New Zealand School of Dance: Classical Performance Season 2025
The New Zealand School of Dance’s classical programme offered an evening that balanced tradition, musicality and youthful sincerity, performed in the intimate Te Whaea Theatre. The closeness of the space heightened the experience, drawing the audience into the detail of each work and allowing the technical strength and camaraderie of this cohort to shine.
La Sylphide
Staged with attentive care by Nadine Tyson, Act II of La Sylphide opened the evening with buoyancy and charm. The dancers approached the Bournonville technique with discipline and musical intelligence, finding lightness in the jumps and an elegant ease through the upper body. As the Sylph, Kaiserin Darongsuwan brought delicacy and a radiant presence to the stage, shaping the air around her with an imaginative softness. Her sense of unbroken line and fluttering footwork carried the spirit of the Romantic tradition.
As James, Hui Ho Yin delivered a performance of remarkable strength and sincerity. His batterie was crisp and articulate, and he paired vivid technical assurance with a genuine emotional pull. The chemistry between Darongsuwan and Ho Yin was especially affecting. Their exchanges were tender and unforced, creating a believable and sweet rapport that anchored the storytelling.
Eleanor Bond, expansive and generous as the Queen Sylph, gave a commanding performance, and the corps of Sylphs danced with unity, refinement and an engaging sense of shared purpose.
Curious Alchemy
Loughlan Prior’s Curious Alchemy, staged by Medhi Angot, offered a vibrant shift of tone. Prior’s choreography demands clarity, wit and alert musical responsiveness, and the cast—Ella Marshall, Lin Yi-Xuan (Ian), Liezl Herrera and Hiroki So—rose to this with buoyant skill.
Marshall was a standout, bringing bright focus, clean footwork and a confident stage presence. Her musical timing sharpened the piece’s playful qualities, and she was well matched by Ian, whose dynamic control and spirited ease shaped the work’s rhythmic intricacies. Herrera and So contributed a freshness and joyful rapport that gave the quartet its sense of cohesive lift. Together, the four dancers embodied the intelligence and generosity embedded in Prior’s choreography.
Façade
Jeffrey Tan’s Façade, staged by Robert Mills, introduced a darker and more inwardly focused atmosphere. Set to Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the work requires emotional precision and extreme partnering clarity. Despite the weight of the material and their youth, the dancers approached it with admirable maturity.
On the night, the central pairing carried the emotional line of the work with striking poise. The duet unfolded with restraint and control, their partnering executed with care and attention to detail. While the thematic weight of the piece is not an entirely natural fit for pre-professional dancers, the dancers delivered an interpretation that was both honest and compelling. Their ability to inhabit the emotional language of the work hinted at the depth they are rapidly developing. I came away from this particular piece having enjoyed it far more than I expected to.
Esquisses
Christopher Hampson’s Esquisses, staged by Turid Revfeim, closed the evening with vitality and flair. The work’s structure offers a rich mix of solos, pas de deux, pas de trois and ensemble sections, allowing the dancers multiple avenues to show both individuality and cohesion. Revfeim’s staging revealed a cast who embraced the playful intelligence of Hampson’s choreography with skill and delight.
Across the piece, partnering was careful, coordinated and joyful to watch. The dancers moved with confidence and trust, clearly buoyed by the strong community formed within this cohort.
A Cohort Moving Forward
What united the evening’s performances was the unmistakable sense of artistic curiosity. These dancers are technically strong, but more importantly, they approach their work with integrity and a willingness to inhabit each style fully. The audience—enthusiastic from the opening curtain—responded to this wholeheartedly.
As the graduating dancers prepare to step into the professional world, they do so with a training foundation that is evident not only in their technique but in their discipline, generosity and readiness to collaborate. The Performance Season affirms the New Zealand School of Dance as a vital source of talent whose influence is felt across Aotearoa and abroad.
New Zealand School of Dance: Contemporary Performance Season 2025
The New Zealand School of Dance’s contemporary evening was engaging from the first moment to the last. What stood out immediately was the strong sense of unity within the cohort. These dancers move as a young company rather than students, embodying confidence, individuality and a shared commitment to the work. The programme of five world premieres offered a thrilling spectrum of tone and energy, and the dancers responded with a maturity that belied their age. For someone more comfortable in the classical realm, it was invigorating to see contemporary dance delivered with such clarity, joy and expressive freedom.
