The return of Tutus on Tour in its traditional format, with the company split into two sections touring the North and South Island’s smaller centres, is a welcome development.  The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s South Island contingent’s final performance brought them to Ashburton’s Event Centre, a well-appointed modern venue with excellent sightlines.

The 2023 programme is well suited for this kind of tour and included works seen on previous Tutus tours, works new to the company and a mix of solos and pas de deux.  The programme opens with Greg Horsman’s Holberg Suite, set to Grieg’s suite for strings.  Made specifically for a previous Tutus on Tour programme in 2009 when Horsman was the company’s ballet master, it is ideally suited to showing off the dancers’ strengths.  Set on four couples, the work provides opportunities for the entire ensemble as well as differing combinations of dancers, to shine.  Following the opening Prelude the Sarabande is treated as a pas de trios, Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson and Luke Cooper providing secure and gallant support for Jennifer Ulloa, a new member to the company this season.  After the energetic Gavotte, Guillemot-Rodgerson partners Ana Gallardo Lobaina in the wistful Air before the spirited Rigaudon brings the work to a close. 

Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain pas de deux featured in the company’s final 2022 programme and it is good to see a work performed in the main centres being shown in smaller venues around the country.  Set to the Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt’s haunting piece Spiegle im Spiegel, (Mirror in Mirror), it is given an assured performance by Kate Kadow and Calum Gray.  The slowly evolving piece, which includes a series of striking lifts, places considerable demands on the dancers and Kadow and Gray maintained their intense focus from beginning to end.

The first half closes with a complete change of mood, the brief solo from New Zealand choreographer Mark Baldwin’s FrENZy, ‘Nobody Takes Me Seriously’ to the music of Split Enz.  Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson’s spirited performance captured the moves but missed the anarchic energy that is the essence of the piece.  It was a reminder, nevertheless, that Baldwin is one of New Zealand’s outstanding international dance-makers and it would be timely for the RNZB to invite him to restage previous works he has made for it and to make a new piece on the company’s current crop of dancers.

Following the interval Cadence Barrack and Laurynas Véjalis perform the pas de deux from Le Papillon, originally created by Marie Taglioni, one of the great stars of the Romantic ballet in nineteenth-century Paris.  This provided a glimpse into another era of ballet’s history in which Vejalis was able to display a range of virtuoso leaps and turns.  Barrack’s butterfly-inspired tutu produced an audible gasp from the audience but the gossamer lightness required for the part of Farfalla, the girl who is transformed into a butterfly, eluded her.

The programme ends with Cold Winter’s Waiting, a further work for four pairs of dancers, thus bookending the evening in the manner in which it started.  In contrast with the classical vocabulary of Holberg Suite, Brian Enos’s choreography is in a contemporary idiom with music by contemporary French, American and Argentinian composers.  The mood is dark and brooding and a lone figure, danced strongly by Shaun James Kelly, opens and closes the work.  Apparently alienated from the larger group, he is briefly welcomed by his fellows before being cast out into the gloom once more.  Daniel Wilson’s lighting design adds to the impact of the work, but what is suitable for the moody tone of one piece does not necessarily work for another; After the Rain would have benefited from some warm sunlight brightening the pervasive gloom.

This is one of the stronger Tutus on Tour programmes of recent years, with a good balance of lighter and more substantial fare.  Regional audiences deserve to see the best the company can offer and the dancers commitment right to the end of their tour is clearly in evidence.  During the final curtain calls acknowledgement was made for Madeline Graham’s decade-long contribution as a dancer with the RNZB.  Recently promoted to soloist, she is now leaving to pursue future dance opportunities in Europe.  She has been a stalwart of the company with a highlight being her creation of the role of Juliet in Francesco Ventriglia’s production of Romeo and Juliet in 2017. She was farewelled with warm applause.

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The first touring season of the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s seventieth birthday year and the last under the directorship of Patricia Barker, Tutus on Tour is set to be an auspicious event that enshrines the ballet company’s history, while heralding a new era. The bill for the tour is a characteristically capricious blend of tradition and the avant-garde, with something to offer audiences of differing ages and engagement in ballet. 

At the events centre venue, the lights lift on the sparkling first act, Holberg Suite, a picture perfect ensemble piece, choreographed by former RNZB ballet master, Greg Horsman. A classical ‘tutu ballet’ in miniature, the muscular, cheesecake charm of this piece with glittering tutus, wide smiles and immaculate petit allegro cannot fail to please. The various movements of Grieg’s score encapsulates the augustness of eighteenth century dances. Sassy flick flacks, épaulement and pas de trois add contemporary pizzazz. The male ensemble perform gravity-defying leaps and barrel turns like it’s a piece of cake. The work is spirited, fun and light as a feather but perhaps overly long with no narrative to hold the audience’s imagination in an otherwise snappy line-up.

The second piece for the evening, After the Rain by New York City Ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, is predictably touching. Performed with such tenderness by soloists Kihiro Kusukami and Katherine Minor, this pas de deux to the sublime Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt oozes with pared back tenderness. The duo embrace, fall and lean into each other, with softness and strength. Minor’s ribcage rises and falls like a startled bird, under her nude leotard, as Kusukami lunges and lifts her, bare-chested in his pale washed pants. The piece culminates in her being carried above his head like a precious queen in a chariot and gently placed down, kissing her forehead; signature motions for this profoundly moving piece. 

The stage is swept with disco fever for the next piece, Nobody Takes Me Seriously, a solo from FrENZy by Mark Baldwin an excerpt from Ihi FrENZy, a collaboration between RNZB and kapa haka champions Te Matarae I Orehu to music by Kiwi treasures, Split Enz. Shae Berney, in sequinned jacket and spray-on black leggings shakes it on down—ballet style—bounding across the stage in air splits and tossing his hair like a lead singer. A highly enjoyable high energy, high octave piece to lead into interval. 

The second half features two starkly contrasting works: Le Papillion Pas De Deux and Cold Winter’s Waiting. The former is a gem of nineteenth century romantic ballet, choreographed by Marie Taglioni.. Brimming with elegance, airy lifts, dizzying spins and fluttering arms, Kihiro Kusukami and Mayu Tanigaito shine with ephemeral radiance. 

The final act for the evening, Cold Winter’s Waiting by Brian Enos, certainly lives up to its bleak name. Low candle-like lighting reveals the dancers staring starkly into the audience, the movie-like musical score of heavy bass piano and strings wafting through the night. The ensemble dance in pas de deux and formation with machine-like precision. Bare torsos and slicked back bunheads in clocklike turns add metropolitan desolation to the work. Cinema and dance collide in this futuristic piece. 
Tutus on Tour lives up to its celebrated, diverse and accessible reputation in an eventful year for the ballet.

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Tutus on Tour is an opportunity for smaller centres to experience the Royal New Zealand Ballet in more intimate venues. It has become an iconic part of their programme, eagerly anticipated by audiences across Aotearoa. Opening night for the 2023 tour at Te Raukura ki Kāpiti is greeted warmly by a full auditorium. To read more

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