hotel before breakfast then met mid-morning to hear her comments on our various reviews. It was a fascinating experience and I stlll use my notes from that weekend.
I also arranged for Joan to give a lecture at NZSchool of Dance where she spoke about Nijinksy. (Joan’s edition of Nijinsky’s Diary reinstates all that his wife Romola had omitted from her early publication of it. Her biography of Mark Morris is also an insightful study of an iconoclastic artist).
In the years of Joan’s sparkling dance and literature writings for the NY Review of Books, and for The New Yorker, there are many classic pieces, but her trip with Baryshnikov on his first return to Riga is probably the most indelibly etched of them all.
A very great dance writer indeed. It was a privilege to have known and worked with her.
Joan Acocella: born San Francisco, 13 April 1945; died New York City, 7 January 2024
Michelle Potter and Jennifer Shennan, 11 January 2024
Featured Image: Joan Acocella photographed in New York. Photo from The New York Review of Books.
1. Twenty-eight artists and two saints (New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House) 2007), p. xiii. Not all the subjects in this book are dance artists but those who are include Lucia Joyce, Vaslav Nijinsky, Lincoln Kirstein, Frederick Ashton, Jerome Robbins, Suzanne Farrell, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Martha Graham, Bob Fosse and Twyla Tharp.
2. Mark Morris (New York: Farrer Straus Giroux, 1993), unpaginated.
James Batchelor continues to make a name for himself in Europe and November will see a national tour around Sweden by Norrdans (Northern Dance) of Batchelor’s latest work Event. Event will share the program with Everlasting—a new love by New York-based choreographer Jeanine Durning. Media for Event describes it as follows:
In Event by Australian choreographer James Batchelor, you encounter a sensuous world of looping patterns and oceanic ripples. Ornamented with a hint of the baroque, the dancers find joy in connection, synchronising and falling into rhythm with an original score from collaborator Morgan Hickinbotham.
Event premiered in late October. One reviewer (Yvonne Rittval) remarked, ‘The stage is covered by a painting with sinuous, swelling shapes in warm colors reminiscent of the Baroque. One gets the exciting feeling that the ten dancers, some wearing crinolines others in many layers of frills, have risen from the painting and are bringing it to life.’
Below is a brief teaser.
Diaghilev’s Empire
Browsing one day in Dymocks bookshop in Sydney I spotted a book called Diaghilev’s Empire. How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World. It was written by English opera critic and (in his own words) ‘incurable balletomane’ Rupert Christiansen and was published in late 2022. It had not previously come to my notice for whatever reason and my initial reaction was ‘not another book about Diaghilev’. But I bought it anyway and am in the process of reading it. So far it has turned out to be a fascinating read and more than interesting for the comments Christiansen has included from books written by those who danced, or otherwise engaged with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. But the one paragraph that continues to make me smile is a quote from American author and critic, Carl van Vechten, about the opening performance in Paris of Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring. Van Vechten remarked (and according to Christiansen this quote comes from Romola Nijinsky’s book Nijinsky):
A young man occupied the place behind me. He stood up during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was labouring, thanks to the potent force of the music, betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great I did not feel the blows for some time. They were perfectly synchronised with the beat of the music.
And so I continue with my reading!
News from Houston Ballet
The most recent news from Houston Ballet is that Australian conductor Simon Thew has been appointed as the company’s musical director and chief conductor. Thew has had a distinguished career across many countries to date and has been the recipient of many awards including the Dame Joan Sutherland/Richard Bonynge Travel Scholarship and a Churchill Fellowship. Thew and Welch first came into contact in 2016 when Houston Ballet staged Welch’s Romeo and Juliet in Australia. On that occasion, Thew joined Houston Ballet’s Ermanno Florio as a guest conductor.
In other news, Stanton Welch has been at the helm of Houston Ballet for some 20 years now but last year former principal with American Ballet Theatre and recent artistic director of Washington Ballet, Julie Kent, joined him as co-artistic director. An article on that joint directorship written by Nancy Wozny recently appeared in Pointe Magazine. Read it at this link.
4 March 2023. Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney (in association with Sydney WorldPride Arts)
KING begins with Bulgarian singer/songwriter Ivo Dimchev walking down an aisle of the auditorium and taking his place onstage in front of the still-lowered front curtain. With a keyboard in hand he starts singing in his mesmerising voice, at times as a bass, at others as a counter-tenor. As his song ends, the curtain rises to reveal a combination set—a jungle of green growth and a mini cabaret setting represented by a chandelier. Against this background stands an all-male cast of ten dancers dressed formally in black-tie dinner suits. They are ready to dance.
