Jack McGee
Alongside me in the audience at the opening night of the New Zealand School of Dance’s (NZSD) Graduating Showcase, is the Governor General, ambassadors from two different European embassies, and a good few dozen confused looking husbands and boyfriends. Outside the theatre, there’s a French patisserie serving pastries and the flashest cheese and crackers I’ve ever seen. During the beautiful mihi delivered by Tanemahuta Gray, it occurs to me that I’m a little underdressed in my bright yellow work raincoat.
In case it isn’t clear, the NZSD showcase is an institution. It has more in common with the Opera than a Te Herenga Waka third year production paper. Each dance is the child of a different world renowned international choreographer. As part of the special pack of information I'm given on arrival (which I assume is given out with premium tickets?) I receive a complimentary fan. Despite its impressive size, the main theatre at Te Whaea does get quite hot. As attempts at bribery go, there have certainly been less successful ones…
The performance season is split into two alternating nights, Contemporary and Classical. I attend both. Each night consists of a variety of works, which I’ll run you through here. There’s a lot of different dancers in these shows and I’m going to name-drop very few of them. Those who I shout out are by no means the best or most talented dancers, they’re simply the ones who were given the opportunities for solos. I wish I was able to celebrate those who didn’t receive that spotlight more, as in many ways they’re the most successful at their craft - to truly immerse yourself in the piece and be inseparable from it is spectacular.
Contemporary - Wednesday 29th of November
As a left-footed mortal with two right feet, I think of dance as a means of catharsis. Whenever I personally dance, it’s a shapeless flurry of pent up emotion; of joy, or love, or frustration. In musicals, and even theatre and film at large, dance holds a similar role. Think of a jig at the end of a Shakespeare play (has there ever been a good one?) or Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling dancing out their romance in La La Land. It’s an effective tool to get out feelings that words aren’t equipped to handle.
If I had one overwhelming conclusion from the contemporary night of NZSD, with the caveat that to real dancers (gods!) it will sound like being told to suck eggs, it’s that dance is just as capable of tension as it is release. The core emotion I feel watching most of these pieces isn’t swooning romance or overpowering joy, it’s a general sense of unease. I won’t lie, I initially feel a little cheated by this. Like a disgruntled slasher fan sitting through an A24 joint, confused as to why there’s so much family trauma and so little stabbing, I find myself craving a high-emotion-freak-out. I soon come to terms with this however, and with a few shake-it-all-out-boogie’s scattered throughout the night, I more or less get what I came for.
Thank You - Choreographed by Felix Sampson
An ensemble of dancers form a line across the stage. Dressed in comfy looking clothes, all shades of gentle blue, our dancers face the audience. With exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, they thank the audience immensely. We’re prompted to react, to woop, give everything but a standing ovation. They leave the stage. They re-enter, they repeat.
Thank You uses this repetition to its advantage, giving us plenty of time to sit with the images it presents. Our eyes dissect its celebratory leaps and delicate rolls as we watch them over and over again. Almost like a show in reverse, I feel like we’re congratulating them for a show before we’ve seen it. With relaxed music, and the more rhythmic noises coming from the performers themselves, the repetitive action quickly feels hypnotic and soporific. The constant smiling keeps me from ever feeling at ease. The show feels like a provocation - what is going on here?
A quick check at the program (the death of interpretation!) reveals Sampson’s intent for the piece acting “as a surreal celebration of graduating, the journey to get there, and what lies beyond.” Clever. As profound a start to a graduation show as you can imagine. We’re excited to thank the performers again when the piece comes to an end. Our applause is enthusiastic.
Outlier - Choreography/composition - Kit Reilly.
Outlier immediately feels much more narrative than Thank You. Even before a check of the program, I’m able to follow a clear conflict. Our titular Outlier (Aleeya McFayden-Rew) dances on her own, away from the ensemble. Said dancers are all paired up, leaving a clear space on stage that McFayden-Rew is not filling. Her jilted dance partner Phoebe Bayley soon begins to confront McFayden-Rew and the tension ratchets up.
