Moves afoot

HUMAN PHYSICALITY: The Royal New Zealand Ballet's 2010 season has begun.

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The Royal New Zealand Ballet is presenting its first 2010 production in Christchurch this week - a triple bill featuring two new works. CHRIS MOORE talks to the two men who designed the steps.

While it's the dancers who take centre stage, it is the choreographer who gives dance its unique physical presence, fusing the human physicality with music to articulate his or her imagination and creativity.

Last week in Dunedin, a New Zealander and an Englishman - one with an established name in international dance, the other launching his choreographic career - saw the long, demanding months of creation and rehearsal made reality.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet's 2010 season has begun with a triple bill. From Here To There features A Song In The Dark, choreographed by former RNZB dancer and Cantabrian Andrew Simmons; Silhouette, created by Christopher Hampson; and a restaging of David Dawson's A Million Kisses To My Skin.

According to the RNZB's artistic director, Gary Harris, presenting a trio of danceworks provides an opportunity to challenge audiences and give new talent a chance to blossom. "From Here to There features three works that are all very different - not just in the sense that they come from different choreographers but they also offer a diversity of dance styles, design and music," Harris says.

For 24-year-old Simmons - born and trained in Christchurch, married to dancer Chantelle Kerr and now establishing a career as a freelance choreographer based in Dresden, Germany - the opportunity to choreograph a work to the music of contemporary American composer Philip Glass presented a personally challenging and "daunting" opportunity.

"I stumbled across the pieces after Gary Harris invited me to choreograph a work. I always start with the music. It takes me with it," Simmons says.

For this ballet, he chose three separate works, the Tirol Concerto for piano and orchestra, Tissue No 1 and a section of the score for The Poet Acts.

"Glass's music is minimalistic. It could have been a cliche to use it but these are works which are unusual, especially the movement from the piano concerto. I wanted music which had energy and was dynamic without being heavy. Three ideas emerged through the choreography - love, missed opportunities and beauty in the ordinary. Interesting, inspiring themes which can be absorbed in individual ways."

Immersing himself in the music, Simmons began to carefully structure his new work. The most exciting part of the project came on the first day of rehearsals with the RNZB dancers.

"That's the day when you give the dancers the first steps - a few bits to learn before the vocabulary develops from there. It's then that the project becomes a team effort and the choreographer begins to feed off the dancers' ideas."

For Simmons' fellow choreographer, Christopher Hampson, 36, the invitation to choreograph a new work has reinforced a decade-long link with New Zealand's national ballet company. He had already created several new pieces for the RNZB - in Silhouette, he had a single goal in mind. To allow the audience to "see" the music on stage through a ballet with a contemporary edge.

The choice of music was comparatively straightforward. Hampson had loved the work of Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), whose sharply elegant, beautifully crafted compositions became the sophisticated epitome of French music between the world wars. For this ballet, Hampson chose Poulenc's Concert Champetre, a work for harpsichord and orchestra that evokes the luminous grace of 18th-century France.

"It's such a crisp, clean work and, like all Poulenc's compositions, it's got a frivolous, playful quality. Themes are juggled and discarded but there's also the most tender and lyrical sections," he says. "There were concerns about using a harpsichord concerto, with the chance that the music would be a small, almost apologetic sound. But this is inspirational stuff and the fact that I'm passionate about it drove me to choreograph this work in four weeks. It was all there in my mind."

While a structure already existed, the steps followed, then, much later, the design for the work.

"In the case of Silhouette, there isn't one. It's an idea of an 'appearance' on stage, the notion of silhouettes. There's an element there which I think works."

For Simmons, A Song In The Dark is the third work he's choreographed for his former company. He now lives in a foreign city confronting an exciting and, he adds, somewhat frightening phase of his career in dance. "This is something that I've always wanted to do but somehow I have progressed to this stage faster than I initially thought. My ultimate dream? At the end of my career as a choreographer to look back and be pleased with whatever I've created. It's as simple as that."

From Here To There: The Royal New Zealand Ballet Company presents works by Andrew Simmons, Christopher Hampson and David Dawson. Isaac Theatre Royal, until March 6. Book at Ticketek.

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