The early choreography was fast-paced and extremely acrobatic, almost circus-style with overtones of street dancing. It was also quite formalised with group shapes appearing and disappearing and hands and arms forming group patterns, sometimes still and picture perfect, sometimes in motion. It’s transfixing to watch and seems to say, ‘Look, this is how men can be and behave, and how we can connect with each other. We have power’
But slowly individual contacts were made amongst the group, many with obvious sexual overtones. The dancers then removed their coats, ties and shirts and began a different kind of connection with each other. The way that identity and power showed themselves in the opening scenes was slowly changing into a kind of aggression and anger, and perhaps also resentment of a kind. Dimchev continued to sing and provoke the performers.
Choreographically there were changes too. The men started to look progressively more animal-like, less than human at times. There were even moments when the Faun from Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun flashed across my mind. Toby Derrick and Joel Fenton, as the two main protagonists, held one’s attention. Derrick by this stage was completely nude and Fenton, who was seen as too close to Derrick for the liking of the others, were set upon until both ended up on the floor, motionless and covered with leaves from the jungle. Slowly darkness brought the show to an end.
I was interested in the audience reaction as the work unfolded. In the beginning, as we watched moments that were sometimes playful, sometimes with sexual overtones, often spectacularly physical, and often showing a certain strength in uniformity, there were chuckles of pleasure from the audience as they sat back and watched in a relaxed manner. But as the connections between the dancers began to unravel somewhat, and become more aggressive, there was silence and many of the audience leaned forward in their seats wondering (perhaps anxiously) what was going to happen next. Were they surprised? Were they expecting what occurred or not?
When I spoke to Shaun Parker earlier this year he told me that KING was about ‘a different way of thinking about sexual identity and power and how they are linked.’ KING was not by any means a hagiography of the male sex, that is there was no undue reverence to, or idolising of the male. But then perhaps nor was there any suggestion of denunciation or disapproval of the changes that slowly took place. It seems to me that Parker was presenting us with a possible view of male identity and power rather than implying any positive or negative judgement.
This was an engrossing show from Shaun Parker & Company in terms of its choreography, its performance by all ten dancers, its musical background and input from Dimchev, and its visual elements.
Memories from across 40 years of life and work and people at New
Zealand School of Dance were triggered by a recent gathering.
Christine Gunn has
been on the faculty at New Zealand School of Dance as classical ballet tutor
for 40 years. A celebratory gathering took place at Te Whaea, the school’s
venue, in early September to mark the occasion but no-one is taking that as a
signal of her impending retirement. The opening speech of heartfelt thanks by
director Garry Trinder acknowledged that Christine prefers not to play the diva
but just to get on with the work. He quipped how pleased he was to have found
her the perfect fridge magnet which asks ‘Would you like to speak to the person
in charge, or to the person who knows what’s going on?’ Perhaps they’ll let her
retire after another 40 years?
Christine
masterminded the art of timetabling the
curriculum for both the classical and contemporary dance streams—(this is
tantamount to completing Sudoku puzzles while simultaneously playing two Chess
games). It was not merely the timetabling skills being remembered and
celebrated however, but the dedication to teaching consistent, supportive
classical technique and repertoire classes that have guided many a ballet
student towards their performance careers. Raising her own family of two
daughters must have required further skills of time management on many
occasions.
Anne Rowse was
director of the then National School of Ballet when Christine joined the staff
in 1979. With Anne, plus Dawn Sanders as part-time tutor and secretary, that
made a staff of three. How ever did they do it, in those asymmetric studios
that you had to traverse to gain access to the dressing rooms? Well, you’d
never have guessed from the calibre of the repertoire in annual Graduation
seasons in the Opera House that training conditions were anything less than
perfect. It takes hindsight to recognise pioneering of course, but the list of
graduates from New Zealand School of Dance, then and since, includes major
figures in world dance. Piano accompanists were always the best in town and,
over time, other teaching staff were appointed, new premises found, and
resources grew.
Turid Revfeim (who
has recently written the 50 year history of the School, and is now a tutor
there) was a student in the year Christine arrived, and she reminisced on what
was done despite those meagre resources. Turid later joined Royal New Zealand
Ballet as did many other graduates, Dawn had also earlier been a dancer with
them, and such links ensured a genuinely close rapport between the School and
the Company, at that time directed by Harry Haythorne. Students used to turn up
in droves at the theatre each night to meet the stalwart Company Managers,
Warren Douglas or Brendan Meek, themselves both NZSD graduates, for passes to
every performance of the season which those days spanned a fortnight. Standing
room if need be, but students seized every chance to glean inspiration of what
their training was all about, in the context of the theatre. The resulting
artistic harvest was bountiful, but it only grew from old-fashioned common
sense and the best kind of opportunism.
