Interview Feature: Venus Rising

I sat down with Kath­er­ine Minor, a soloist with the Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let, to dis­cuss rehears­ing dur­ing COVID lock­down, what it’s like being back in the stu­dio, and the RNZB’s upcom­ing Venus Rising tour. 

The Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let will be one of the first dance com­pan­ies in the world to return to the stage with their new tour Venus Rising. Fea­tur­ing four extraordin­ary new pieces cre­ated by four world-renowned female cho­reo­graph­ers, this show hits the Wel­ling­ton stage from August 20, and will be tour­ing around the coun­try from then. 

Inspired by Venus, the bright­est of stars, these beau­ti­ful works show­case love, intim­acy, and the strength of vic­tory over adversity. In such fraught times, they are a beau­ti­ful link to what makes us human.

I: So, Kath­er­ine, what did you get up to dur­ing lock­down?

Kath­er­ine Minor: I noticed lock­down was def­in­itely time to slow down the pace of life. Lots of read­ing and long walks and speak­ing with people who I haven’t spoken to a while. It felt like this really long, very quiet sum­mer vaca­tion when no-one was around.

I: I under­stand you spent some time dur­ing lock­down rehears­ing via Zoom with the RNZB.
What was that like as an exper­i­ence?

The biggest thing that came out of lock­down was the real­isa­tion that dan­cers take hav­ing a stu­dio and a lot of space for gran­ted. That daily Zoom class felt very pre­cious, and essen­tial to con­nect with the com­pany. We worked on bar work – I did mine hold­ing onto a book­case.

How­ever, it was an amaz­ing oppor­tun­ity to do classes with people all around the world. That was quite spe­cial. There were people from oth­er com­pan­ies Zoom­ing into our class, I got to see people I hadn’t spoken to in years. Ours is a very con­nec­ted com­munity.

I: I’m sure it felt very dif­fer­ent to get back into a stu­dio after such a long time apart.

It was strange at first see­ing oth­er people after going a few weeks without hav­ing any close inter­ac­tion. The first time we were allowed to part­ner each oth­er felt very for­eign and strange. Being able to feel each oth­er. It took a bit of time for cer­tain coordin­a­tion to come back, to do jumps and pointe work and turn and take up space in such a big room.

What I’ve thought about a little bit are how import­ant the arts are in a time like this – this way of trans­mit­ting a feel­ing and a mes­sage that’s trans­por­ted sub­ject­ively instead of via the news feed which often makes us feel like that’s our only real­ity. Maybe going to a per­form­ance or get­ting in touch with some­thing artist­ic is a remind­er that times were dif­fer­ent before this, that they will be dif­fer­ent when this is over.

I: Mov­ing onto Venus Rising. What pieces are you involved with? 

I am in With­in, Without (cho­reo­graphed by Andrea Scher­moly), Water­baby Baga­telles (Twyla Tharp) and Aur­um (Alice Topp).

I: What has rehears­ing this sea­son been like?

It has been very excit­ing work­ing with four dif­fer­ent, renowned women cho­reo­graph­ers. The pro­cess of work­ing with each of them has been very dif­fer­ent, but won­der­ful in their own ways. They’ve all been very dif­fer­ent per­son­al­it­ies that have some­thing new to offer.

All the pieces have music which I could just listen to all day. For me, that’s nor­mally what can make a piece really nice to do, if there’s won­der­ful music though it.

I: What should the audi­ence expect com­ing into Venus Rising?

There is such a gen­er­al energy of appre­ci­ation being back in the stu­dio work­ing on some­thing togeth­er – feel­ing and know­ing that we’re in such a for­tu­nate pos­i­tion being in one of the only com­pan­ies work­ing togeth­er and work­ing on some­thing at the moment. Each piece is quite dif­fer­ent – all of them are an entirely dif­fer­ent mind­set going into them.

One of the pieces is an example of the work of one of the greatest liv­ing cho­reo­graph­ers of our time. Each one of these cho­reo­graph­ers is very con­nec­ted to the com­pany, and it’s always fun to see new work by cho­reo­graph­ers you like.

We have a lot of enthu­si­asm to be on stage again in front of an audi­ence. This is the first time we’re per­form­ing to an audi­ence since Feb­ru­ary. We’re really excited to be on stage and we’ve been work­ing really hard to get the pieces where they should be.

It feels very pre­cious to get to per­form this pro­gramme.

Venus Rising is being per­formed across New Zea­l­and by the Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let from the 20th of August to the 19th of Septem­ber. The shows will take place in Wel­ling­ton, Auck­land, Palmer­ston North, Christ­ch­urch, Napi­er and Duned­in. Tick­ets are avail­able here.