Where Thank You is gentle and slightly sleepy, Outlier borders a little on horror. The characters are dressed in beige fabric that screams Cinderella pre-makeover. The music is heavy on the bass, and the whole affair has a jagged, stuck-record tone. Upon checking the program, I'm shocked to find that it’s a piece inspired by meditation. Outlier is built to capture that moment when you’re meditating where you accept an external noise, idea, or concept, and somehow integrate it into your place of calmness, without changing what it is. Emphasis on accept. My empathy by default is with McFayden-Rew. The piece reframes quickly in my head, as I view it from this other side.
I’m shocked by how violent it feels. The dancing is tense and angular, not something I'd instinctively associate with meditation but maybe I'd be lying to myself if I attested that acceptance was anything but confrontational. The piece reminds me of Beth Alexandra-Sammons Paradox in Fringe this year, which dealt with similar themes. Much like Paradox, it only grows more compelling with further thought.
The Beginning of Nature - Excerpts - Choreographed by Garry Stewart
The Beginning of Nature was originally presented at WOMADelaide (World of Music, Arts, and Dance, Adelaide) in 2016. It’s a fusion of classical music (by the Zephyr Quarter) with Kaurna (Indigenous Australian) voices, in a broad and raw exploration of nature. Of all the pieces, this is the one I wish I knew more about. Jack Buskin is credited in the program as Indigenous Consultant, and on further research I’ve discovered that he’s one of few people keeping the Kaurna language alive. It had been deemed all but lost, until revival efforts began in the 1980s. I really cannot make any judgement about how the language informs the piece. I simply don’t understand it enough. This doesn’t prevent me from finding it intriguing however, and it’s always a joy to see overseas indigenous voices bring work to Aotearoa (shout out Māoriland).
As for the dance itself, it’s an interesting mix of prop work, and interconnected-rube-goldberg-machine chains of dancers. The ensemble interacts with both small handheld rocks, and large green sticks. These sticks are used both as a peacock-feather-esque backdrop for point of focus on Hannah Scotlen, and a cage for her to get trapped under. Dancers interlink with each other in a variety of ways, swaying their arms together in a seamless wave, or forming a mechanical looking pile of limbs that suggest a metaphorical birth.
One highlight involves dancers Aylin Atlay and Anna Hosking locking foreheads and dancing around each other, with their hair covering their face. The result is something akin to two warring animals sizing each other up, or one disturbed and frighteningly symmetrical creature without a face.
Only excerpts of a larger show, Beginning of Nature feels like a taster of a bigger thing. I struggle to work out how I feel about it, other than that it leaves me wanting more.
RE:ACTION - Choreographed by Ross McCormack
There’s a really big rock in this one. It begins the piece hidden away in the corner, as dancer Molly Robinson takes the stage with a jerky, melancholy, creepy-doll-esque dance. By the time dancer Sofija Milic takes her place at the end, the rock has come to life, essentially puppeteered from the inside by a mass of dancers, dancing alongside and in opposition to our various soloists.
RE:ACTION, according to my magic program, is a sort of sequel to a work named RE:STRUCTURE, with both pieces focusing heavily on a single set element. RE:STRUCTURE was part of the 2019 Performance Season, and centred around poles - both a literal metal one, and a group of dancers stacked on top of each other (Quick aside, I was only able to find this information because of Lizzie Murray’s Review for Art Murmurs, so shout out to our awesome publication for providing a record of local art).
The big difference this time round, is that choreographer McCormack and his dancers have teamed up with local visual artist, choreographer, and scenographer Max Deroy. Deroy, who also did the costuming for Outlier, deserves a shout out for being the only artist I've ever googled who has an essay/manifesto showcased on his website. The Commanding Object is very academic and not an easy read (but I would recommend it if you want to find out what Object Oriented Ontology is) and I think is best summed up by this line in Deroy’s bio “Max creates work that gives non-human-agents authority in the choreographic space.”
The rock leads the way! Dubbed “the force” in the program, the big rock is core to McCormack’s choreography. Able to both exert pressure on the dancers (there’s many an Atlas-esque moment) and react to them, it fully becomes a character in the piece. I’m fascinated by all of this. The process of choreography seems utterly magic to me, a true example of starting with a blank stage and ending up with art. The idea that the rock (sorry, the force) is able to have its own independent agency in that space despite being, well, a rock, is both stupidly heady and very, very, cool.
