Royal New Zealand Ballet & Scottish Ballet
St.James Theatre, Wellington
14 March 2025
Scottish Ballet are visiting New Zealand primarily to perform in Auckland Arts Festival, the full-length work A Streetcar Named Desire, choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, to music by Peter Salem. (We saw Ochoa’s Requiem for a Rose here from RNZB a few seasons back and I remember liking it a lot, finding her choice of Schubert inspired).
A flying visit of Scottish Ballet to Wellington has enabled them to share with RoyalNew Zealand Ballet this short season of four works, two from each company. It’s acolourful programme of contrasts, quirky then charismatic, tight-tuned tension then riff & romp. Luckily it’s not a competition…
Scottish Ballet first visited here in 1979, when under the direction of Peter Darrell, who choreographed a number of works that gained international recognition. Touring with the company (known by variations of its title over the decades) were Margot Fonteyn, Ivan Nagy, and leading dancer ex-pat Patricia Rianne, who impressed in solo roles – Sonate à Trois, La Sylphide, La Ventana among others.(The story is remembered of an exhausted company finishing their tour in Dunedin, being piped across the tarmac by a local Scottish Pipe Band, moving the dancers to smiles and to tears. The ties that bind).
Another strong connection is that Scottish Ballet’s current artistic director, Christopher Hampson, was commissioned by RNZB’s Artistic Director Gary Harris to create two full-length works to Prokofiev scores — Romeo & Juliet, 2003, a filmic drama in a setting that combined traditional and contemporary elements to extraordinary effect, and Cinderella, 2007, with a finely nuanced reading of character into the main roles. Both are remembered as masterworks in our Company’s repertoire.
SB’s opening work on the current programme is Schachmatt ( derived from Persian shah mat – the king is dead, Checkmate), choreographed by Cayetano Soto. The floor cloth is a giant chequer board but that image is unfortunately lost to all those sitting in the stalls. From above that may have added a shaping dimension of meaning to the swift lines, entries and exits of uniform groups in a myriad of movements, to a cluster of many pieces of music, from Michael Le Grand to Maria Teresa Lora. Jockeys’ hats were worn throughout, with cheeky wit and quirky twerks all part of the race.
RNZB followed with Shaun James Kelly’s Prismatic, a contemporary tribute to the talisman work from our company’s first decade, Prismatic Variations, co-choreographed by Russell Kerr and Poul Gnatt, with fabulous set design (then and still) by Raymond Boyce. This choreographic treatment gives opportunities to the dancers to convey enthusiasm through every move, and none of those are wasted. They are clearly inspired, as were the original dancers, by the music ( Brahms — Variations on a Theme by Haydn). Every dancer is outstanding but Kihiro Kusukami is a particular comet. Kelly takes every chance to lift the dancers clear of gravity, which in turn takes us with them. It’s an infectious joy of architectural choreography.
Limerence was seen in the recent RNZB Tutus on Tour programme. Here in the larger venue it rises to an even greater level of dramatic tension as it delves into the psychological challenge of the central character who is haunted, even undone, by memories of early or other relationships. It is moving to watch that breakdown, portrayed in a phenomenal performance by Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson. The anxious and perplexed group of those who would help if only they knew how, is equally poignant, with committed performances by Ana Gallardo Lobaina, Katherine Minor and Kihiro Kusukami. There is a hint of hope in the final moments when Lobaina is lifted aloft to walk forward into the future’s airy shadows. We must go on. Every move meets the Schubert piano composition phrase for phrase. I could watch this work every month for the rest of my life.
The final work Dextera, by Sophie Laplane, is to 10 excerpts of different Mozart’s compositions, so the intention is not to follow where that thread leads but is instead a cryptic and comic play of male v female, power & control, fashion & fancy. It toys with the theme of a created being (Coppélia maybe) that takes on a life of its own and learns to fight back on its own terms. The red glove, no wait there’s a pair, no, wait, there’s 20 pairs, become symbol of that coercion which then wittily subverts the tired old order.
An improvised finale has all the dancers from both companies filling the stage in a party dance that assures us they’ve all had a ball. Our dancers don’t get to travel to meet other companies, so this would have been a tonic for them. Meantime a red lunar eclipse has moved across the Wellington sky, a celestial choreography if ever there was one, a very hard act to follow, but luckily it’s not a competition…