DANZTe Whaea: National Dance and Drama Centre
Wellington
2 July 2026
Choreographic Mentor: Matte Roffe
Lighting Design & Operator: Alex Dickson
Dramaturgical Consultation: Miranda Manasiádi
Costume Coordination: Matte Roffe and 3rd Year contemporary students with Anne De Geus
Reviewed by Brigitte Knight
All Photographs by Stephen A’Court
Timed to be part of the annual Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance, the New Zealand School of Dance presents Note to Self; fourteen original works choreographed and performed by the third-year contemporary stream students, curated into a cohesive 90-minute production crafted by choreographic mentor Matte Roffe and dramaturgical consultant Miranda Manasiádi. Note to Self is supported by complementary and effective lighting by Alex Dickson, which creates colour, tone, and variety across the fourteen choreographies. Costumes are white throughout, allowing lighting to take responsibility for contrast and mood, and the open Studio Theatre space, sans wings, allows choreographers and dancers the utilisation of proximity and depth to great effect. Opening (charmingly) in the hallway leading to NZSD’s new Studio Theatre, the 2026 choreographic season is an energetic, nuanced, and comprehensive celebration of the graduating class and their engaging creative and technical skill.
Initiating the performance, Macka Hancock’s Whoman activates the hallway with four faceless dancers, accompanied by music in earpods that only they can hear, moving statically, stickily, robotically in and out of synchronicity before the audience are welcomed into the impressively-scaled Studio Theatre. Hancock’s unconventional choreographic presentation is externally quiet, internally focused and refined, and works well ahead of the interconnected works that follow.
As we take our seats, dancers are preset moving in calm but deliberate walking patterns, activating the full stage space through meditative pathways accompanied by birdsong and children playing, allowing the audience to relax and settle into the space, to focus or chat, to pay close attention, or drift.
Poppy Lawrence’s Solace feels more akin to the conventional opening of the show, building from a meditative, introspective beginning in subtle, abstract ways into a movement vocabulary juxtaposing rigidity and softness. Bathed in a warm light, Lawrence sets her exploration of symbolic solace or restriction to an original recorded conversational soundscape of her own composition, forming and dissolving interesting pairings with thoughtful pacing.
Aptly set to Phase Shift by Scott Buckley, Beauty of Impermanence by Alistair Gorton seeks to find and appreciate the beauty in grief, finding dissipated emotion through sensitive, natural grace. Initially for six dancers, the work yields to a brief but beautifully intimate duet for Braelan Newman and Strahan Cormican-Jones, and yields again for a thoughtful, reaching solo by Cormican-Jones.
The first of three works created through collaboration between two choreographers, Residuum (something residual, a residue product after a process) acknowledges something that was, and what remains of it now. Wistful and contemplative, Nicola Anslow and Kataraina Poata’s choreography for ten dancers evolves into a pulsing, rhythmic trance-like collection of solos, pairings, and small groups displacing captivatingly original movement material and building to a fragmented and haunting conclusion.
Opening with fabulous visual impact, To Occupy by Annabel Lowe features four dancers supported by the ensemble, and explores one’s authentic presence and the right to occupy physical, emotional, and social space. A timely contemplation in a bombastically fractious world, Lowe’s work takes a confidently measured approach against the driving electronic accompaniment of Open Eye Signal by Jon Hopkins, making later elevation and speed by Braelan Newman, Alistair Gorton, Kataraina Poata, and Grace Howard all the sweeter.
Dancing her own work alongside Alistair Gorton, Alecia Houston’s IDK (I Don’t Know) asks “What is dance, and who are we without it?”. With a humorous and whimsical approach, Houston playfully explores status, attention-seeking, and clashing competing egos, whilst featuring extremely impressive and totally unexpected coat rack balancing prowess from Gorton.