Incant: Summoning the Lost Magic of Intuition - Choreography by Amber Haines
First performed in the 2016 performance season, Incant is a wonderfully witchy ensemble piece. Moving ritualistically and all clothed in blue gowns, the performers are hard to distinguish from one another, compelled on mass by (as the program puts it) “the luminous beauty of shared intention”.
There are still solos to be found however. My craving for a fully cathartic expression of intense feeling is finally met by Hannah Scotlen, who gives us a very satisfying freak out. The piece gets particularly stylish when a light ball enters the picture. Its rhythmic, rotating, reverent pass around the room fully reminds me of the (equally witchy) backup dancers for Willow in Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour earlier this year. When the ball ultimately ends up in the hands of dancer Caterina Moreno at the end, as all the rest of the dancers are flopped to the floor, there’s a feeling of immense power. Moreno’s facial expression is intense - somewhere between menacing and excited. It’s a wonderful hook to the end the night on, almost like a wink to the audience.
Classical - Thursday 30th of November
We’re back for night two, and word of warning: it shouldn’t be a surprise that as someone who comes to dance for emotional release, ballet is a square peg and I'm a round hole. The dominant thing being expressed by ballet seems, to me at least, to be an impressive and overwhelming sense of control. Every tiny action seems thought within an inch of its life. While contemporary dance seems concerned with making hard things look easy, in ballet it seems there are no easy things and we’re constantly reminded of how difficult the hard ones are. It probably doesn’t help that I couldn’t tell a pirouette from a hop, skip, and a jump. Ballet enthusiasts, continue at your own risk…
Quick note, I credit all the choreographers here, however the person actually staging each of these productions is Betsy Erickson. A San Francisco Ballet alumnus, we’ll see that she picks work that she’s familiar with…
Meisten’s Mozart - Choreographed by Helgi Tomasson
Initially choreographed in 1991 by Tomasson when he was the artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, Meisten’s Mozart was previously performed by NZSD in 2016. Translating to “mostly Mozart”, the score consists of a series of Mozart tracks interspersed with other composers of the era, all performed by the Tolzer Boys choir. The youthful voices on the soundtrack help set a childlike tone. Our dancers resemble a group of children, dancing in and out of cross gender groups, drifting on and off stage.
Overall, the piece feels emotionally muted. With the amount of control and effort required to perform, it’s an uphill battle to make it feel truly playful. I question whether ballet is an art form that translates particularly well to this subject matter? Kids aren’t poised, they’re messy. Play isn’t calm, it’s emotional as all hell. There’s a segment in Meisten’s Mozart where one of the dancers indiscriminately get’s her heart broken. Compelling. She’s promptly cheered back up by her friends, and the piece forgets about it. It feels like we’re viewing this from the outside, adults condescendingly looking down at the insignificance of these feelings. I want to be in the head of the kids! To them, those feelings couldn’t be more significant!
While the craft is immaculate, the dance very impressive, this one’s not for me.
Aria - Choreography by Val Caniparoli
Joshua Douglas looms around the front of the stage like a spider. The curtains are drawn behind him, concealing the stage I've become very used to by this point. A mask conceals Douglas’s face, rendering him unknowable, frightening. He lets the mask down, placing it on the floor. From a theatrical perspective, it’s great mask work. He’s doing it all with his body, lowering the mask to the ground and picking it up, all without using his hands. It’s very well fitted - no straps required. It rests on the floor, gently illuminated by a precise spotlight. Douglas is now unrestrained. Human again. His movement is melancholy. Aware that he’ll soon return to the mask, each gesture seems to mourn its own passing. All too soon, the inevitable happens, he is remasked, and the piece is over.
There’s few clues to this one in the program. Caniparoli, another San Francisco Ballet Alumnus, originally choreographed it in 1997, for a showing in Canada. The aria itself is from the opera Rinaldo by Handel. It’s sung by Alminera, a heartbroken woman trapped in a garden, lamenting her captivity. It translates beautifully into dance. This is by far my stand out of the night, if not the season overall.