Christine’s choice
at her gathering was for students to perform an excerpt from Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco which they did with a
commendable clarity of line and musical acuity. Luke Cooper, a recent graduate
now dancing with RNZB, had organized video messages to Christine from former
students living and working afar. All the students then performed a massed
Maori tribute, a waiata with the
talisman wiri of quivering arms and
hands that breathes life into dance. The male students delivered a mightily galvanised haka taparahi that could have given the
All Blacks the shivers.
The large
gathering was a spirited one and no doubt evoked many and varied memories among
former teachers and students of their experiences across those 40 years—of
things trained, learned, rehearsed, performed, triumphed, loved, hoped, danced
and dreamed. I’ll put the (injuries and heartbreaks) into parentheses. Nothing
about dance is easy—it’s only meant to look that way, with the grace of divine
nonchalance suggesting that you, the audience, could be dancing too.
*********
Anne Rowse invited me to join the staff in 1982, to tutor in Dance Studies—Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, Dance notation, History & Library studies, World Dance Traditions including Pacific and Asian cultures—all the interesting things no one else wanted to teach. How lucky was I? I also offered public courses of dance interest through the Centre for Continuing Education of Victoria University of Wellington, so there was some creative accounting as Anne agreed to let the School premises be used in exchange for free places for students. Win-Win. I was also entrusted to build up the School’s library from fairly meagre holdings, so it was surely a stroke of luck that Smith’s Bookshop, the town’s very best second-hand bookshop, run by Dick Reynolds, was in an adjacent building, so I could each week sniff out dance and related arts books for bargain prices. One day, to my astonishment I found David Garnett’s Lady into Fox, a short story that had been famously adapted, by Andrée Howard, into a choreography by the same name, and the one ballet I most wished I could have seen. I consider myself quite old, but not quite old enough to have caught it when Ballet Rambert toured here in 1949. You could search the shelves of bookshops worldwide and not find Garnett’s stories, so this was a glint of gold. I recall cancelling that day’s planned class and telling the students all about Lady into Fox instead.
How poignant it
was some years later at a matinee of the School’s graduation, with the front
rows of the stalls at the Opera House filled with audience from an old folks’
home (another of Anne’s initiatives), to sight Dick Reynolds propped up in a
wheel chair, nodding and faintly clapping along as the students rollicked
through The Lancers’ Quadrille, but I
believe he was wiping away tears when Chopin’s music for the Prelude from Les
Sylphides began.
Another standout memory was a visit from the iconoclast dance-maker Mary Fulkerson from Dartington, an important centre for the arts in Devon. Mary brought her eight hour long performance saga, titled Don’t Tell the Prime Minister I’m coming. The first instalments were performed across two evenings in the BlueRoom at the National Art Gallery, when director Luit Beiringa opened those doors for us, but the third and fourth evenings were across a weekend, posing a problem of access to the NAG. There was no budget. (How ever did we do these things on zero budgets? Well, we just did. You could say they were free because they were priceless, which is of course the opposite of worthless). Anne with typical generosity handed over the school keys for the weekend. That gesture remains as memorable as the dance itself, which ended with Fulkerson tossing each of the eight dresses she had worn through the evenings high up into the air, all the while still dancing, singing, and smiling. But wait, only seven dresses ever came back down to earth. The eighth one caught on a high ceiling beam and dislodged a decade’s worth of dust, glinting in the light as it sent a shaft of golden stars down onto our heads. That was 1983 but I can see that glinting still. And no, we didn’t tell the Prime Minister Mary was coming since Muldoon wouldn’t have known what to do with the information, though nowadays you could tell PM. Jacinda Adern, since she is also Minister for the Arts.
The School moved
to new premises in Cable St., the entrance to which sat between adjacent
doorways—one to Cash Convertors, the other to Abundant Life Spiritual Centre,
daily reminders of the spectrum of possibilities in life as well as art. We
tried to ignore the nine months of deafening pile-driving as Te Papa
construction across the road got under way, and just got on with our work.
Patricia Rianne,
one of New Zealand’s most celebrated expatriate dancers, had returned home and
become Head of Classical Studies at the School, a most valued teacher and
mentor to the students. Her Summer’s Day,
to music by Jenny McLeod, and Bliss,
inspired by Katherine Mansfield’s story, were staged by RNZB and the graduates
dancing there found joy in performing them.