The brilliant choice of Eden Mulholland’s Orchids by Marcus Dillon for Tear Down My Bars creates a richly integrated visual and auditory foundation for his exploration of
trust, fear, and forgiveness. Bold, focused, and riddled with unwieldy power, Tear Down My Bars concludes with a solid and intentional solo danced with authenticity by Dillon himself.
Hōng by Fiona Chang is a thoughtfully structured and fluid work, considering resistance and surrender to the inevitable passage of time, and the space created by the quiet of gentle acceptance. Mario Batkovic’s Ineunte seamlessly supports Chang’s initial rippling and ethereal movement vocabulary, and her later finessed and satisfying utilisation of canon, unison and group lifts. The dancers deliver Hōng’s sophisticated emotional landscape with sensitivity and depth.
Multi-talented choreographer, costume designer, and composer Strahan Cormican-Jones’ soft as bone is the perfectly-placed only solo work of Note To Self, a visceral and loving somatic investigation of spine, nervous system, fluidity, and stacking bones. Costumed in a long, spined cape, soloist Andie French delivers a brilliant performance of Cormican-Jones’ perfectly crafted and intelligently structured spiralling and varied movement material.
Time Out by Braelan Newman explores individual human perceptions of contrasting experiences of time, to the haunting Babel by Lustmord, and Rana by Zutzut. A powerful, captivating, and strikingly cool solo performed masterfully by Eve Gaudio gives way to engaging ensemble choreography, and a skilful, cohesive, and appealing interpretation of theme.
Strong and sustained control and stage presence by Lydia Chapman throughout her solo (elevated on a box) initiates the work of the programme’s second choreographic duo, Maisy Bell and Aaron Gore. Eat Who You Love is a wonderfully weird, explorative, pulsing work for seven dancers; Bell and Gore encapsulate a movement vocabulary for microorganisms and human heartbeats, aptly utilising strobe, before their unleashing their denouement of flawless kaleidoscopic moving tableaux, and wrapping with a satisfying group unison and insect-swarm finale. Eat Who You Love has a clear choreographic intention, and with plenty of original movement materials the makings of an appealing full-length work.
Lydia Chapman’s delightfully avant garde Sickly utilises a sophisticated electronic soundtrack of Himmel Himmel Blao by Barrio Lindo & Andi Otto, and Taste of Honey by The Chemical Brothers, opening with a masterful solo by Kataraina Poata. Rhythmic camera flashes reveal varied nightmarish tableaux, in a confident and dramatic work with nine women moving through iterations of the thematic consideration of being alone while together, and together while alone. Engaging, imaginative, and controlled closing solos from Poata and Gaudio (moving into a duo with Andie French) could easily be extended in length and continue to captivate.
The final co-choreographer pairing of Andie French and Grace Howard present Sharpen Your Senses, a work of body knowledge, memory, awareness, and cool, graceful proximity-based movement. Nine featured dancers with the ensemble illuminate the dance with handheld lights, sensitively, calmly directing focus and moving the performance into a loose, fluid unison (with effective snippets of canon), relaxing and inviting to watch.
Eve Gaudio’s brings Note to Self to an energetic and celebratory close with the loosely narrative and joyous finale Aliens Entering A Rave. Four beautifully interconnected featured dancers bathed in extraterrestrial green light encounter unexpectedly decisive chaos when they put on Rave Sunglasses for the first time. Crafted with a precise blend of humour technical skill, and vibrantly supported by the ensemble, Gaudio’s memorable work effectively integrates bold lighting and a stirring soundtrack of Queen of Banshees by Sara Landry & Nico Moreno, and Parola (Rework) by Donato Dozzy & Anna Caragnamo. Appropriately, elevated on a box centre stage, Gaudio herself plays DJ.
The New Zealand School of Dance’s wonderfully large 2026 cohort of contemporary stream dancers are cohesive, professional, and both physically and emotionally generous performers; showcased and curated with aroha by Matte Roffe, the choreographic season rich and thoroughly entertaining.