Interview - Courtesy of National Radio 20/10/2004

Presenter (Lynn Freeman): Internationally acclaimed New Zealand choreographer, Douglas Wright, has been awarded New Zealand's largest choreographic fellowship. Over his 25-year career the Auckland choreographer has created more than 30 works. His next project will be made with the help of the 2004 Creative New Zealand choreographic fellowship worth $65,000. I asked Douglas what he has planned for his latest dance piece.Interview - Courtesy of National Radio 20/10/2004

Presenter (Lynn Freeman): Internationally acclaimed New Zealand choreographer, Douglas Wright, has been awarded New Zealand's largest choreographic fellowship. Over his 25-year career the Auckland choreographer has created more than 30 works. His next project will be made with the help of the 2004 Creative New Zealand choreographic fellowship worth $65,000. I asked Douglas what he has planned for his latest dance piece.

Douglas Wright (choreographer): Well, I'll be working with seven dancers and a ventriloquist and possibly some film. At the moment I'm working on writing the dialogue between the ventriloquist and the dummy so I'm spending a lot of time with that. And in July next year I'll be doing a three week workshop with the dancers. I mean the money really is only enough to employ them for that long so a lot of the work I'll be doing over the year will be on the dialogue, with the composer and just working through my ideas, yeah.

Presenter: A ventriloquist is a fascinating idea. How is this going to work in with the dance?

Wright: Well, that's what we have to find out [laughter]. I'm very interested in text and working - well, I was going to say, integrating dance and words but you know, they don't have to be together, they can co-exist, so I'm really exploring the idea of what ventriloquism is and what actually is the dummy. Is it a part of the ventriloquist or is it a separate character? It's quite fascinating when you sort of really look at it.

Presenter: You've said in the media release that it's a luxury to have the time and the money I guess, to explore something like this. I mean could this work - I know it's in its early days, but could it have happened without the fellowship?

Wright: Not for me, no. I actually wasn't going to make another long work because of this time stress usually placed on us choreographers here. I couldn't imagine doing another work of this sort of complexity without the opportunity to work in the studio for at least a short period without the sort of pressing anxiety of you know, a date hanging over my head. No, it's actually making it possible for me to - you know, to actually even consider making new dance works so it's a real gift for me.

Presenter: You must be looking forward to it, to being able to just really devote yourself to this?

Wright: Well, I'm doing that now so - as much as I can without the dancers so yeah, it's sort of - I think when you make a work, especially an evening-length work, you need a lot of time for the thing to sit inside you and sort of grow.

Presenter: You've chosen your designer and your composer.

Wright: Yeah.

Presenter: tell me about them?

Wright: David Long, the composer I've worked with several times over the years, he did the music for "For ever" in '94 I think it was. He's a wonderful Wellingtonian and we work really well together. And the designer is Michael Pearce who is from Melbourne who I first worked with when I worked with Australian Dance Theatre in 1989 and he's since collaborated with me on about five works so we've got a long history together.

Presenter: Do you have dancers specifically in mind? I mean I have wondered this with choreographers, as it starts to take place in your mind, whether it helps to have dancers who you know, whose works you know, whose bodies you know as you bring it together or -

Wright: Yes, well I've chosen my dancers and I'm bringing about four dancers, New Zealand dancers that have been working overseas, back for this project and about the same number who are resident here. So I've got a group, many of whom I've worked with before which is really helpful, and it will be a good opportunity for them to be seen here because you know, they've done really well in Australia and Europe and in the absence of a full-time company it's quite difficult for dancers of that calibre to perform in New Zealand. So it will be exiting I think, to see them, yeah.

Presenter: You've worked now in dance you know, for more than 25 years and I wondered, if you cast your mind back a quarter of a century ago, do you think that in terms of dance we are living up to our potential?

Wright: That's an interesting question. To be quite honest I don't see a lot of dance myself. I haven't seen a lot recently so -

Presenter: Is that because there hasn't been work there that's interested you or there hasn't - you know, you just haven't - it's not around as much as it should be?

Wright: I tend not to go out very much (laughter) but I do - I mean I have seen Black Grace and I have seen other companies and I think what they're doing is really powerful and good work. I feel a kind of a loss myself in that, because of illness, I've been unable to do as much dance work recently as I would liked to have done so for me it's been quite difficult but there is certainly no shortage of people out there working in dance.