George Dorris and
Jack Anderson, leading New York dance writers, walked in the door one day as I
was teaching Baroque dance. I squealed in delight to recognise them, introduced
them to Anne, we both scolded them for not warning us they were coming, so they
returned a year later and gave a wonderful seminar which we also opened to the
public. We surveyed the many titles of the fabled Dance Perspectives, a series of periodicals edited by our mutual
colleague, Selma Jeanne Cohen. No other dance journal can hold a candle to this
series so I was emboldened to beg our National Library to lend us their
complete run from the Stacks. No-one had ever borrowed them because no-one knew
they were there. They do now. What a weekend we were treated to. I can’t
remember if we thanked Anne, but she will have known that the real rewards
survive in the minds and memories of those who attended. The threads that
weave, and the ties that bind.
Ann Hutchinson, leading authority in dance
notation, visited and gave a workshop in which she mounted from her score
Nijinsky’s l’Apres Midi d’un Faune,
to music by Debussy. Nijinsky was the true pioneer of modern choreography, as
well as a legendary dancer. Sad that he is remembered more for his
schizophrenia than his art, but such is the ephemeral nature of dance. The cast
of Faune calls for seven dancers, one
male and six females. As luck would have it, just 14 students turned up, two
males and 12 females, so Ann set about teaching the work to two casts and the
whole piece was completed by the end of the afternoon, which you would have to
rate a small miracle. The mercurial Warren Douglas was there that day and
danced the Faune, as well as many roles at RNZB in following years. Years later
but still young, he died tragically, of complications from Aids. It was so sad
and so wrong to have to write his obituary. We must never forget the dancers
whose lives that cursed illness snatched away. Warren might well have become a
brilliant director of RNZB, and would have changed the world.
The most treasured
heritage for me throughout my 20 years teaching at the School was undoubtedly the repertoire of
choreographies by Doris Humphrey and José Limon, pioneers of the best of
American modern dance, taught and staged by Louis Solino who had been a member
of their company in New York for years.
It was another of Anne’s courageous moves to appoint Louis to the staff, since
there might have been resistance to the distinctive technique and repertoire,
but he was an unusual and quiet genius and in fact over the years turned up
gold in a repertoire we’d have been lucky to catch in any world capital … Air for the G String, Day on Earth, The Shakers,Two Ecstatic Themes, There is a Time, La Malinche, The Unsung,
Dances for Isadora, Choreographic Offering, The Moor’s Pavane in seminar.
Later the mighty Bach Chaconne was
performed by Louis’ partner, the multi-talented Paul Jenden. Paul has since
died and a broken-hearted Louis returned to the States, but make no mistake,
anyone who ever danced in, or saw rehearsals and performances of those Limon
and Humphrey masterworks will never have forgotten them. Next month’s story
might tell the detail of how that came about.
Everyone present
at Christine’s celebration will have had memories like these, all the same, all
different. The following weekend, large numbers of us gathered at parties
in Paekakariki to help Sir Jon Trimmer
celebrate his 80th birthday, and his 60 years of performing with
RNZB. Jon’s sister, Coral, came from Melbourne with her harmonica in her pocket
and played jazz numbers from the 1920s like a shimmering hummingbird, cavorting
and gliding about, giving total lie to her 89 years. We knew this was her
instrument but hadn’t heard her play. Now we have. That will have to be the next next month’s story.
Between those two
gatherings, our daughter gave birth to her firstborn, a baby girl. I’ll let her
grow a while and then maybe I’ll make for
next next next month, a story about the dance-like movements of a wee,
serious, busy, tiny one as she explores the world around her, learning to latch
on and to change sides, to yawn and to hiccup, to sneeze and to gurgle, to make
frog’s leg kicks that Jeremy Fisher might envy, and, when her arms are
unswaddled, to conduct and wave at symphony orchestras. The baby as dancer—I’m
up to review that.
It was Eugene O’Neill who said, ‘‘There is no present or future—only the past,happening over and over again—now.’ I like that, so think I will help myself to his words.
Jennifer Shennan, 30 September 2019
Featured image: Christine Gunn cutting her anniversary cake. New Zealand School of Dance
Douglas Wright, dancer, choreographer, writer, poet, visual artist, has died at the age of 62.
An obituary is normally about the deceased, but I begin with my declaration of conflict of interest (actually, deeply shared interest)—namely, that Douglas is the single most important artist in my life. His fearless vision through an astonishingly prolific artistic output moved us beyond comfort, beyond normalcy, beyond the already known. Not fantasy, not surrealism, not escapism, but expressionist art of the highest order, framed with wit—dark, caustic, incorrigible, ironic and hilarious by turns, and teeming with alternative perceptions of the natural and social givens. As a New Zealand artist across five genres, Douglas Wright remains a phenomenon without peer.
