Find out what’s happening in New Zealand dance news!
The New Zealand School of Dance (NZSD) has an exciting few months ahead, featuring new works and exciting collaborations. From cultural showcases to contemporary ballet and classical repertoire, NZSD students and alumni will take the stage across the country.
NZSD will feature at this year’s Pacific Dance Festival, with two new contemporary works by Māori, Pasifika and Australian First Nations students. These pieces explore cultural identity through movement. Graduate Samara Reweti and second-year students Kataraina Poata and Hayley Crisp debut original choreographies. The performance will take place 17 June at 7pm, at Māngere Arts Centre. For more information, visit www.pacificdance.org.nz.
NZSD returns to Whirinaki Whare Taonga with UNBOUND, a compelling programme combining classical ballet and contemporary dance. Audiences can expect standout pieces from the School’s repertoire, alongside fresh, original choreography. UNBOUND runs from 14 – 16 August, at Whirinaki Whare Taonga. For tickets, head to www.nzschoolofdance.ac.nz/whats-on.
The Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB)’s new season, Home, Land and Sea, will feature a historic first-time collaboration with The New Zealand Dance Company (NZDC). This creative partnership will bring together two of New Zealand’s premiere dance institutions in a bold exploration of national identity, connection to place and our collective future. The world premiere title work, Home, Land and Sea by acclaimed NZDC Artistic Director Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, will feature six dancers from each company.
“We’re not creating a nostalgic version of the past or a tidy vision of the future,” says Patterson. “Home, Land and Sea is being built as a space for reflection and resistance – a place where the audience can sit with complexity, with connection and with hope. The result will be a deeply human work that moves between the personal and the political, the ancestral and the imagined. Home, Land and Sea will invite audiences to consider what it means to feel at home in this place. It will ask where we have come from, where we are going, and how we might find strength, connection and hope in one another?”
This collaboration represents a new chapter for ballet in Aotearoa, says Ty King-Wall, RNZB’s artistic director. “Joining the collective forces of our two distinctive companies is all about kotahitanga, about unity and togetherness, which we are so committed to. It is brilliant for RNZB to be building further the creative partnership we’ve established with Moss over the years, and to be elevating that to another level through this project with NZDC. Both in the studio and on stage, this will be such a wonderful opportunity for learning, sharing and contemplation.”
The programme also features Chrysalis, a world premiere by RNZB choreographer-in-residence Shaun James Kelly; and The Way Alone, a work by Stephen Baynes which premiered in New Zealand as part of Tutus on Tour. New Zealand School of Dance students and alumni will also join this powerful production. 2025 tour dates for Home, Land and Sea are: 24 – 26 July (Wellington), 31 July – 2 August (Auckland) and 8 – 9 August (Christchurch). For tickets and more information, head to rnzb.org.nz/show/home-land-and-sea.
This Matariki, The New Zealand Dance Company (NZDC) proudly presents Whetū, an exciting triple bill marking 10 years of the Tāmaki Tour. Inspired by the cycles of nature, the shifting winds, and the celestial rhythms of Matariki, Whetū explores themes of connection, renewal and reflection — just as the rising constellation invites us to consider where we have been and where we are going. Designed for students from primary to secondary levels, Whetū brings together three distinct dance works, each revealing the patterns that connect us — to nature, to our histories and to each other.
Whetū will feature Bianca Hyslop’s A Murmuration, set to a composition by Rowan Pierce; ‘Isope ‘Akau‘ola’s Tawhiri’s Ring, which celebrates whānau, the power of the elements, and the ever-changing nature of the world around us; and an excerpt of Moss Te Ururangi Patterson’s 100 Winds, with music by Philip Glass. Whetū will tour from 3 – 19 June. For more information, visit nzdc.org.nz/stage/works/tāmaki-tour.
The second annual Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance is back this July, featuring seven performances across the week by six of Aotearoa’s finest contemporary dance artists and companies, as well as eight residency recipients developing their craft in residence at the Te Auaha studios. Performance seasons feature artists such as Footnote New Zealand Dance, Dance Plant Collective, BalletCollective Aotearoa and Java Dance Theatre. The festival runs 30 June – 5 July in Te Auaha, Wellington. For more information, visit www.teauahaevents.com/home/poneke-festival-of-contemporary-dance.
After a sellout premiere tour of Japan in 2024, Footnote New Zealand Dance is proud to present Kota Yamazaki’s Thin Paper, Autonomous Synapses, Nomads, Tokyo(ing) 薄い紙、自律のシナプス、遊牧民、トーキョー(する) in Wellington for one night only, on 1 July, at the Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance this July. Kota Yamazaki and Footnote explore the changing and fluid nature of human identity, freeing it from socially preconditioned notions of self. Throughout the work, words float and scatter, collected from the scenery of Wellington and young people’s hang-out spots in Tokyo. For this special one-off performance, the company will be joined by Kota himself onstage, performing his striking solo prologue to the work. Tickets are on sale now from www.footnote.org.nz/events/thin-paper-wellington.
By Laura Di Orio of Dance Informa.
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