Review – PERFORMANCE SEASON 2025 – New Zealand School of Dance

Review – PERFORMANCE SEASON 2025 – New Zealand School of Dance

Te Whaea: National Dance and Drama Centre
Wellington
19 & 20 November 2025

Choreography (Classical): August Bournonville, Loughlan Prior, Jeffrey Tan, Christopher Hampson CBE
Choreography (Contemporary): Riley Fitzgerald, Tristan Carter, ’Isope Akau’ola, Airu Matsuda, Raewyn Hill
Lighting Design & Operation: Wendy Clease
Costumes: Anna de Geus, Maria McCarthy, Alexandra McCleod

Reviewed by Brigitte Knight

All photos by Stephen A’Court

The New Zealand School of Dance Performance Season 2025 returns to a split stream format, with alternating classical and contemporary dance programmes each providing a full evening’s entertainment. Formatting the season in two parts gives time for the dancers to showcase their skills through the presentation of works by a variety of choreographers, and whānau and supporters can select either or both programmes to attend. Performance Season 2025 showcases dancers from across all three year groups, and although the third-year students are generally prominent with their technical skill, stamina, and stage presence there are an impressive number of first- and second-year dancers more than holding their own onstage.

The 2025 Ballet Programme consists of four balanced and thoughtfully selected works which together satisfyingly span romantic, classical, and contemporary ballet. Beloved romantic era treasure La Sylphide Act II Pas de Deux and Grand Divertissement opens the evening, with meticulous and loving staging of August Bournonville’s choreography by Nadine Tyson. Third-years Kaiserin Darongsuwan (Mook) as The Sylph and Hui Ho Yin (Mike) as James deliver technically impressive performances; dynamic, spritely, filled with nuance, artistic intelligence, and integrity. The entire cast of La Sylphide dance with cohesion, care, and love for the artform, and features a number of first-year students doing brilliant work in the corps de ballet. Sylphs April Buscomb, Coco Giera, Phoebe Ewington, and Orla Riches are particularly lovely on opening night.

Curious Alchemy staged skilfully by Medhi Angot features Loughlan Prior’s witty, ebullient, and vivacious choreographic voice, intelligently detailed, accessible, and energised choreography, and absolutely perfect casting. Superb second-year dancers Liezl Herrera, Ella Marshall, Lin Xi-Yuan (Ian) and first-year Hiroki So masterfully embody the plentiful opportunities in Prior’s work, each contributing engaging artistry and technical precision. The second contemporary ballet of the programme, Jeffrey Tan’s ambitious Façade staged by Robert Mills, is a complete tonal shift but coincidentally shares flattering utilisation of dancers in profile. Performed beautifully on opening night by Ella Marshall, Lin Xi-Yuan (Ian), the work features stark costuming and challenging partnering transitions which leave nowhere to hide. Rising to the challenge, Marshall and Lin balance boldness and care in their approach to the work, impressing the audience with their grace and stamina.

Following a brief interval, Christopher Hampson’s 2002 work Esquisses is staged by Turid Revfeim, benefitting from her consummate and adroit knowledge of the work and choreographic intention. A large cast, costumed stylishly in design by former Royal New Zealand Ballet Artistic director Gary Harris, fills the stage with cheeky sketches and satisfying explorations, in solos, pas de deux, trois, quatre, six, and ensemble arrangements. Beautiful, varied, and endlessly entertaining, Esquisses offers rich material for dancers to excel in. Soloists Ava Boeschenstein (in the delightful and iconic Degas’ Little Dancer solo), Ruby Clarke, Hui Ho Yin (Mike), and Hollie Knowles each make the most of their featured roles, dancing expressively and with care. Amongst a strong cast, the Pas de trois men (Muhyeon Choi, Lin Xi-Yuan (Ian), Shanwen Tan) and corps dancers Katrina Casey, Liezl Herrera, and Patrick Nawalowalo McCrory consistently catch my eye.

The 2025 Contemporary Programme features five World Premiere works in two acts, with all but one utilising large ensemble casts. Three of the works share the successful format of slow or moderate opening, building in intensity to impactful, rigorous, rhythm-driven, fast tempo unison. Matte Roffe rehearsal directs both of the opening two works Riley Fitzgerald’s You Cannot Make a Deal With a Tiger and Tristan Carter’s God is in the Room. Fitzgerald’s is the smallest cast of the evening, with five strong and well-chosen second- and third-year dancers restlessly interwoven through intricate connections and groupings. Third-year student Aylish Marshall is masterful in this movement material, holding the tone of the dance, and effortlessly delivering the choreographic and technical detail. A celebrational challenge, the transformation of energy, a riot of humour, and rigorous physicality comprise Carter’s God is in the Room. Choreographed for the graduating third year dancers, and drawing on nuance and personalities, Carter’s movement and concept flatter the group, especially Ali Mayes, who delivers a vibrant and richly commanding performance. Anatomy of Entanglement by Footnote New Zealand Dance artist Airu Matsuda is choreographed for the whole first-year contemporary stream cohort, exploring an abstract theme though formation, relationships, interactions, and separations. Matsuda and the dancers do well to manage the space available, and this facet of the staging will continue to settle as the season progresses. Anatomy of Entanglement achieves a beautiful, moody opening, and offers the students plentiful technical and performative opportunities.

The remaining two works feel quite tonally unique; New Zealand Dance Company performer and tutor ’Isope Akau’ola’s Crybabies Never Pelu, and Artistic Director of Australia’s Co3 Contemporary Dance (and Oamaru-born Kiwi) Raewyn Hill’s The Space Between. Considering endurance, service, and love, Akau’ola’s Crybabies Never Pelu (fold/give up) is a work of warmth, darkness, and breath, moving through considered formations and spacing, to a wistful yet reassuring selection of music and song. Choreographed for the second-year dancers, Crybabies Never Pelu is full of heart, and will continue to develop as extension uniformity and spacing shore up during the season. Finally, Hill’s endlessly generous and profoundly moving The Space Between closes the show with a sublimely conceived and realised choreography of wild finesse and reckless technical precision. A master of her artform, Hill’s choreography wields the large cast of twenty-six dancers in raw, arching brushstrokes, flocking, sweeping the stage, entrancing the audience in symbiosis with the score by Eden Mulholland. Group lifts are invisible until they’re in the air, formations barely realised before dissolving, essential drive and energy pulse throughout the performance. One can feel the late Douglas Wright’s choreographic presence here – Hill’s work is not derivative, rather it holds respect for his contribution to the lineage of contemporary dance in Aotearoa. The artistry of every single cast member is celebrated in this choreography – the dancers partner and connect with aroha and visible care. The Space Between achieves an emotional authenticity as rare as it is poignant. From a stellar ensemble cast, Braelan Newman, Mia Mangano, Eve Gaudio, Ali Mayes, Andie French, and the breathtaking Gabrielle Arnold and Millie Madden surface to twinkle again and again.

Congratulations to the staff and students of the New Zealand School of Dance for two beautiful programmes of dance in their Performance Season 2025. It is heartening indeed to appreciate the world class training provided to the dancers, and to experience the consistent professionalism, formality, stagecraft, and gravitas of their annual graduation performances.

Gallery photos by Stephen A’Court