The Solomon Islands term for a choreographer translates as ‘dreamer of dances’. That epithet pleased Douglas since he often referenced Morpheus, god of dreams, son of Hypnos, god of sleep. His last dance, commissioned by art gallery director Michael Lett, was exquisitely performed by Sean MacDonald at Tempo Dance Festival in October, with final rehearsals conducted at the hospice. Titled M_Nod, with Morpheus in mind, it incorporated a James Joyce reading from Finnegan’s Wake, an aesthetic that suited Douglas well. The work was dedicated to the late Sue Paterson, Douglas’ long-standing colleague and friend.
In 1998 Douglas was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2000 a Laureate of The Arts Foundation. His company, Douglas Wright and Dancers, only ever received project-based funding from the Arts Council and there can be no easy way to analyse why his phenomenal talent was not better supported and continuously facilitated across the decades. Permanent funding of company management and adequate resources to tour his work internationally were what he wanted and deserved, but they were never forthcoming. In that, we let down both him and ourselves.
Now that Douglas is safely silenced, the tributes are flowing in torrents. Our best honour to him however is to remember his work, and lucky we are that he has written about dance, the most ephemeral of the arts, in depth and detail. The outstanding video documentary Haunting Douglas by Leanne Pooley (Spacific Films) is the finest portrait of a dance artist anywhere.
A consummate man of the theatre, the words Douglas loathed most were ‘bland’ and ‘boring’. His constant attention was to our experiences—the public, the personal and the private. If it had happened, or been thought or dreamt, then spit it out, say it loud, choreograph it, write it, draw it, sculpt it, tell it as it is. If some audiences or critics took offence, at least they were not bored. It was proof they were engaged. An indelible image remains—from Black Milk—when Three Graces, dressed in nurses’ uniforms, brought forward a tray of medical syringes then knelt to inject the stage floor, presumably a local anaesthetic to help us through what was to follow.
Douglas certainly had a gift for naming his dances—listen to them—Now is the Hour, Passion Play, How on Earth, As It Is, Buried Venus, Inland, Forever, Black Milk, Rapt, The Kiss Inside. He did not need tertiary education to lead him to literature, but as a school boy simply raided the library. His voracious reading habits included an early affinity with the writings of Janet Frame. His memoir, Ghost Dance, (Penguin, 2004, awarded the Montana prize for Best First Book) makes clear the abiding importance of his relationship with artist Malcolm Ross. (David Eggleton’s 2004 review for The Listener of Ghost Dance is definitive).
Douglas grew up in rural New Zealand, in Tuakau. The place name means tu = to stand, akau = river bank. You get a good view of a river when you stand on its bank. You get a good view of Douglas Wright through Pooley’s documentary, about his childhood intrigue at the woman dancing in a white dress on the porch of the neighbouring house in moonlight (‘…perhaps she was a moth who laid her eggs in me’) and fascination with his grandmother taking him to Catholic Mass (later referenced in Halo, for Royal New Zealand Ballet).
To his father’s disgust, rugby held no interest for the child but Douglas’ childhood talent for gymnastics brought him junior champion status and photos reveal a strength, grace and line that would eventually lead him to dance. The boy travelled alone from Tuakau to Auckland for regular training sessions, which led into the darkness of predatory sexual abuse in bus stations as bad as anything you’ve imagined. He was robbed of his childhood and the scars lasted for life, yet he could later communicate the complexity of the experiences without letting it destroy him. One poem, in his volume CactusFear (Steele Roberts, 2011) tells us about it, if you can get through it without crying.
After leaving school there was a dramatic drug career, eventually supplanted by his dance career, initially with Auckland-based Limbs Dance Company (1980–1983). Teacher Dorothea Ashbridge imparted the ballet technique that helped Douglas ‘map my body … give names and directions to movements my body already knew’. He spent 1983–1987 with Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York, a spectacular career, with performances and choreography (Hey Paris, Faun Variations) still remembered decades later by New Yorkers who probably see six dance performances every week.
Douglas’ astonishing strength combined with lyricism can be seen in DV8’s talisman and horrifyingly brilliant work by Lloyd Newson, Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men, in 1988 (available on dvd). Back in New Zealand Douglas’ grief at losing friends to Aids is choreographed into Elegy, 1992. Although not the death sentence it once signaled, Douglas’ own HIV diagnosis was encompassed in choreographies Forever and Ore.
In 1993 Russell Kerr cast Douglas in the title role of his production of Petrouchka for Royal New Zealand Ballet, described in Royal New Zealand Ballet at Sixty (VUP, 2013). His insights into performing that celebrated role, created by Nijinsky, are rare, if not unique, in the annals of ballet history. Douglas wrote what Nijinksy was unable to.
