Ballet dancers are some of the most graceful and elegant people on Earth.
So it was a treat when three dancers from the Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) recently visited Bruce McLaren Retirement Village in Dannemora to talk to its residents about their craft and to stage a fun and challenging quiz on ballet.
Several dozen of the village’s residents took the opportunity to meet and hear from dancers Luke Cooper, Hannah Thomson and Calum Grey, each of whom introduced themselves and detailed their own background.
All three studied at the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington.
Cooper joined the RNZB at age 19 and has been with the company for seven years.
At just 20 years old Thomson is one of the company’s youngest dancers.
“I got a contact with the company (RNZB) last year so it’s been short but fun,” she said.
“I’m a ‘scholar’ at the moment. I’m joining the company fully next year, which will be really nice.”
Grey, who’s from the UK, moved to New Zealand 12 years ago at age 17.
“After three years I got employed at the Royal New Zealand Ballet and I’ve been with them for six years,” he said.
Cooper said RNZB is a troop of about 36 dancers and because he, Thomson and Grey all attend the same dance school they aren’t a great representation of the breadth of training at the company.
“It’s quite diverse in terms of where the dancers trained and where they’re from.
“Over 50 per cent of the company are from New Zealand. It’s really important the RNZB has representation from other countries and other forms of training to keep the standard of dance in New Zealand really high and to keep us competing.
“We can get quite content with what we do as we’re the only ballet company [in New Zealand], so it’s good for us to constantly be having other people in and inspiring not just us but the audiences and up and coming ballerinas and dancers.”
This year’s been a big one for the company, the trio explained.
It began with their regional tour, Tutus on Tour, followed by Swan Lake.
Thomson said ballerinas carry the core in Swan Lake “because you’re on stage for most of the ballet”.
“It’s definitely been, speaking to all of the dancers in the company, our dreams to get to do Swan Lake and it was such an amazing time to show it around New Zealand with all of our families.”
The dancers told the village’s residents about the history of ballet, their dance shoes and training, and their current production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is being staged at the Aotea Centre and Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland this month.
Village resident and ballet tutor Alison Sutcliffe was presented with a unique one-off ballet shoe for winning the quiz.
