Cover Story
My big fat Kiwi wedding
by Tim Watkin
For the first time, a dream team from the country’s literary, classical music, dance, theatrical and design sectors has come together to work on a single arts piece.
Padding around the large, light rehearsal room at Wellington’s St James Theatre in a long white T-shirt, black trackpants and socks, Mark Baldwin is a panther among flamingos. The pink-footed dancers sit on chairs in a chevron formation, jiggling restlessly and checking themselves in the wall-length mirror before them. They tuck hair behind their ears, adjust their tights and smiles as the choreographer stalks in front of them. Baldwin signals for the music to start and a slow, slave-boat beat begins. The dancers freeze, except for their lips counting time. Then a staccato rhythm kicks in over the kettle drums and the dancers are swaying. Behind them the men start to fight. They shove and lift one another, miming slaps, elbows and head-butts. It’s the first of many signs that this ballet is not like other ballets.
When a couple of the dancers get out of synch, Baldwin turns to ballet master Tim Couchman and signs for him to stop the stereo. “We lost it,” he says, sighing, and walks over to consult the sheet music.
“It’s all fives and then one six,” says Couchman.
“Where’s the six?” asks Baldwin. “There? Oh, bugger.”
It’s Friday morning, just a few weeks out from the premiere of the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s bold and expensive new production, The Wedding, by Witi Ihimaera. Sue Paterson, general manager of the RNZB, is upbeat about the show, saying, “We have invested heavily in this brand new work because it is a Kiwi story – it’s about New Zealanders for New Zealanders.” Still, it’s a gamble on a scale seldom seen in New Zealand arts. The company is spending $1.7m to create something from scratch, and has staked its money on a writer who says, quite openly, “I’ve never been in love with the ballet.”
Baldwin is the man charged with coaxing the dance from the story. This morning, he and his charges are working on the big finale at the church where Ang, the love-torn bride, will choose between American fiancé Brad and her high-school sweetheart Charles. Despite the approaching deadline, no one teeters on the edge of a tantrum. In fact, there’s not much talking at all. Most of the communication is done in numbers: 12345/12345/1 and 3433. A dancer’s code.
The most Baldwin offers is at the end when he looks up from his fighting boys and sees the clock has passed 12.30pm. “I’ve got to let you go for lunch, I’m afraid. Although dancers shouldn’t eat,” he adds wryly, “they should just practise their arabesques.”
A small part of him probably wishes he wasn’t joking. The Wedding is a ground-breaking step for the Royal New Zealand Ballet – for New Zealand arts, even. For the first time, a dream team from the country’s literary, classical music, dance, theatrical and design sectors has come together to work on a single piece. Everyone involved knows they daren’t fail.
“It’s a huge risk to do something so different and with this much money,” says composer Gareth Farr later. “If we don’t get the sales and nobody wants to go, no one’s going to want to do it again.”
Five years in the planning, The Wedding represents the most the national company has ever spent on a new production. But it’s a production that is being made back to front and dispensing with many of ballet’s age-old conventions along the way. Ihimaera remembers that Baldwin pointed this out to him the first time they met.
“Mark said to me, ‘You know, Witi, this isn’t the way one normally does a ballet.’ What do you mean? He said, ‘Normally, the composer and choreographer get together, then a designer joins in.’ I thought, oh, we’re all trying something new, then.”
By comparison, the creative process for this work is all tutu over tiara. The story has come from a writer – Ihimaera – and designer Tracy Grant started on the sets before the choreographer and composer began their work.
A writer for a ballet? Yes, that’s new, as is the use of a dramaturg – director Raymond Hawthorne – to school the dancers in theatrical techniques. And it’s exactly what appealed to Ihimaera, who, throughout his career, has constantly been like a magpie looking for a bright, shiny new idea. As a novelist, he has veered from rural Maori life to science fiction. He has written short stories, opera, libretti, a play and, most famously, helped turn Whale Rider into a movie. And even though when he first went to a ballet “they had to stuff handkerchiefs in my mouth because I couldn’t stop laughing”, dance has now captured his imagination.
“I thought, ooh, no other writer’s gone here before. It was a challenge. And doing something where people don’t talk …” He begins to laugh. “There ain’t no words …”
And, as with anything he writes, he wants to “create new ways of seeing. For New Zealanders to see themselves in an unusual way.”
As crazy as it all sounds, the Royal New Zealand Ballet loved the idea, no doubt in part because of Whale Rider’s success and Ihimaera’s pulling power. “What I said to them,” he says, “was that I could bring to ballet an audience that ballet’s never had. That was my pitch. That I could create an inclusive idea.”
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