Dazzled by the dance

Straight from the darkness and drama of Macbeth, ballet dancer and choreographer Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson has washed off the blood and dived into his bright and sparkly children’s work Dazzlehands. He tells RebeccaFox how a ballet like it could have changed his view of ballet as a child.

As a young dancer, Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson did just about anything to avoid ballet.

‘‘I was like ‘anything but ballet’, basically. I thought it was so boring. I mean, as a boy too, it’s harder to wind up in ballet and so I was steering quite clear of it.’’

Instead, growing up in Christchurch, he dived into all other forms of dance such as ballroom, tap dancing and jazz, before deciding to move into contemporary dance. Only the advice was: he would need to get some ballet training to do that.

‘‘That pressure was building up as I realised I wanted to be a professional dancer. And, eventually, I just bit the bullet. I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to have to do this’. I actually didn’t really want to even start ballet. But it just seemed like a necessity.’’

What he did not bank on at age 14 was ballet and the challenges it posed becoming addictive.

‘‘It just started to become something that I wanted to do more and more of, the more I got into it.’’

So much so he got into the prestigious Juilliard School in New York where he gained a bachelor of fine arts in dance. He also studied choreography and created pieces for Juilliard’s Choreographic Honours shows for three years.

But dancing became his main focus when he graduated. He went on to dance at Houston Ballet for three years before deciding to return home to New Zealand in 2020, joining the Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) as a guest artist before becoming a fulltime company member and soloist in 2021 and a principal artist in 2024.

When he got the opportunity to choreograph a studio work for RNZB, he looked to his childhood for inspiration, creating a work about children in a playroom trying out different imaginary scenarios from going on a boat voyage to being spies and doing karaoke.

‘‘It was like I used to do with cousins and my brother when we were younger. It was really crazy. I think everyone else probably always knew it was for children, but I didn’t really realise that until the end.’’

It was this combination of his early beginnings in a variety of dance forms and that playful piece which attracted the attention of the ballet’s community engagement manager, Lauren Byrne, who was looking for someone to choreograph a new children’s work based on the book Dazzlehands, by Wellington author and illustrator Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan.

‘‘As soon as I came across the book, I knew it was meant to be danced,’’ Byrne says.

‘‘There’s so much movement in the language and illustrations that it immediately sparked ideas for choreography and character.’’

For Guillemot-Rodgerson, it has been an opportunity to dig out old dance moves, combine them with the ballet he has come to love and get back to choreography.

At the heart of the ballet is Pig, who lives on a perfectly ordinary farm where the animals all know their roles. The cow goes ‘‘moo’’, the chicken goes ‘‘cluck’’, and the farmer expects Pig to simply ‘‘oink’’. But Pig has other ideas. Instead of making the expected sound, Pig dazzles everyone with a series of elaborate ‘‘hands’’ — from train hands to disco groove hands — much to the farmer’s growing frustration.

‘‘We wanted to combine ballet with those different dance styles, and so each of the characters is like ballet combined with something else. So the cow’s a hip-hop, funk-loving cow. The chicken is a bit spicier, and she’s on point, but she’s doing tango steps. And the sheep is your old Hollywood, kind of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly. He’s got a cane that he dances with, Broadway jazz sheep. And then Flamingo is a play on the swan. She’s just like a kookier version of that real in-a-tutu ballet dancer. And then the pig is his own thing. He’s the centre of the story and he will not do what a pig’s supposed to do, and so his dance moves go all over the shop.’’

Working alongside the authors, Guillemot-Rodgerson and Byrne aimed to create a 40-minute show, so it required the addition of a couple of characters and fleshing out a few others.

‘‘That’s how we ended up with a flamingo on a farm, because they loved the absurdity of it and thought it totally fit in the Dazzlehands world.

‘‘Because even the more side characters of the cow and the chicken, they’re not in the book as much, but when they are, they have so much personality and they’re very sassy and over it and it was fun to get to create characters like that with the dancers.’’

The colourful illustrations in the book have been brought to life by designer Victoria Gridley, who had the job of creating human costumes from the characters.

‘‘Even though it’s tricky to make a literal cow in a book and become a human who’s part cow, I think she did an awesome job.’’

Guillemot-Rodgerson enjoyed learning about the requirements of making a show for children, how it needed to be easy for them to join in, amazing enough for them to go ‘‘wow’’ and the need for jokes that appealed to children and adults.

‘‘It was cool to have all these parameters, because sometimes when you’re choreographing, you could just go absolutely anywhere, but often that is not as freeing as it sounds.’’

The process has left him with a love of children’s choreography.

‘‘It was certainly not what I was expecting. Being in that audience and seeing them get the things that you were hoping they would get throughout the show is so satisfying. And then also the unexpected things, like there’s so much laughter that goes on at random moments, and that’s super cute and awesome as well.’’

Guillemot-Rodgerson is sure that if he had seen the ballet as a 5-year-old he would have thought maybe ballet was for him.

‘‘I hope that kids are thinking that when they’re watching the show, because I ended up getting to ballet when I was 14, which is pretty late.

‘‘And I still feel like I’m playing catch up.

‘‘It’s something that it does help the earlier you do start.’’

He has also tried to ensure there is plenty of appeal for young males who often find it harder to access ballet.

‘‘I hope it’s already changed some young dancers or young non-dancers’ lives in that regard already. I mean, both those that want to dance, because it is a ballet, but also the message of the story is about embracing what makes you you and your individuality.’’

The finished product debuted at Te Papa in 2024 and then toured other locations. The latest tour of regions around the country will be the first time the show has been performed in his home town.

It also comes hard on the heel of the RNZB’s Macbeth in which Guillemot-Rodgerson danced the title role in some shows.

‘‘I’m not sure they could have done anything more drastic, actually. We’ve gone from maybe the darkest thing we’ve ever done to one of the brightest. It’s super cute and funny and crazy and disco-y and it’s just everything we were not doing. So I actually think it’s quite fun for the dancers to pivot like that and get to show off another side of themselves.’’

The latest cast is a mix of dancers new to the show and ones who have performed it since it began.

‘‘It’s obviously just gotten better every time and they make riskier choices and funnier choices with their acting and some of the stuff that they do on the side while other people are dancing.

‘‘So I think it’s almost taken a life of its own and the version that I had in my head would be so boring now compared to what these dancers are able to give it.’’

They encourage children to get up and ‘‘boogie along and yell out the animal noises’’ that happen during the show.

To see

Dazzlehands, Royal New Zealand Ballet, April 4-5, Memorial Centre, Queenstown; April 8, Opera House, Oamaru.