Three works commissioned by Royal New Zealand Ballet, The Decay of Lying (1992), Rose and Fell, (1997) and Halo (2000) are all remembered by the dancers. Critics were challenged, as critics often are, but Douglas remained disappointed that the company never re-staged any of those works.
Douglas’ mercurial and multi-faceted personality was reflected in his works—by turns ecstatic (Gloria, A Far Cry); melancholic (Terra Incognito, Black Milk); grief-stricken (Elegy, Rose & Fell); satirical (The Decay of Lying); gender-shifting (Hey Paris, Forever); political (Black Milk); spiritual (Rapt, The Kiss Inside). We sense that whatever happened to him surfaced somewhere in one of his choreographies, but were never just about himself. He staged themes that may have shocked, or saddened, but they rang with truth.
Douglas released the artistry in many dancers and they know who they are. Lisa Densem (in the astonishing photo montage by Peter Molloy on the cover of the Pooley documentary) told me, ‘After you’ve worked with Douglas you have had more than a dance experience. He lets you become his friend.’
Several dancers became his muses: Debbie McCulloch with whom he shared an early close rapport; the enigmatic ‘goddess-like’ Kilda Northcott; Sarah Jayne Howard, a fiery furnace of a performer. Alex Leonhartsberger danced like Douglas-come-again, then Sean MacDonald became the final trusted courier of Douglas’ dream visions. Repertoire has been expertly staged in recent years by rehearsal director, Megan Adams.
There were only the briefest tours taking Douglas’ works abroad, yet, had that been responsibly managed and financed, he would have earned an international reputation as the Pina Bausch of the Southern Hemisphere. Nought to be done about that now but live with it. At least his treasures are in Nga Taonga Film & Sound Archive, in art galleries, on bookshelves, and in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
Douglas once asked me how baroque dance works—not that he wanted to perform one, just to understand how people danced in different times and places, so I showed him. He instantly caught the implications of the highly stylised technique, then quoted Louis XIV to me, and in one hour learned a sarabande that would take a ‘normal’ student a year to master.
Five of Douglas’ drawings, purchased by the Chartwell Collection for Auckland Art Gallery, hang in a current exhibition there alongside works by Colin McCahon, by Gretchen Albrecht (who provided the backdrop for Douglas’ first full-length work, Now is the Hour) and Jim Allen, celebrated sculptor of light. Douglas’ note alongside his work reads, ‘The figures in my drawings are verbs not nouns’. A number of these drawings are incorporated into his volume of poetry, Laughing Mirror, (Steele Roberts, 2007) where he famously penned the line, ‘Never trust an artist who is always trying to explain their work’.
Perhaps Auckland City Council might consider converting Douglas’ council flat, his home for many decades, in Norgrove Ave, Mt. Albert, into a choreographic residence? Alongside all else, Douglas was a perfectionist, not to say obsessive, gardener. The ancient cycads growing there (he would groom the spider webs off them with a toothbrush) might inspire a younger generation of home-grown dance-makers. Goodness knows, the country needs them.
Helen Aldridge, a Waiheke teacher and arts advocate, commissioned from Douglas a choreography to commemorate the life of her daughter, Deirdre Mummery, who died of an accidental drug overdose. Helen told me she did not know what to expect—perhaps a lament, or lachrimae? Instead, Douglas produced the exquisite Gloria, to Vivaldi, celebrating the life of his young friend. Gold silk-clad dancers fly and twist and turn in an airborne wonder. It’s the best dance ever made, by anyone, anywhere.
Beautifully filmed by Alun Bollinger, it’s there on YouTube (note, inexplicably, in two parts), posted anonymously by ‘a Rugby supporter’. Where is James Joyce when you need him?
Douglas is survived by his loyal and devoted mother, Pat, and the dancers of New Zealand.
Douglas James Wright: born 14 October 1956, Pukekohe; died 14 November 2018, Auckland
Acknowledgements: Megan Adams, Helen Aldridge, Lisa Densem, Sarah (Lawrey) George, Sean MacDonald, Keith McEwing, Leanne Pooley, Turid Revfeim, Guy Robinson, Anne Rowse, Roger Steele
This obituary is posted with the permission of The Dominion Post where it appeared on 17 November 2018.
Being in London is always full of dance surprises. Apart from performances, the city’s galleries almost always have a dance-related exhibition, or a small display featuring dance items from their permanent collections. This November, for example, the Courtauld Gallery had a particularly interesting show, Rodin and dance. The essence of movement. It examined Rodin’s mouvements de danse, until now a little known a series of sculptures, with accompanying drawings, made towards the end of his life.
