Imagery by Steph­en A’Court.

The Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let is back with anoth­er series of four bal­lets to warm you up this winter. Cel­eb­rat­ing the power and pos­sib­il­ity of dance, these four bal­lets range from the clas­sic to the exper­i­ment­al, a won­der­ful tableau that accur­ately sums up the RZN­B’s 70th anniversary.

Open­ing the show is George Bal­anchine’s Ser­en­ade, staged by Rebecca Met­zger. 89 years after it was first staged, this icon­ic bal­let is per­formed to Tchaikovsky’s Ser­en­ade, and is a quint­es­sen­tial example of Bal­anchine bal­let with long lines, strong and struc­tured per­form­ance and beau­ti­ful stage pat­terns. Though plot­less, this large cast bal­let (20+ per­formers) floats between duos, triplets and lar­ger group pieces; an admir­able show of tim­ing and com­pos­i­tion.

The premiere of Moss Te Urur­angi Pat­ter­son’s Te Ao Mārama is a tri­umph in per­form­ance and a deeply power­ful work, imbued with impli­cit Māori iden­tity – it’s the first Māori bal­let I’ve ever seen but I sin­cerely hope not my last. A solo shirt­less per­former on stage moves to the sound of taonga pūoro (Ariana Tikao), along­side a under­cur­rent thrum of elec­tric son­ic gui­tar (Shayne Carter), before being joined by four­teen oth­er male per­formers for a group work that folds and unfolds through iden­tity, gender and con­scious­ness. This work is spec­tac­u­lar; with a full seg­ment with no music, only the sounds of the per­formers’ foot­falls and breath­ing, and cul­min­at­ing in a full haka.

Anna­belle Lopez Ocho­a’s Requiem for a Rose opens with a single dan­cer onstage (Soloist Kirby Selchow), dressed entirely in nude fab­ric, hold­ing a rose in her mouth. Her angu­lar, sharp dan­cing draws in the oth­er per­formers, both male and female alike, all wear­ing bright red skirts that flut­ter about them like flower petals. The romance is inter­woven through­out the piece as the dan­cers couple up and fall apart again – 1000 love stor­ies all at once. With all per­formers wear­ing the same things (nude shirts on the women), gender slips away, decoup­ling this dance from the het­ero­top­ic bal­let we all know so well, to a world where roles are shared and people of all genders are partnered togeth­er.

The night closes with a monu­ment­al piece of sta­ging in Alice Top­p’s Logos. Set to the works of my favour­ite com­poser, Ludovico Ein­audi, this series of tri­os and duets explore heavy emo­tions and bru­tal intim­acy; with dar­ing holds, leaps and bal­ances – as smoke builds up behind a plastic cur­tain at the back of the stage everything feels on a knife’s edge. Until, there is a release – the plastic cur­tain drops to the stage, smoke bil­low­ing out towards the audi­ence and around the final pair of dan­cers (Ana Gal­lardo Lob­aina & Mat­thew Slat­tery), like ragged storm clouds in the sky. Rain falls from the ceil­ing, drench­ing the two per­formers, and they move togeth­er, deeply intim­ate, a heav­ier pas­tiche of a scene from a rom-com. This moment is a mas­ter­work of an end­ing to a very strong pro­gramme.

As we move through the RNZB’s 70th year, I con­tin­ue to enjoy the com­pany pulling away from bal­let’s very het­ero­sexu­al Euro­centric roots to some­thing that’s much more inter­est­ing and far more remin­is­cent of the human exper­i­ence – queer­ing dance, decoup­ling the works from their colo­ni­al­ist ideals in pas­sion­ate, mov­ing ways – it’s very wel­come, and I hope it con­tin­ues.