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.