Presenter: And I think there are choreographers like yourself and Shona and Michael who I just can't imagine the dance scene without the three of you?

Wright: Yeah, I think that Michael and I in particular were the first to break through into evening-length works after Limbs. I mean you know, I'm sure I'm leaving somebody out but at the end of the 80's it was not the thing to make a work that lasted the entire evening and I think we sort of pioneered that in a way.

Presenter: I think you did. And you've - I mean you've got more than 30 works to your credit already, Douglas. I mean that's a phenomenal achievement, and obviously the ideas are still going strong for you?

Wright: Yeah, well I did take some time out and wrote my book and I thought that I might write more but unfortunately dance doesn't seem to leave me alone. I keep - I didn't really want to make more dance but it wants me to make it so I'm really, really happy to go along with that.

Presenter: And that's Douglas Wright, winner of the 2004 creative New Zealand choreographic fellowship.

Ends
Internationally acclaimed New Zealand choreographer Douglas Wright has been awarded the 2004 Creative New Zealand Choreographic Fellowship to research and develop new work. Worth $65,000, it is the largest choreographic award or fellowship available in New Zealand.

Over his 25-year career, the Auckland choreographer has created more than 30 works. The project he'll be working on over the next year will involve seven dancers, a ventriloquist and film.

"It's wonderful to have the financial support so that I can work with dancers, my designer Michael Pearce and composer David Long," Wright says. "It's also a luxury to have unpressured time in my studio to explore ideas, take risks, and experiment with language and movement."

Alastair Carruthers, Chair of the Arts Board of Creative New Zealand, says Douglas Wright is one of New Zealand's pre-eminent choreographers with a large body of work acclaimed both in New Zealand and internationally.

"Awarding the fellowship to Douglas Wright recognises his rare talent," Mr Carruthers says. "It also offers him considerable creative freedom to explore and make new work over a one-year period."

Earlier this year, Wright's first book, Ghost Dance, was published by Penguin Books. Described as "part love story, part memoir", the book has received glowing reviews commending his writing.

Last year, Wright was the subject of a documentary by Auckland director Leanne Pooley called Haunting Douglas, which recently won Best Dance Documentary at the ReelDance International Dance on Screen Festival in Sydney.

And in 2000, Wright was one of five inaugural Laureates of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand and was made an adjunct Professor of Dance by Unitec in Auckland.

The Creative New Zealand Choreographic Fellowship was established last year in response to recommendations made in Creative New Zealand's dance strategy, Moving to the Future: Nga Whakanekeneke atu ki te Ao o Apopo. The inaugural 2003 recipient was Auckland choreographer Shona McCullagh.

In Moving to the Future, Wright contributed a paper on the state of contemporary dance in New Zealand. In the paper, he wrote: "I have come to believe that human beings need beauty and communication. They need dancers to leap FOR them."

Mr Carruthers says that the Arts Board was delighted with the calibre of applicants to the 2004 Creative New Zealand Choreographic Fellowship. "The fellowship offers a tremendous opportunity to senior artists wishing to immerse themselves in a major project. It's also something to which other choreographers can aspire."

Douglas Wright: a snapshot

Douglas Wright grew up in South Auckland and began his dance career with Limbs Dance Company in 1980. In 1983, he joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company of New York where he remained until 1987.

In 1988, he returned to New Zealand and created his first full-length work for Limbs, called Now is the Hour, and a year later formed the New Zealand-based Douglas Wright Dance Company. Since then, he has created many works of dance theatre, includingHow on Earth (1989), Gloria (1990), As It Is (1991), Forever (1993) and Buried Venus (1996). When Forever had its European premiere in Switzerland, it was hailed as "an overwhelming contemporary contribution to the history of our life and times".

In 2002, he choreographed Inland, which premiered at the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts and then toured New Zealand. Evening Post reviewer Jennifer Shennan wrote of the work: "Douglas Wright's choreographic imagination, fed with superphosphate from down on the farm, has yielded a profound work of dark humour and breathtakingly brilliant dancing ... It's a work of genius. What else do you want to know?"

The Douglas Wright Dance Company has toured throughout New Zealand, and to Australia and Europe. His work has been performed by other dance companies, including The Australia Dance Theatre, Sydney Dance Company and the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

Wright has also made several dance films in collaboration with Chris Graves and Grant Lahood.