Driving from the Front of the Bus
By Francesca Horsley
Longevity and a full year-long schedule of work is every dance company’s heartfelt dream; especially in New Zealand. Wellington’s talented and energetic company Java Dance can tick these boxes, plus a few others, for 2011. The stats are impressive - now in its ninth year, Java Dance Company has created and staged 12 new works in its first eight years and performed to over 45,000 people nationally. Artistic director Sacha Copland says “We've gone from being a very poor co-operative in 2003 to being able to fully support ourselves for the majority of 2011 from Java alone.”
Sacha, a graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance, founded the company in 2003. “I knew I wanted to make work and lots of different kinds of work, so I started to create pieces and found a group of dancers that fuelled it,” she says.
Their inspiration, Sacha says, comes from how the body can express the pulse underneath the skin of everyday life.
Read the full article (Iss. 24)Driving from the front of the bus