The single standout in my year was the opening night performance of RNZB’s Swan Lake.  Production by Russell Kerr, always faithful to heritage yet with a fresh take on interpretation, was undoubtedly world class.  Kenneth Young’s devoted conducting of Vector Wellington Orchestra allowed Gaylene Cummerfield in the lead role to perform an adagio reading of great poignancy. Yu Takayama and Katie Hurst-Saxon in alternate casts were also impressive, and the ballet’s theme, of a woman trapped by violence escaping to love, still resonates. Kerr may be older than he used to be, but I wouldn’t write him out of New Zealand ballet history just yet. His mind and memory are the sharpest amongst my many dance colleagues, and he’s younger than Petipa was when he choreographed the ballet 112 years ago.

RNZB’s Cinderella was a stunning achievement of choreography (Christopher Hampson) and design (Tracy Grant Lord). The production’s shimmering beauty and inventive wit again demonstrated Hampson’s gifts and rapport with Prokofiev’s evocative music (reminding us that his Romeo & Juliet remains one of the company’s great achievements). 

I take regular pleasure in watching Company’s daily class, to study the qualities of so many gun dancers as they power across the floor.  Three of the most seasoned – Craig Lord, Vivencio Samblaceno and Geordan Wilcox – have all now left to pursue studies or other careers. They will be much missed, but not forgotten.

NZ School of Dance marked their 40th anniversary with a programme at the Opera House, the highlight of which was Evening Songs, a work by Dutch master-choreographer, Jiri Kylian, to Dvorak. Footnote gave an inspired performance in the challenging midst of an exhibition of New Zealand soldiers in New Caledonia during WW II, at the Wellington Museum.

Jan Bolwell staged a moving Requiem with members of the Crows’ Feet Collective. But top billing in the Dance Your Socks Off festival month of September went to Legacy, the hip-hop dance crew from Island Bay who harnessed huge energy and spirit into an impressively tight and clever show at Bats.

Vivek Kinra often produces his company, Mudra, in a group season but this year he performed a solo recital instead. The breathtaking beauty (always apparent) and endless stamina (always disguised) of his performance, particularly the varnam on Siva, to Sanskrit poetry, made this a performance of a very high order indeed. Kinra is a civilising presence in our city, and to watch him teach class is further revelation of the qualities and demands inherent in the jewelled art of Bharata Natyam.

Touch Compass, the mixed-ability company from Auckland, marked their 10th anniversary with a national tour. Their darling programme included a number of accomplished short films (Wellingtonian Brownyn Hayward starred in one of these).  Felicity Molloy’s piece, Amir-Spinnaret, to Leonard Cohen, was a powerful metaphor of this company’s  courageous journey. It is also heartening to see that the NZ School of Music’s graduate programme in Music Therapy is now introducing a dimension of Dance Therapy into its curriculum.

A visionary production of Maui, driven by Tanemahuta Gray, made impressive impact at St. James; other standouts were the pricelessly camp yet erudite Monarchy by Paul Jenden at Circa; Poe: a Gothic Cabaret by Lucien Johnson with an extraordinary performance by Chris Palmer at Happy; an inventive collaboration, White Lie, between Megan Adams and Johnson at Toi Whakaari; and ‘offshore’ at Auckland’s Arts Festival, a sparkling reading of Vivaldi’s Les Quatre Saisons  by Ballet Preljocaj.

Liong Xi, a dancer of remarkable and unusual talents, died aged 80. His life in New Zealand since 1960 mirrors the social changes of many decades here.  The light also went out for Marcel Marceau, French mime artist extraordinaire, who visited New Zealand several times, and Maurice Bejart, one of Europe’s driving forces of contemporary ballet.

Douglas Wright’s book of poems, Laughing Mirror (Steele-Roberts) contains one of the most remarkable homages to Nijnsky ever penned. The new release by Leanne Pooley of her documentary on Wright, Haunting Douglas, is also welcome. Sarah-Jayne Howard was made a NZ Arts Foundation Icon, and memories of her  sensational opening solo in Black Milk came flooding back.

2008 already offers much – starting with a January presentation at the Goethe Institut by Lisa Densem, ‘local girl made extraordinarily good’ in the Sasha Waltz dance company in Berlin.  

Several events through the year will mark the centenaries of two giant choreographers of the 20th century: Jose Limon, Mexican-American, and Antony Tudor, Anglo-American. On 9 March, in the NZ School of Music concert series in the Adam Concert Room, Paul Jenden will perform Limon’s Chaconne, to Richard Mapp playing Bach/Busoni, in a priceless concert which is therefore free entry.

I expect that taking account of the combined work of Limon & Tudor & Wright will occupy me for the rest of my life. Meantime, the dance line-up for the 2008 International Festival of the Arts is strong and stroppy and will pack some punches. Later in the year the quadrennial Pacific Arts Festival in Samoa sees a major contingent of Mâori and Pacific artists representing New Zealand. It would be good, for a change, to see media coverage here of that phenomenal gathering.

Remember that dance puts the body back together with the mind, where it has always belonged. Happy New Year.

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