The first room of the exhibition had a section that looked at the inspiration Rodin drew from the visit to France by the Royal Cambodian Ballet in 1906, which I have discussed briefly in a different context elsewhere on this site. This room included a small number of the very beautiful drawings in pencil, watercolour and gouache that Rodin made of the Cambodian dancers, along with photographs of contemporary dancers who also influenced Rodin, including Loïe Fuller and Ruth St Denis, and some photographs of Rodin himself.
Auguste Rodin sketching a Cambodian dancer in France in 1906. Photo: Émile Sanremo
The second, and main room contained material devoted to the mouvements de danse, a collection of terracotta and plaster figures, with some bronze castings, and accompanying drawings showing extreme dance movements and acrobatic poses. Although the drawings had been exhibited during Rodin’s lifetime, the sculptures had not. While they were all fascinating to look at—and there is a handsome exhibition catalogue (Rodin and dance. The essence of movement (London: Paul Holberton, 2016)—a model of Vaslav Nijinsky (in fact two models, one in plaster and one in bronze) attracted my attention.
Auguste Rodin, bronze casting of a model of Vaslav Nijinsky (original model 1912)
Rodin is known to have been at the opening night of Nijinsky’s L’après-midi d’un faun in Paris in May 1912 and followed up with an article in the Parisian newspaper Le Matin in which he showered Nijinsky with praise. Shortly afterwards, Nijinsky reputedly visited Rodin in his studio when it is thought the model for the sculpture was made. Looking at the sculpture it is impossible not to notice a certain turbulence and intensity in the figure. It is quite breathtaking in fact.
The Courtauld also has a collection of bronzes and paintings by Degas including the one shown as the featured image in this post. This particular bronze made me wonder about how it was made. Did a model pose, and if so was she a dancer? Most dancers, I think, would automatically take a pose with the lifted arm in opposition to the pointed foot, rather than same arm as leg as in the sculpture. Or did Degas simply model from memory, or just by adding body parts unthinkingly? But however it was made, this sculpture looked particularly beautiful as a shadowy figure with light streaming through the window.
The other major show with a strong dance component was an exhibition, Picasso Portraits, at the National Portrait Gallery. One room was devoted to portraits and some photographs of Picasso’s first wife, Diaghilev dancer Olga Khokhlova. While the portraits and drawings were fascinating, so too were some photographs of Olga, including two of her on the roof of the Minerva Hotel in Rome and some wonderful home movie footage of the family—Picasso, Olga, their son Paulo, and the family dog enjoying some light-hearted family moments.
A portrait of Olga appears on the cover of the catalogue (Elizabeth Cowling, Picasso Portraits (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2016).
Other rooms in the Picasso Portraits exhibition contained items relating to Ballets Russes personnel including composers, designers and of course Jean Cocteau looking particularly dashing in one pencil drawing in two dimensional, Egyptian style representing, so the caption said, Cocteau’s well known vanity.
Michelle Potter, 12 November 2016
Featured image: Edgar Degas, bronze sculpture of a dancer, right foot forward, the Courtauld Gallery, London. Photo: Michelle Potter
On Dancing’s reviews of John Neumeier’s extraordinary choreography, Nijinsky—both the recent Australian Ballet production, which I have not seen, and the link to that of 2012 for the Hamburg Ballet in Brisbane,* are welcome reminders of the Hamburg company’s stellar achievements.
Telling reference is made to the circular shapes incorporated into the set design, echoing paintings by Nijinsky—and lucky we are that one of his paintings is held in a private collection in Wellington, a tiny telescoping of ballet history.
I keep indelible memories of two trips to Hamburg, 2005 and 2015, where I saw in total ten of Neumeier’s full-length works. What astonishing programming in two short weeks, demonstrating the enduring worth of keeping repertoire extant, instead of allowing Rip Van Winkle to steal away with choreographed treasure never more to be seen in a lifetime, as happens in too many places.
Hamburg Ballet’s detailed website is further evidence of this artistic confidence, paying much respect to the casts listed at its premiere and in subsequent seasons, to the audiences’ interest in such things, and in the company’s future programming, which gives us the wherewithal to make fruitful travel plans.
Jiri Bubenicek created the lead role in the 2000 premiere cast of Nijinsky in Hamburg, and his twin brother Otto Bubenicek danced the Golden Slave and the Faun in that same season. After many years with Hamburg Ballet, the brothers, now collaborating and working on an international circuit, Jiri in choreography and Otto in design, will this month prepare a work on New Zealand School of Dance students for their graduation show in November. I look forward to viewing and reviewing it.
