Paul Taylor & Albert Camus come to mind watching Black Grace in New Zealand.

 I have to admit that I am better at paraphrasing than quoting, so I won't attempt to give you a word for word rendering here. But... Taylor was known for saying, and I have heard it from him directly, that if he got sixty percent of what he imagined in his mind from from his dancers, he accepted he was doing okay. Of course, the more important question is what was Taylor's standard percentage unit of artistic achievement for any given dance. LOL. I rely on the desire to see more than fifty percent of my expectations to assure myself, that I am doing okay in my role of building on Taylor's legacy for the current dancers and future generations in the dance field.

Thinking about the sub-culture out of which modern and contemporary dance was born, I often refer back to a quote from Albert Camus (I looked it up online, so I apologize if my quote is incorrect, but the sentiment is what I remember), "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." 

Black Grace: If Ever There Was A Time photo: Jinki Cambronero

Performances are running of this Double Bill with Paul Taylor's Esplanade and Neil Ieremia's world premiere If Ever There Was A Time. The contrasts are undeniable when looking at these two dances, and critics have been generously favorable in this vision of what Black Grace Dance Company aspires to bring to stages world wide as it completes its thirtieth anniversary of existence. From my perspective, it is amazing how similar the genesis of these works are in looking to express a cross section of a cultural zeitgeist through watching dancers move, and the worlds they create by their relationships to each other, and sometimes in counterpoint to each other. The look and sound of each dance is so radically different, that it seems to make little sense for me to describe them here. I will link to a couple of reviews below for you to read how local audiences might be responding to the dances in performance.

New Zealand Arts Review, Andrew Whiteside - blog review.

There is something fascinating about the idea of how an audience with different cultural references might view what is considered "pedestrian", and yet so much of American Modern Dance post 1950's has coined that term to imply a universal coding of "everyman" movement. Taylor's Esplanade is intended to be pedestrian (in the universal sense), yet some of his group patterns and impetus for locomotion or gesture are not as universal as one might think. Fortunately, Taylor's genius lay in crafting work that can transcend the unfamiliar, for attentive audiences. And viewers here in New Zealand have been infinitely curious and appreciative seeing Black Grace perform Taylor. 

But where I started this post is in considering how dance in the hands of Taylor and Ieremia is exceptionally detailed in their conceptions and subversive by their very existence. Both choreographic works on this program are intended to comment on how we look at and question the social environments in which we live. For Esplanade, the initial reaction is typically the joyful, romantic, playful nature of much of the dance. Yet there is a dark and profoundly tragic second movement that underpins the joy of the other sections, and without which the dance loses its realism that joy is a contrast to grief. For If Ever There Was A Time there is an equivalent sense of hope in the face of striving and despair without falling into melodrama, and Black Grace's audiences get that immediately.

I cannot know how far my contributions to the field of dance performance in New Zealand and beyond will ripple out. Yet I have seen the benefits to many young dancers around the world in every project in which I have had the privilege to engage with the support of Fulbright and the World Learning teams. I will forever be grateful for the Fulbright Commissions that have embraced dance amongst its Arts support, for myself alongside others of my peers whom have applied based on my example.

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

Mid-grant reflection... dance as a catalyst

Walking and writing can be exhausting. This is not so much of a complaint as an observation. As an Arts manager, I don't spend as much time physically engaged in a studio with dancers as when I am teaching a class or staging a work. And as the person directing from the front of the room, my studio activity is far more anaerobic, where I am observing and taking notes with intermittent periods of jumping up to demonstrate, explain, or move dancers into shapes and positions. But this past weekend was spent writing up a mid-project report for Fulbright and then going to visit the Auckland Zoo. 

Studio rehearsal shot by Jinki Cambronero

The great thing about keeping this blog, and writing up reports, is that I need to focus my perspective and review of what I have been doing, most of which is not about writing. In fact, dance is specifically about learning to express and interpret between, around and outside of spoken and written languages. Certainly, as I have described before, I rely on written words, diagrams, and various forms of notation in the process of reconstructing a dance. And one of my references are the original notebooks that Paul Taylor kept when he was first developing the choreography for each dance. 

Rehearsal with Black Grace holding written compendium. Photo: Jinki Cambronero

This weekend marks the end of Paul Taylor Dance Company's second week of performances of three at Lincoln Center in New York City. Included in their repertoire for this season are 12 Taylor works, 2 world premieres, 1 new york premiere, 1 company premiere, and 2 revivals of non-Taylor works. The works by resident choreographers Lauren Lovette and Robert Battle are joined by the NYC premiere by Hope Boykin and last year's homage to Loie Fuller by Jody Sperling. It is an astonishing feat to perform 18 dances in rotation in just 3 short weeks. And considering that each dance probably requires between 20 to 60+ hours of rehearsal before they are ready to be on stage, I cannot stress how important it is for audiences to jump at the chance to see live performances. Each dance has the potential to transcend all that time and effort in a momentary instant that connects with you as a witness. 

Black Grace marketing photo for upcoming Double Bill of Ieremia's "If Ever There Was A Time" and Taylor's "Esplanade"

Audiences carry with them as many stories and connections to life's joys and woes as there are individuals sitting in seats. So whether there is the chance to see only one dance or many, the hope is that some perspective of the Art being created on stage will touch something in the each and every viewer. I have been consistently in awe of chreographers' abilities to create works that spark an indelible memory into our lives, and their inspirations for work are as myriad as the audiences with whom they hope to connect. Neil Ieremia, the choreographer who founded Black Grace has more than once astonished me with his dances and dancers, and I can easily tell you of my indelible memories of a dance and dancers I have seen performed by Black Grace. Some of the memories are of environments and cultures with which I have not had much, if any, connection, yet the dance and dancers transcended my personal knowledge, and lit an interest in knowing and seeing more, not just of dance, but of life. My expertise is with Paul Taylor, and it is a weighty privilege to be adding to Ieremia's legacy and Black Grace with the introduction of "Esplanade" to be performed by the current team of dancers, production artists and theater audiences. 