Vivaldi Concerto Grosso - Choreography by Lew Christensen
Opening with a massive, bouncy, highly symmetrical ensemble number, Concerto Grosso feels grand. This is a huge, cavernous stage and it’s completely filled by a group of twelve dancers who feel like fifty. They all depart. We focus in, two dancers now. Eleanor Bond, and Rilee Scott. They begin to dance.
First performed in 1981, before Christensen’s passing in ‘84, this is his swan song. The program informs us that he intended it as an exercise in contrast, between grandeur and small, deliberate, intimacy. Bond and Scott’s segment is just that. It’s moving, romantic, and personal. I feel like we’ve just zoomed into a picture of a crowd, grabbed a random couple and gone, “What are they like when they’re alone? Who are these people?”
Every little gesture read big, as the performers stick to a small fraction of the stage. Credit to Christensen, the contrast works. Soon, part three. The full ensemble returns, back to scale, back to all four corners filled, back to bouncy, symmetrical, baroque movement. Dancers soar around the stage. I think about the billions of interior lives hidden in all our crowds.
Street Songs - Choreography by Val Caniparoli
Street Songs is a massive work, made up of 12 smaller sections. The music composed by German Music Educator Carl Orff has a childlike, unpretentious quality. This is a truly irreverent work, that genuinely feels like it could be at home performed on a busy street - or comes as close to that as any piece of classical dance could.
All dressed like extras in the music video to Gotye and Kimbra’s Somebody that I Used to Know, our ensemble enter stage as a pulsing blob, jittering with energy. The dancers gradually scatter out, and various combinations of them will make up the rest of the piece. Featuring everything from cartwheels, to slapped away kisses, penguin-esque waddling, and piggy-backs, Street Songs feels genuinely playful where Meisten’s Mozart felt cold. It’s light on its feet, and a great note to end the night on.
Conclusion
Writing this review felt like a serious research project. There’s so much packed into the NZSD performance season and trying to wrap my head around it is a surprisingly meaty task. It’s a good reminder of how much work goes into a ten to twenty minute dance, even without including the training and effort the dancers themselves go through. And while it’s certainly interesting, and useful for prosperity, it’s an even better reminder of how well dance speaks for itself. I had no context, no understanding of choreographers, manifestos, or composers when I experienced these performances but I am deeply moved by many of them all the same. Here’s to next year!
The performance season is split into two alternating nights, Contemporary and Classical. I attend both. Each night consists of a variety of works, which I’ll run you through here. There’s a lot of different dancers in these shows and I’m going to name-drop very few of them. Those who I shout out are by no means the best or most talented dancers, they’re simply the ones who were given the opportunities for solos. I wish I was able to celebrate those who didn’t receive that spotlight more, as in many ways they’re the most successful at their craft - to truly immerse yourself in the piece and be inseparable from it is spectacular.
Contemporary - Wednesday 29th of November
As a left-footed mortal with two right feet, I think of dance as a means of catharsis. Whenever I personally dance, it’s a shapeless flurry of pent up emotion; of joy, or love, or frustration. In musicals, and even theatre and film at large, dance holds a similar role. Think of a jig at the end of a Shakespeare play (has there ever been a good one?) or Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling dancing out their romance in La La Land. It’s an effective tool to get out feelings that words aren’t equipped to handle.
If I had one overwhelming conclusion from the contemporary night of NZSD, with the caveat that to real dancers (gods!) it will sound like being told to suck eggs, it’s that dance is just as capable of tension as it is release. The core emotion I feel watching most of these pieces isn’t swooning romance or overpowering joy, it’s a general sense of unease. I won’t lie, I initially feel a little cheated by this. Like a disgruntled slasher fan sitting through an A24 joint, confused as to why there’s so much family trauma and so little stabbing, I find myself craving a high-emotion-freak-out. I soon come to terms with this however, and with a few shake-it-all-out-boogie’s scattered throughout the night, I more or less get what I came for.
