The Roy­al New Zealand Bal­let is back for their final offer­ing this year, a trio of celes­tial bal­lets with­in the show Venus Ris­ing. I’ve been wait­ing to see this show for a cou­ple of years now, for it’s been delayed twice by COVID, so it was an absolute delight to final­ly catch it at its open­ing night last night. 

All chore­o­graphed by women, the three bal­lets with­in Venus Ris­ing are Aurum (chore­graphed by Alice Topp), The Autumn Ball (Sarah Fos­ter-Sproull) and Waterba­by Bagatelles™ (Twyla Tharp), which each run at about half an hour. All three are utter­ly dif­fer­ent, but each fea­ture an RNZB ensem­ble.

Aurum opens the piece. Based around the prin­ci­ple of kintsu­gi, [a Japan­ese art tech­nique where bro­ken pot­tery is repaired with gold — philo­soph­i­cal­ly high­light­ing and mak­ing the cracks and life of the piece impor­tant] this work is an inti­mate part­nered dance with heavy emo­tive moments, inspir­ing notes of con­tem­po­rary dance. The dancers grip, hold, and bal­ance with each oth­er. Gold­en light reflects off bare skin. They inhale, and so do we. 

Deeply pow­er­ful, Aurum is a show­case in strength and bal­ance, of the true lengths our bod­ies can go when giv­en the chance. I also see it as an exer­cise in trust; as the dancers are lift­ed and held in grav­i­ty-defy­ing bal­ances. Every­one has their own cracks, and every­one relies on oth­ers — it is those cracks and our endur­ing strength that makes our sto­ries worth telling. 

Under­scored by inter­min­gled vio­lin and piano pieces by my favourite com­pos­er, Ludovi­co Ein­au­di, Aurum is whol­ly beau­ti­ful and quite mov­ing. While it is per­haps a down­beat to open a show, it is one that inspires thought and in some moments, sheer awe. 

The Autumn Ball dances to an entire­ly dif­fer­ent beat. The thun­der­ous, heavy music gives the piece a more mod­ern edge, and a chal­lenge is set. The per­form­ers are dressed in bright, some­times-70s-style cos­tumes, and ini­tial­ly split along gen­der lines as they seem to chal­lenge each oth­er to Shark-vs-Jet-like duels. 

As the piece goes on, the groups homogenise, and the dance gets more fre­net­ic. Gen­der roles are washed away as the groups move togeth­er, with same-sex pair­ings danc­ing togeth­er (some­thing, as a queer dancer myself, I real­ly, real­ly want to see more of in bal­let). We see notes of club danc­ing, hip thrusts and lighter moments, until we’re drawn through to the cli­max of the piece, where autumn leaves (con­fet­ti) fall from the ceil­ing and the dancers move togeth­er under­neath.

The autumn queen fin­ish­es the piece alone, and we are left to rel­ish in the beau­ty of the scene. While I wouldn’t quite describe this piece as joy­ful, the pal­pa­ble flir­ta­tion and ten­sion under­neath is very com­pelling, with a warmer bright­ness from the pre­vi­ous work.

We con­clude the night with Waterba­by Bagatelles™ - a work that was first per­formed in 1994! A dance piece full of silli­ness and joy, this bal­let fea­tures the largest cast so far, all wear­ing cos­tumes in shades of blue, some that even resem­ble old timey bal­let cos­tumes. Some of the dancers are even dressed in what looks like vel­vet — at least from where I’m sit­ting.

The heavy flu­o­res­cent light­ing above gives the aura of a pub­lic pool, as so does the music — bub­bling and foam­ing, some­times dis­so­nant pieces. The dance in this bal­let resem­bles clos­est to what we know as ‘tra­di­tion­al bal­let’, with more struc­tured move­ments and stag­ing than the oth­er two works — this jux­ta­po­si­tion against the ridicu­lous feel of the piece (I mean that in a very good way). It is a very springy, airy piece, with lots of lifts and jumps.

This struc­tured move­ment breaks about halfway through the piece into a hilar­i­ous moment where the men in the ensem­ble show off to a group of the women — danc­ing, show­ing off, absolute­ly strut­ting their stuff, before it resolves, the groups form­ing togeth­er once more, like schools of fish. 

Venus Ris­ing con­tains three very unique bal­lets, all with equal­ly gor­geous, res­o­nant moments. It’s a per­for­mance that will have some­thing for every­one, and that makes it an utter­ly great night out. I’m utter­ly pleased that the RNZB final­ly got to stage this work.

Images by Stephen A’Court.