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DANZ QUARTERLY No 7 April 2007
Raewyn Hill
Hanging Up Her Dancing Shoes
Francesca Horsley talks to Raewyn Hill about her decision to give up dancing – and her hopes for the future as a choreographer and company artistic director.
“I am a dancer, that is what I am; in my heart that is what I will always be.” These words introduced Raewyn Hill’s programme notes for her solo work We Are Gathered Here Today at Auckland’s Tempo° festival in October last year. They have a poignancy that rings true for all dancers – Raewyn had come to the inevitable but difficult decision to retire as a performer. Her dancing has always been full-on, unsparing with her subject matter and intense with its delivery; pushing though physical and emotional barriers. Her distinctive voice will be missed.
However, as a choreographer, she is still very much alive and intends to continue to provoke audiences with her uncompromising choice of themes. Also she is hard at work developing a national dance repertory company, New Zealand Dance Theatre, whose primary focus is restaging existing choreography from fellow New Zealanders.
In the 19 years since she began training as a 15 year old with the New Zealand School of Dance, Raewyn’s dance career has seen her blossom as an extraordinarily committed performer, who felt “compelled to dance”. In the 90s, after graduating with the ‘best all round student award’ she danced for major productions, and with a string of scholarships and study grants, travelled to Australia, New York and Europe.
In the late 1990s and early 2000, as works by Shona McCullagh, Michael Parmenter and Douglas Wright tapered off and dance jobs became scarce, there was an exodus of her peers abroad. She also went to Europe in 2000, but when the contract for a full time position with a company fell through she returned to NZ.
With a drought of work still happening here, she decided to create her own. “That was the turning point for me – to go, well, if I don’t take control of my career, it’s always going to be like this. I’ll be hanging out waiting for someone to give me a job, so I made a choice to make my own work.”
She formed her company, Soapbox Productions, in 2001, and in that year premiered her first full-length work, the solo When Love Comes Calling, in Christchurch. Her hallmark passionate, no-holds-barred, knee crunching and eloquent dance style began to make waves. She then toured the work nationally, later taking it to Sydney where she performed in the Sydney Opera House in July 2004.
In 2002, she created her ensemble work, White, an instant success. This was followed by Night, then Angels with Dirty Feet, as well as making pieces for Footnote Dance Company and other commissions. But it was always her own dancing that was most precious to her. In an interview in 2002 with the NZ Listener, Raewyn questioned how long she could maintain the pace of performer, choreographer and producer.
She said then “I can absolutely say from my heart, I can’t sustain this – something is going to give. Just a couple of weeks ago, I felt like I had hit the wall. I questioned a lot of levels of my life, but every day I’m not dancing it just feels like death.”
She now says, “It took me a long time to come the decision to actually stop, but I couldn’t really sustain doing it anymore. If I had had a job, for example in a ballet company, I wouldn’t have retired, I would have kept going. But I haven’t been employed as a dancer since 1999, and it is a long time to have to keep producing works by myself.
The only time I got to dance was if I actually made something myself – it just took its toll really and I couldn’t do it – it was too painful on loads and loads of levels – my heart will always be with my dancing but I can’t sustain a career here like that. I had to let go for my own sanity.”
Her drive and independence has, in a way, come back to bite her. “It’s funny, you’ve got to get out there and keep doing it, you don’t want to rely on other people but in some ways by creating your own company you just don’t get employed anymore, you don’t get offered contracts – people see you as being a different kind of dancer. Michael Parmenter offered me a job in Commotion for the Retrospective – I remember being really excited that I got a job offer – I had to turn it down as I had just come out of the Angels with Dirty Feet tour and there was no way I was in the right space to get on stage.” She says the material in her most recent solo, We Are Gathered Here Today, in some ways deals with the issues of departure, both physical and psychological.
Hanging up her dance shoes however does not mean the end of Raewyn’s career in dance. To the contrary, she is intensely full steam ahead as usual. She is at present working in Launceston, Tasmania on a commission for Tasdance that will premier in the Ten Days on the Island Festival this month. It is the first time the company, comprising six full time dancers, has been awarded an international commission.
Entitled A dance for the forgotten, the work came out of a visit to the historic site in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Infamous for its harshness as a colonial penal institution, it gained further notoriety for a bloody massacre in 1996 when 35 people were shot. This led Raewyn to explore other repressive regimes around the world including Argentina’s infamous la Escuelita (The Little School), where many political prisoners were housed and tortured in the 1970s. She says “A dance for the forgotten observes the survival and strength of the human spirit in times of adversity. It shows how it brings us hope in times of need.” Jointly commissioned by the Festival of Colour, they will perform in Wanaka in April, and then travel to Wellington to feature as a double bill with Footnote.
Aside from working on her choreography commissions, Raewyn has put a huge amount of energy into developing her brainchild, the New Zealand Dance Theatre. The new venture, to be based in Christchurch, has a primary focus of acknowledging and honouring existing NZ repertoire. “We want to get the repertoire back on stage, to give choreographers time to rework, reshape and revisit and have their work produced by a highly professional technical company.”
“We also have initiatives of mentoring dancers, choreographers, how to participate in dance festivals, the process of getting your work on the stage. There will also be programmes for dancers that want to choreograph; they will be able to produce work in a safe and low risk environment. Also every year we will invite a choreographer to develop a new work - this would be a two year process, which I think really acknowledges the need for us to have development time – and not have to produce work in the five to six weeks cycle which sees to be inbuilt.”
Raewyn says “But the main focus is on existing repertoire. So it could be a full length work that can be cut down to smaller works – or solos programme, duos programmes – it will be quite diverse as far as programming is concerned.”
Over the last year and a half we have been writing strategic plans, five year planning and budget forecasts, and have gone on to the second phase which is developing repertoire”.
The first premier season is already being planned - a triple bill of works: Shona Dunlop MacTavish’s Death of a Bullfighter, choreographed in 1978, a 30–35 minute reworking of Ann Dewey’s Queen Camel; and Michael Parmenter will reset Empty Chairs. “That is the plan, which is really exciting. They sit beautifully together, technically they are great for the dancers because they show diversity and they are very challenging.”
However late last year Raewyn encountered a stumbling block for the venture; Creative New Zealand want a further three year development phase before the company can go onto annual funding. This means negotiating the twice - yearly project funding application round which has a limited pool of money to allocate to dance projects in New Zealand. The large amount requested by NZDT to keep the project going would consume one third of the total allocated by CNZ for funding projects.
The news came as a blow. She is now faced with either abandoning the project altogether or compromising her own choreography options and possibly compromising any commission offers. She is also very aware of the considerable sacrifice the dance community would have to make if NZDT is awarded project funding, as this would reduce the funds available to other applicants who are seeking this category of fundng. “People would be upset, and I am absolutely fined that they are – I absolutely get that – it is a big ask not only to me but to the entire dance community, to ask to exist on project funding for another three years.” p>
At the time of writing was she undecided on what course to take, bearing in mind the implications this will have on her professionally and personally. However she was cautiously optimistic that there was a workable solution to the problem. One thing for sure, Raewyn Hill’s dynamic energy dedicated to developing New Zealand dance will not be diminished.
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