Thank You - Choreographed by Felix Sampson
An ensemble of dancers form a line across the stage. Dressed in comfy looking clothes, all shades of gentle blue, our dancers face the audience. With exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, they thank the audience immensely. We’re prompted to react, to woop, give everything but a standing ovation. They leave the stage. They re-enter, they repeat.
Thank You uses this repetition to its advantage, giving us plenty of time to sit with the images it presents. Our eyes dissect its celebratory leaps and delicate rolls as we watch them over and over again. Almost like a show in reverse, I feel like we’re congratulating them for a show before we’ve seen it. With relaxed music, and the more rhythmic noises coming from the performers themselves, the repetitive action quickly feels hypnotic and soporific. The constant smiling keeps me from ever feeling at ease. The show feels like a provocation - what is going on here?
A quick check at the program (the death of interpretation!) reveals Sampson’s intent for the piece acting “as a surreal celebration of graduating, the journey to get there, and what lies beyond.” Clever. As profound a start to a graduation show as you can imagine. We’re excited to thank the performers again when the piece comes to an end. Our applause is enthusiastic.
Outlier - Choreography/composition - Kit Reilly.
Outlier immediately feels much more narrative than Thank You. Even before a check of the program, I’m able to follow a clear conflict. Our titular Outlier (Aleeya McFayden-Rew) dances on her own, away from the ensemble. Said dancers are all paired up, leaving a clear space on stage that McFayden-Rew is not filling. Her jilted dance partner Phoebe Bayley soon begins to confront McFayden-Rew and the tension ratchets up.
Where Thank You is gentle and slightly sleepy, Outlier borders a little on horror. The characters are dressed in beige fabric that screams Cinderella pre-makeover. The music is heavy on the bass, and the whole affair has a jagged, stuck-record tone. Upon checking the program, I'm shocked to find that it’s a piece inspired by meditation. Outlier is built to capture that moment when you’re meditating where you accept an external noise, idea, or concept, and somehow integrate it into your place of calmness, without changing what it is. Emphasis on accept. My empathy by default is with McFayden-Rew. The piece reframes quickly in my head, as I view it from this other side.
I’m shocked by how violent it feels. The dancing is tense and angular, not something I'd instinctively associate with meditation but maybe I'd be lying to myself if I attested that acceptance was anything but confrontational. The piece reminds me of Beth Alexandra-Sammons Paradox in Fringe this year, which dealt with similar themes. Much like Paradox, it only grows more compelling with further thought.
The Beginning of Nature - Excerpts - Choreographed by Garry Stewart
The Beginning of Nature was originally presented at WOMADelaide (World of Music, Arts, and Dance, Adelaide) in 2016. It’s a fusion of classical music (by the Zephyr Quarter) with Kaurna (Indigenous Australian) voices, in a broad and raw exploration of nature. Of all the pieces, this is the one I wish I knew more about. Jack Buskin is credited in the program as Indigenous Consultant, and on further research I’ve discovered that he’s one of few people keeping the Kaurna language alive. It had been deemed all but lost, until revival efforts began in the 1980s. I really cannot make any judgement about how the language informs the piece. I simply don’t understand it enough. This doesn’t prevent me from finding it intriguing however, and it’s always a joy to see overseas indigenous voices bring work to Aotearoa (shout out Māoriland).
As for the dance itself, it’s an interesting mix of prop work, and interconnected-rube-goldberg-machine chains of dancers. The ensemble interacts with both small handheld rocks, and large green sticks. These sticks are used both as a peacock-feather-esque backdrop for point of focus on Hannah Scotlen, and a cage for her to get trapped under. Dancers interlink with each other in a variety of ways, swaying their arms together in a seamless wave, or forming a mechanical looking pile of limbs that suggest a metaphorical birth.
One highlight involves dancers Aylin Atlay and Anna Hosking locking foreheads and dancing around each other, with their hair covering their face. The result is something akin to two warring animals sizing each other up, or one disturbed and frighteningly symmetrical creature without a face.
Only excerpts of a larger show, Beginning of Nature feels like a taster of a bigger thing. I struggle to work out how I feel about it, other than that it leaves me wanting more.