Australia’s Daniel Gaudiello proved a most gracious and convincing Albrecht in Royal New Zealand Ballet’s recent Giselle—and soon our Joseph Skelton crosses the Tasman in the other direction to guest as Albrecht in the Australian Ballet’s production.
RNZB will soon offer a studio season of new work by dancers aspiring to choreograph. Again this will be named for memory of dear Harry Haythorne.
Thus the ballet world continues to turn with little more than demi-plié degrees of separation between practitioners and their ephemeral heritage. Words on dance websites help hold the gossamer together between seasons.
Jennifer Shennan, Wellington 12 October 2016
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*which I did get lucky to see, in their wonderful double billing with A Midsummer Night’s Dream—which in turn makes interesting contrast now with Liam Scarlett’s choreography in the co-production between Royal New Zealand Ballet and Queensland Ballet. RNZB are performing it this week in Hong Kong at the Shakespeare festival there—then home for a brief Wellington season).
7 September 2016, State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne
Alexandre Riabko, guesting with the Australian Ballet in the lead role on the opening night performance of John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, has been dancing that role since at least 2003 when Hamburg Ballet guested in Paris. He may well have danced it even earlier. At the work’s world premiere in Hamburg in 2000 he took the role of the dancer Nijinsky as Harlequin in Le Carnaval and the Spirit of the Rose in Le Spectre de la rose. Thus the ballet Nijinsky, and the role of Vaslav Nijinsky, have been part of his dancing life for more than fifteen years. And so it was not surprising, but nevertheless thrilling, that his performance throughout the ballet was exceptional. It was exceptional from his first commanding entrance and walk down the steps leading to the space where he was to dance, through to his dramatic finale, performed in the same space, albeit now an arena that contained signs of destruction, as indeed did Nijinsky’s state of mind. Riabko held the work together. It was a tour de force by a dancer who communicated with every inch of his body.
Those with whom Riabko shared the stage—characters representing Nijinsky’s family, especially his wife Romola; characters that Nijinsky danced during his career; dancers from Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, including Tamara Karsavina and Leonide Massine; Diaghilev himself; soldiers and others representing war, against which Nijinsky was so opposed—had mixed success.
Leanne Stojmenov was a standout as Nijinsky’s sister, Bronislava Nijinska, especially in the Rite of Spring scene (of which sadly there seem to be no media images available, but see below for Stojmenov as the Young Woman in Jeux).
In the Rite of Spring scene, where Stojmenov played the Chosen Virgin, she danced as if there was no tomorrow, tossing her body into Neumeier’s demanding positions, flinging herself from side to side, hair in disarray. In fact this scene, with Riabko/Nijinsky standing on a chair shouting out instructions to the performers, is one of the most exciting of the evening. (To the Australian Ballet: oh please get access to the Pina Bausch Rite of Spring and put Stojmenov in the lead. She would be stunning).
I also thought that François-Eloi Lavignac was outstanding as Stanislav, Nijinsky’s brother. His small, compact but very flexible body perfectly suited Neumeier’s writhing movements. Stanislav’s death was a compelling scene.
Along with Lavignac and Stojmenov, I was also impressed by Cristano Martino as the dancer Nijinsky as the Faun in L’après-midi d’un faune, and the Golden Slave in Schéhérazade. His Golden Slave was slinky and strongly sexual. His Faun was beautifully controlled and conveyed an innate power.
As ever, however, I longed for so many of the others in the cast to have more artistry in their performance and, for the first time in my various encounters with this ballet, I felt as though Neumeier’s Nijinsky was too long and too slow in parts. I still get the feeling that the dancers of the Australian Ballet focus on steps, and Neumeier’s Nijinsky is not about steps. I was disappointed, for example, with Adam Bull’s portrayal of Diaghilev. Bull is an excellent dancer but I think of Diaghilev as an eccentric character and there was nothing eccentric about Bull’s interpretation. For me he was a ballet dancer pretending to be Diaghilev. Similarly with Amy Harris as Romola. I got no feeling for what kind of person she might have been.
I did enjoy the sets and costumes (concept by Neumeier) more in this viewing than previously, when I guess I was more focused on what was happening and who was who. Neumeier’s use of ‘attributes’ rather than detailed costuming to distinguish characters was aesthetically pleasing and the circles of light that occasionally appeared as part of a particular setting recalled Nijinsky’s fascinating circular drawings, some of which are part of Neumeier’s personal collection of Nijinsky memorabilia.
Nijinsky is a thrilling work and I bow to Neumeier’s concept. But I hope that throughout the Australian Ballet season, as it continues in Melbourne, and then goes to Adelaide and Sydney, that stronger characterisations might emerge from more of the dancers.
