View from 'the gods'

The Secret Lives of Dancers #1 & #2

Having watched episode one of this last week, I managed to catch episode two this week. The half-hour-long episodes take you for behind the scenes look at the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

Episode one was centred on the annual open auditions, and Gary Harris -the Artistic Director, who has the final say on who is in, and who is out. There are the usual interviews with the candidates before and after the day-long audition. The format is pretty standard for a behind the scene look at any enterprise that holds selections for a limited number of places – the candidates could have been models or circus artists or rugby players.

What I really wanted to know was how the candidates heard about the audition.

It is a bit brutal; as they say: Many are called, but few a chosen. Gary is quite blunt with his on air assessments of dancers – I hope the candidates signed waivers! This year ‘The Company’ accepts two: Lucy Green and Yang Liu. Lucy is from Australia and Yang is from China. It is pretty obvious that these two will be selected: Lucy is shown doing some killer fouetttes and Yang is shown doing some lovely leaps, while Gary can be heard say “what lovely lines”. Also, we are told that, Yang was hand picked by the chinese ballet system at an early age, trained at the Beijing ballet, and danced is a member of the National Ballet of China. I also could not resist looking up the company in the Carmen programme on my shelf!

Episode two is centred on the first day back from holidays – established Company members return and the new members turn up with some trepidation.

Greg Horsman, the ballet master, takes class and, he claims, works them real hard. Which I found a concern, if it was true. He and company management expect the dancers to be ready to work; yet they know that the members of the company have been resting and that the only way to be ready to train at the level he claims to be putting them through is if they did not have a rest (for their bodies to recover from last year), but found somewhere to train (hard) in the off-season! Professional sports teams would not do this – maybe professional sportman are harder to come by than professional ballet dancers!

Then it was some interviews with members of the company – Abigail Boyle and Lucy Balfour seem to get the most air time. There is some nice gossip.

We also reconnect with Lucy Green and Yang Liu; both of whom have relocated to Wellington. For Lucy it is her first time away from home (Melbourne). Yang, has come accompanied by her fiance – good man!

There is lots of human interest – direct interviews, gossip and filming of people walking around.