RE:ACTION - Choreographed by Ross McCormack
There’s a really big rock in this one. It begins the piece hidden away in the corner, as dancer Molly Robinson takes the stage with a jerky, melancholy, creepy-doll-esque dance. By the time dancer Sofija Milic takes her place at the end, the rock has come to life, essentially puppeteered from the inside by a mass of dancers, dancing alongside and in opposition to our various soloists.
RE:ACTION, according to my magic program, is a sort of sequel to a work named RE:STRUCTURE, with both pieces focusing heavily on a single set element. RE:STRUCTURE was part of the 2019 Performance Season, and centred around poles - both a literal metal one, and a group of dancers stacked on top of each other (Quick aside, I was only able to find this information because of Lizzie Murray’s Review for Art Murmurs, so shout out to our awesome publication for providing a record of local art).
The big difference this time round, is that choreographer McCormack and his dancers have teamed up with local visual artist, choreographer, and scenographer Max Deroy. Deroy, who also did the costuming for Outlier, deserves a shout out for being the only artist I've ever googled who has an essay/manifesto showcased on his website. The Commanding Object is very academic and not an easy read (but I would recommend it if you want to find out what Object Oriented Ontology is) and I think is best summed up by this line in Deroy’s bio “Max creates work that gives non-human-agents authority in the choreographic space.”
The rock leads the way! Dubbed “the force” in the program, the big rock is core to McCormack’s choreography. Able to both exert pressure on the dancers (there’s many an Atlas-esque moment) and react to them, it fully becomes a character in the piece. I’m fascinated by all of this. The process of choreography seems utterly magic to me, a true example of starting with a blank stage and ending up with art. The idea that the rock (sorry, the force) is able to have its own independent agency in that space despite being, well, a rock, is both stupidly heady and very, very, cool.
Incant: Summoning the Lost Magic of Intuition - Choreography by Amber Haines
First performed in the 2016 performance season, Incant is a wonderfully witchy ensemble piece. Moving ritualistically and all clothed in blue gowns, the performers are hard to distinguish from one another, compelled on mass by (as the program puts it) “the luminous beauty of shared intention”.
There are still solos to be found however. My craving for a fully cathartic expression of intense feeling is finally met by Hannah Scotlen, who gives us a very satisfying freak out. The piece gets particularly stylish when a light ball enters the picture. Its rhythmic, rotating, reverent pass around the room fully reminds me of the (equally witchy) backup dancers for Willow in Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour earlier this year. When the ball ultimately ends up in the hands of dancer Caterina Moreno at the end, as all the rest of the dancers are flopped to the floor, there’s a feeling of immense power. Moreno’s facial expression is intense - somewhere between menacing and excited. It’s a wonderful hook to the end the night on, almost like a wink to the audience.
Classical - Thursday 30th of November
We’re back for night two, and word of warning: it shouldn’t be a surprise that as someone who comes to dance for emotional release, ballet is a square peg and I'm a round hole. The dominant thing being expressed by ballet seems, to me at least, to be an impressive and overwhelming sense of control. Every tiny action seems thought within an inch of its life. While contemporary dance seems concerned with making hard things look easy, in ballet it seems there are no easy things and we’re constantly reminded of how difficult the hard ones are. It probably doesn’t help that I couldn’t tell a pirouette from a hop, skip, and a jump. Ballet enthusiasts, continue at your own risk…
Quick note, I credit all the choreographers here, however the person actually staging each of these productions is Betsy Erickson. A San Francisco Ballet alumnus, we’ll see that she picks work that she’s familiar with…
Meisten’s Mozart - Choreographed by Helgi Tomasson
Initially choreographed in 1991 by Tomasson when he was the artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, Meisten’s Mozart was previously performed by NZSD in 2016. Translating to “mostly Mozart”, the score consists of a series of Mozart tracks interspersed with other composers of the era, all performed by the Tolzer Boys choir. The youthful voices on the soundtrack help set a childlike tone. Our dancers resemble a group of children, dancing in and out of cross gender groups, drifting on and off stage.
