Royal NZ Ballet celebrates anniversary of women's suffrage

Strength and Grace
Royal New Zealand Ballet
Opera House, Wellington
August 17, 18

This year is the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand as well the Royal NZ Ballet’s 65th anniversary.

Marking this convergence, the Royal New Zealand Ballet has asked four internationally acclaimed women dance makers to create works acknowledging the shared anniversaries.

As RNZB executive director Frances Turner says, “Dance can tell stories that transcend language. As the national ballet company for a young country, the Royal NZ Ballet has from its earliest days created and commissioned works which resonate with audiences from our homeland, telling our own stories as well as those from abroad.”

“In recognition of this significant year in our company’s and our country’s histories, we are inspired by both our past, the great women who have contributed to our nation’s story, and by the many possibilities of dance making in the 21st century.”

New Zealander Sarah Foster-Sproull is creating a work for the first time for the ballet company. She is widely known in the New Zealand dance community and her work has been performed at festivals both locally and internationally. Her work for this programme, which is inspired by female strength, explores strength in numbers, endurance, and woman as a deified figure, with a sound score by Eden Mulholland, commissioned specially for this work.

The Australian choreographer, Danielle Rowe, who is the associate artistic director of SF Dance Works in San Francisco, has created a piece which is both a tribute and celebration of the strength, sacrifice and beauty of motherhood as the audience observes the world of one mother and her son and the ebbs and flows of their relationship over time.

Penny Saunders is the choreographer in residence at Grand Rapids Ballet and was the recipient of the New York City Ballet choreographic commissions initiative and Princess Grace choreographic fellowship. Her work will focus on the private struggles that were fought within the home, celebrating the conversations wives and daughters dared to have behind the scenes of the public suffrage campaigns.

South African Andrea Schermoly has danced with Boston Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater and won the Outstanding Choreographer award twice at Youth America Grand Prix. Her work is based on the pamphlet Ten Reasons Why A Woman Should Vote, published in 1888 in which women had to clearly convince, explain and justify their right to political participation.