Review: Big J: A New Legacy
Reviewed by Nadia Freeman Photo credit: Philip Merry Jacob Dombroski is all heart in his performance of Big J A New Legacy. It is clear that he relives the feelings of every story he shares. This vulnerability is most evident during his dance pieces. From krump to graceful, emotive sections, his actions are deliberate. He […]
Review: Venus Rising
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 […]
Review: RNZB’s Cinderella
RNZB’s Cinderella is a carnival of excess, packed full of joy and beauty and delight. It shines with queerness, and as a queer dancer myself, this ballet was a revolutionary take on a well-hewn story and hit me right in the chest. Cinderella (Mayu Tanigaito) is the same woman we all know, stuck in a […]
Kia Mau Festival week two
What a joyful privilege to experience week one of the Kia Mau Festival. I made it to six events. Visually gorgeous work with strong themes of connection/disconnection from culture, the necessity of transformation, and response to new situations building off the work of the ancestors. Each had layers referencing the past and future, woven through […]
Kia Mau festival!
The Kia Mau Festival started last week and is already racing along. It’s a treat to see Māori and Pasifika excellence in live performance — here’s what’s on this week. All I See at Circa Theatre The explosion of grief causes memories to ricochet around her. Memories begin to bleed into her reality. Time collapses. […]
Giselle by the Royal New Zealand Ballet
Giselle is a ballet I know very little about, aside from one episode of Angel and reading the synopsis on Wikipedia: The ghost-filled ballet tells the tragic, romantic story of a beautiful young peasant girl who falls for the flirtations of the deceitful and disguised nobleman Albrecht. When the ruse is revealed, the fragile Giselle dies […]
Preview: The Slutcracker
From School For Gifted Children, and the creator of Change Your Own Life comes a new queer ballet for Christmas. Loosely based on the classic Tchaikovsky ballet The Nutcracker, The Slutcracker tells the story of a queer chosen family Christmas gathering, and a romantic whirlwind night through the queer streets of Wellington. Director Jean Sergent says “I […]
Preview: Ecology in Fifths
Award-winning director and performance designer Sam Trubridge is bringing a bold new performance to Te Whaea this August. Taking inspiration from H Guthrie Smith’s ‘Tutira: The Story of an NZ Sheep Station’ (1921), Ecology in Fifths enacts this obsessive account of NZ ecology — now a recognised classic in environmental science worldwide. Piece by piece, the […]
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 […]
Review: Pōhutu
Pōhutu is a multidimensional contemporary dance piece that thrives in liminal space. Drawing parallels between Choreographer Bianca Hyslop’s grandmother’s diagnosis of Alzheimers and the geothermal landscape she grew up in, it’s an unsettling and utterly beautiful work. The beginning and end sequences draw gasps from the audience. The middle sequences contain some of the most […]