Overall, the piece feels emotionally muted. With the amount of control and effort required to perform, it’s an uphill battle to make it feel truly playful. I question whether ballet is an art form that translates particularly well to this subject matter? Kids aren’t poised, they’re messy. Play isn’t calm, it’s emotional as all hell. There’s a segment in Meisten’s Mozart where one of the dancers indiscriminately get’s her heart broken. Compelling. She’s promptly cheered back up by her friends, and the piece forgets about it. It feels like we’re viewing this from the outside, adults condescendingly looking down at the insignificance of these feelings. I want to be in the head of the kids! To them, those feelings couldn’t be more significant!
While the craft is immaculate, the dance very impressive, this one’s not for me.
Aria - Choreography by Val Caniparoli
Joshua Douglas looms around the front of the stage like a spider. The curtains are drawn behind him, concealing the stage I've become very used to by this point. A mask conceals Douglas’s face, rendering him unknowable, frightening. He lets the mask down, placing it on the floor. From a theatrical perspective, it’s great mask work. He’s doing it all with his body, lowering the mask to the ground and picking it up, all without using his hands. It’s very well fitted - no straps required. It rests on the floor, gently illuminated by a precise spotlight. Douglas is now unrestrained. Human again. His movement is melancholy. Aware that he’ll soon return to the mask, each gesture seems to mourn its own passing. All too soon, the inevitable happens, he is remasked, and the piece is over.
There’s few clues to this one in the program. Caniparoli, another San Francisco Ballet Alumnus, originally choreographed it in 1997, for a showing in Canada. The aria itself is from the opera Rinaldo by Handel. It’s sung by Alminera, a heartbroken woman trapped in a garden, lamenting her captivity. It translates beautifully into dance. This is by far my stand out of the night, if not the season overall.
Vivaldi Concerto Grosso - Choreography by Lew Christensen
Opening with a massive, bouncy, highly symmetrical ensemble number, Concerto Grosso feels grand. This is a huge, cavernous stage and it’s completely filled by a group of twelve dancers who feel like fifty. They all depart. We focus in, two dancers now. Eleanor Bond, and Rilee Scott. They begin to dance.
First performed in 1981, before Christensen’s passing in ‘84, this is his swan song. The program informs us that he intended it as an exercise in contrast, between grandeur and small, deliberate, intimacy. Bond and Scott’s segment is just that. It’s moving, romantic, and personal. I feel like we’ve just zoomed into a picture of a crowd, grabbed a random couple and gone, “What are they like when they’re alone? Who are these people?”
Every little gesture read big, as the performers stick to a small fraction of the stage. Credit to Christensen, the contrast works. Soon, part three. The full ensemble returns, back to scale, back to all four corners filled, back to bouncy, symmetrical, baroque movement. Dancers soar around the stage. I think about the billions of interior lives hidden in all our crowds.
Street Songs - Choreography by Val Caniparoli
Street Songs is a massive work, made up of 12 smaller sections. The music composed by German Music Educator Carl Orff has a childlike, unpretentious quality. This is a truly irreverent work, that genuinely feels like it could be at home performed on a busy street - or comes as close to that as any piece of classical dance could.
All dressed like extras in the music video to Gotye and Kimbra’s Somebody that I Used to Know, our ensemble enter stage as a pulsing blob, jittering with energy. The dancers gradually scatter out, and various combinations of them will make up the rest of the piece. Featuring everything from cartwheels, to slapped away kisses, penguin-esque waddling, and piggy-backs, Street Songs feels genuinely playful where Meisten’s Mozart felt cold. It’s light on its feet, and a great note to end the night on.
Conclusion
Writing this review felt like a serious research project. There’s so much packed into the NZSD performance season and trying to wrap my head around it is a surprisingly meaty task. It’s a good reminder of how much work goes into a ten to twenty minute dance, even without including the training and effort the dancers themselves go through. And while it’s certainly interesting, and useful for prosperity, it’s an even better reminder of how well dance speaks for itself. I had no context, no understanding of choreographers, manifestos, or composers when I experienced these performances but I am deeply moved by many of them all the same. Here’s to next year!