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This heart-felt solo performance of Harrison Cook, who is Kai Tahu, takes viewers along his journey of exploration. Buried within the dancer’s psyche are ancient treasures of memories, stories, sounds, rhythms, movements, smells, sights and spirits of his ancestors. Keep Reading
Te Whaea: National Dance and Drama CentreWellington2 July 2026 Choreographic Mentor: Matte RoffeLighting Design & Operator: Alex DicksonDramaturgical Consultation: Miranda ManasiádiCostume Coordination: Matte Roffe and 3rd Year contemporary students with Anne De Geus Reviewed by Brigitte Knight Top Photo (No.10) - Crop as needed ‘TIME OUT' by Braelan Newman.... Keep Reading
New dance theatre work Mythosoma by choreographer and director Kelly Nash’s collective Body Island – Motu Tinana draws on ConTact C.A.R.E therapeutic practice, somatic trauma theory, and lived experience, in an abstract work that moves between humour and deep solemnity. In the Te Whaea complex, Newtown, new festival venue Tāwhiri... Keep Reading
Billed as one of the headline acts for Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts 2026, Gloria – a Triple Bill, a trans-Tasman collaboration between the New Zealand Dance Company and Co3 Contemporary Dance Australia, is a cohesive, varied, and rewarding evening of contemporary dance. Choreographer and Artistic Director... Keep Reading
St James Theatre Wellington 25 February 2026 Choreography: Alice Topp Music: Christopher Gordon Set & Lighting Design: Jon Buswell Costume Design: Aleisa Jelbart Dramaturgy: Ruth Little Conductor: Hamish McKeich String Ensemble: Musicians of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra A Co-Production with West Australian... Keep Reading
St James Theatre Wellington 30 April 2025 Conductor: Hamish McKeich, Orchestra Wellington Reviewed by Brigitte Knight The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s double bill of The Firebird with My Brilliant Career presents two one-act narrative contemporary ballets, both innovative and thoughtful, yet refreshingly contrasting in style. Braving a... Keep Reading
Concluding their three-centre tour in the capital, a collaboration between the New Zealand Dance Company, New Zealand String Quartet, and Chamber Music New Zealand presents 100 Winds Taupō Hau Rau to a capacity audience at Te Papa's Soundings Theatre. Set to the minimalist music of American composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich, the... Keep Reading
Unusually for a dance performance there is a long queue to a bag check before the general audience can enter the Auckland Town Hall for Black Grace’s;This is Not a Retrospective (VIPs and patrons are ushered through without queueing and guided to preferential seating in the venue’s balcony). Keep Reading
New Zealand School of Dance’s Performance Season 2024 is a singular mixed programme with six works by selected Aotearoa and international choreographers, covering classical, neoclassical, and contemporary ballet, and contemporary dance. The production is entertaining and well-balanced, presenting three sections of two works, divided by two... Keep Reading
The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s 2024 winter season Solace presents a triple bill of abstract contemporary ballets by three celebrated and engaging modern choreographers. Infra by recently knighted, award winning British choreographer Sir Wayne McGregor, To Hold by Auckland based Royal New Zealand Ballet Choreographer in Residence Sarah Foster... Keep Reading
The New Zealand School of Dance presents Liminal; eight works choreographed and performed by the eight third year contemporary stream students, curated into a cohesive 60 minute production overseen by choreographic mentor Holly Newsome. Presented unconventionally in the round, the student choreographer/dancers manage and manipulate spatial and... Keep Reading
It is often said that ballet is a hand-me-down art; you cannot learn it from a textbook or a YouTube tutorial, it must be passed on from teacher to student, from choreographer to dancer. Swan Lake, so beloved that it has become synonymous with the artform globally, is the jewel in the crown of classical ballet repertoire, and the dual role... Keep Reading
Akram Khan’s Jungle Book reimagined is the third time Aotearoa New Zealand audiences have had the opportunity to experience his work, following iTMOi (in the mind of igor) in 2015 and the magnificent Giselle for English National Ballet in 2018. Jungle Book reimagined steps more firmly into the territory of dance theatre, with a small cast of... Keep Reading
A sizeable and significant co-production between NZ Opera and Black Grace, (m)ORPHEUS reimagines Christoph Gluck’s beloved eighteenth-century opera Orpheus and Eurydice as a “dance-opera” through a contemporary Pasifika lens. Director and Choreographer Neil Ieremia is adept at weaving together cultures and movement vocabularies... Keep Reading
For the winter season in their 70th Anniversary year the Royal New Zealand Ballet offers an enriching and perfectly balanced production with Lightscapes. Two female and two male choreographers, brand new and recent works alongside a Balanchine classic, artistic perspectives from Australia, Europe, the United States of America, and Aotearoa are... Keep Reading
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