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Footnote’s Wellington season to feature new collaborations

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Anu Khapung at Princess Bay on Wellington’s South Coast. Photo by Caroline Atkinson Photography.

News from Footnote NZ Dance
A consistently creative and experimental company of outstanding professionals are enticing new audiences to dance. New Zealand’s longest running contemporary dance company, Footnote New Zealand Dance, is thriving after a sell-out nation-wide tour of Search Engine, and will now showcase their talent in another dynamic new season, Balancing Point.

Fulltime company dancers, Georgia Beechey-Gradwell, Tyler Carney, Joshua Faleatua, Anu Khapung, and Adam Naughton, have attracted high praise, with reviewers calling recent performances ‘beguiling’, ‘spellbinding’, and ‘impressive.’ The company attracts top local and international choreographers to give their dancers innovative and exciting pieces to work with, and draws upon other artistic talent to give deep textural layers to their performances.

For Balancing Point, Footnote has gathered together a heady mix of New Zealand’s top musicians, designers and artists. “We’ve been successfully experimenting with new forms of collaboration this year in our Search Engine season, so for Balancing Point we wanted to keep pushing and see how far we could go.” says Richard Aindow, General Manager.

New Zealand artist Zahra Killeen-Chance has created Elliptical Fictions for Balancing Point. In collaboration with accomplished Wellington composer Emi Pogoni, Zahra Killeen-Chance has choreographed a visually mesmerising dance that transcends the conventional limits of the form by drawing on martial arts she learned during a residency in Taiwan. Adding to her hypnotic work is projected imagery by legendary New Zealand artist Richard Killeen, Zahra’s father, whose work has exhibited widely internationally and across Aotearoa. This is the first time he has collaborated with his daughter. With costumes woven with continuous loom by Auckland University of Technology faculty members, this work brings together a potent combination of creativity.

In their captivating offering for Balancing Point, Australian choreographers James O’Hara and Eliza Sanders have created a tender ode to home. Having settled on the Wellington’s south coast, this rugged landscape is the silent collaborator in this piece and provided the backdrop for the vivid photoshoot for the season. Set to the cadences of acclaimed New Zealand songstress Nadia Reid, this dance speaks of the elation and comfort a sense of home brings for two international choreographers who have chosen to call Aotearoa their home. In this new collaborative work, the whirling energy of the Footnote dancers is accentuated by the costumes from New Zealand’s ethical fashion house, Kowtow, from their brand new Summer 2019 collection.

Balancing Point promises to be a rich, sophisticated, and global dance heightened by the performance of this vibrant contemporary company and its line-up of notable New Zealand creators. Footnote perform Balancing Point in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland.

Wellington
Te Whaea Theatre
16th, 17th, 18th August
Tickets on sale now www.footnote.org.nz

Footnote New Zealand Dance
Footnote New Zealand Dance is New Zealand’s longest-running contemporary dance company. The story of Footnote is the story of our art form in this country. For over a generation, almost every notable dancer and choreographer has worked with Footnote during their careers. Founded in 1985 by Wellingtonian Deirdre Tarrant, Footnote has played a significant part in shaping the foundation of New Zealand’s contemporary dance landscape. The company has been at the forefront of this art form; using contemporary dance to distil and reflect New Zealand’s identity. A Wellington arts icon, Footnote is a national arts organisation that extensively tours dance works around Aotearoa and internationally; performing in the United States, China, Germany, the UK, Belgium, Switzerland and France in recent years. As the only national contemporary dance company outside of Auckland, Footnote has been representing Wellington nationally and internationally for over 30 years.