You Cannot Make a Deal with a Tiger
Riley Fitzgerald’s You Cannot Make a Deal with a Tiger, rehearsal directed by Matte Roffe, opened the programme with tightly wrought energy. The smallest cast of the evening, the work relied on intricate connections, shifting rhythms and carefully engineered groupings. The dancers navigated this with precision and a charged physicality. Aylish Marshall was particularly compelling, maintaining the tone of the work with ease and delivering sustained control through Fitzgerald’s unpredictable phrasing. Her performance set an early benchmark for both technical discipline and emotional clarity.
God is in the Room
Tristan Carter’s God is in the Room, also rehearsal directed by Roffe, shifted the energy into something expansive, celebratory and richly human. Designed for the graduating third-year dancers, the piece unfolded with increasing intensity as the ensemble pulsed together in sweeping unison sections. Carter’s choreography sits close to the personalities of the cast, giving space for nuance and individuality to surface within the collective. Ali Mayes, in particular, shaped the work with vibrant authority, moving from quiet internal focus to fearless physical attack. The work’s humour, drive and generosity made it a standout of the first act.
Anatomy of Entanglement
Airu Matsuda’s Anatomy of Entanglement (Footnote New Zealand Dance) brought the full first-year contemporary cohort to the stage in a thoughtful, atmospheric exploration of interconnection. The work opened with a moody stillness before building into more complex spatial conversations, using formation and separation as thematic anchors. Matsuda’s choreography provided the students with generous technical opportunities, and despite the challenge of such a large cast, the dancers handled the spatial architecture with care. This is a work that will continue to settle over the season, but its intent and imagery were already vivid and promising.
Crybabies Never Pelu
’Isope Akau’ola’s Crybabies Never Pelu brought a shift into a world of warmth, darkness and breath, shaped by music that held both nostalgia and resolve. The work explored endurance, service and the moment of not giving up, and the second-year dancers responded with sincerity. There was heart in the way they moved through Akau’ola’s sculptural groupings, and the material felt well-suited to their physical sensibility. Extension, spacing and uniformity will continue to develop as the season progresses, but the emotional centre of the piece was beautifully communicated.
The Space Between
The evening closed with a triumph. Raewyn Hill’s The Space Between, created for a cast of twenty-six dancers, was a masterwork of energy, architecture and emotional weight. Hill wielded the ensemble with sweeping command, sending dancers surging across the space in great arcs that dissolved as quickly as they formed. Eden Mulholland’s score worked in symbiosis with the dancers, driving the choreography into a state of wild finesse.
What impressed most was the dancers’ ability to meet Hill’s ferocity with precision and an unguarded openness. Group lifts appeared from nowhere, formations rippled and broke apart with startling clarity, and the transitions between states were delivered with absolute commitment. The costumes played a significant role in the storytelling, amplifying the flow and emotional resonance of the work. It was a piece that honoured lineage and possibility in equal measure, evoking shades of Douglas Wright’s influence while standing firmly in Hill’s distinct choreographic voice.
A Programme of Integrity and Joy
What made the contemporary evening so compelling was the dancers’ wholehearted ownership of each work. They demonstrated technical strength, particularly in their jumps and partnering, but also a rare sense of expressive ease. There was genuine joy visible throughout the programme, a quality that is not always easily found in contemporary seasons.
For audiences used to classical work, this programme was a revelation. The dancers embraced every choreographic language set before them and revealed both versatility and flair. Their emotional and technical maturity felt fully realised, making the evening not only impressive but deeply enjoyable.
This contemporary evening was a testament to the skill of the faculty, the commitment of the dancers and the vitality of the next generation of creative voices.
Across both the classical and contemporary programmes, what emerged most clearly was the shared calibre of the New Zealand School of Dance’s two streams. Whether navigating the refined demands of Bournonville or the sweeping physicality of new contemporary work, the students revealed a consistency of training, an artistic curiosity and a collective professionalism well beyond their years. Together they demonstrated the school’s distinctive strength: dancers who are not only technically accomplished, but deeply engaged, versatile, generous and ready to take their place in the wider dance world.
- Olivia Weeks