If you are in New Zealand, I encourage you to come see Black Grace peform its double bill in Auckland on 21 November and in Christchurch on 25, 26 November.

As a foreigner to a country where I am trying to stage a dance from an American choreographer, I am constantly looking to find connections to the everyday culture of the local environment. Common sources of media in my lifetime has been television, radio, and now the online social media platforms. If I have a television in my residence where I am working, I often have it playing in the background, and have been surprised by things that have caught my attention as related to my work as a Taylor regisseur. In China, I was staging "Company B" set to World War II era songs by the Andrews Sisters. Both the music and the perspective of American GI's was unknown to the dancers in China, but I noticed that most of the day time dramas on television were focused on the Sino-Japanese wars, and I was able to work with how the love and loss in any war is the heart of the Taylor's "Company B".

Along those lines, I discovered another connection here in New Zealand to Taylor's "Speaking in Tongues", for which Taylor won the top US television award, an Emmy, when it was produced for the Dance in America series on US television. There is currently a series in running on TVNZ called Escaping Utopia that is focused on the isolated religious community of Gloriavale on the South Island. Taylor choreographed his dance back in 1988, and its subject matter is not only still relevant, but addressing a perspective on current documentary news cycles in NZ, which are eerily similar to communities in the US about which Taylor made "Speaking in Tongues". However, it is from the craft aspect of choreography that I was struck by a recent reviewers comments on the current performances of Taylor's dance in NYC last week.

"But it was the folding chairs and their imaginative use that struck me most – at first, as a step to bring you closer to heaven, then as a barricade to hide behind, and a sign of shame to drag with you wherever you go. And finally, as the lid to your coffin." - Bachtrack, Nov 13, 2025. Carla Escoda

Taylor was, generally, sparing in his use of sets and props in his dances. And designers like Alex Katz were notorious for providing Taylor with choreographic challenges by the use of sets. But Taylor was also a visual artist and very capable of finding just the right prop or design element to craft an essential component in a dance.

2025 revival "Speaking in Tongues". Photo: Ron Thiele

If I type quickly, I might be able to get this posted today... Obviously I have been doing a lot of writing, which I mentioned at the beginning can be tiring in and of itself. But my visit to the Auckland Zoo reminded of how just walking can be tiring also. I found myself wandering the paths of the Zoo for more than three hours, and I was lucky to be there on a glorious sunny day that was not too hot, and not too cold. 

Not all readers of this post might agree with the concept of zoos, but going to visit them in different parts of the world has been of great interest to me. In Vienna I had the chance to visit one of the oldest zoological parks in all of Europe, and in San Diego I visited one of the most progressive zoos dedicated to the identification and sustaining of animals around the world. The Auckland Zoo is more in the model of the latter, and promotes its collaborations with other zoological institutions around the world in the interests of both knowledge and the future of the planet. I also find that observing exotic animals that I might never see elsewise, to be similar to going to dance performances, some are truly inspiring, and others are less interesting, but all hold a certain beauty unto themselves, and they hold secrets about their lives which will never be told directly through words, but in how they move and interact. 

The animals at this zoo seem to be healthy and willing to be observed, if not always interested in being on display. As a means of encouraging myself to roam as much of the zoo as I could, I did limit my time at each environment to whether I thought I got a good enough photo of the animal protagonist, once I identified them, hah. In the end, I traversed three-fifths of all the zoo pathways before I needed to take a rest and grab a bite to eat myself. It was nice to read that included in the animals' care was an emphasis on their emotional well being. And I remembered an old children's story about birds having the freedom to go where they wished since they could fly, and mostly chose to stay close to home because they understood the privilege of their freedom... the story goes on to tell about a bird who getst captured by humans, only to use the wisdom he learned from his family to trick his way back to freedom. 

Birds in the Afican Safari Track of Auckland Zoo.

A fortuitous viewing for me was to see one of the Sumatran tigers settling down on a bridge overlooking the pedestrian walkway. He/she seemed quite content to look down on us from a perch safe from any actual contact with the humans that started to block the pathway in an effort to get their own pictures. Even though I grew up in the West Indies with no tigers, my Chinese family ancestry offered me a water tiger as my birth zodiac, and I have always enjoyed imagining the privilege of the tiger's standing in the animal kingdom. They are mostly solitary creatures that roam vast territories, and my life has proven to somewhat parallel this description.

Sumatran tiger in the South East Asian Jungle Track of Auckland Zoo.

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

Engrossed in details that aren't supposed to be noticed!

Most mornings I start my day with a crossword app that usually takes me less than ten minutes. As new puzzles are published daily, it is easy to tell when I have missed a day (or two... or more!). Missing my daily brainteaser is usually a function of adjusting to a new routine, and getting stuck-in to a project... to be honest, I have missed multiple days since my last post on this blog. 

My private courtyard in Auckland, where the out of sync reflection seems apt...

While I have been leaving at 8:00am each morning and returning home by around 7:00pm, I have not really noticed the length of my days, though I have fallen asleep on the sofa every evening shortly after making myself dinner. It is only upon reflection that I realize just how much has been achieved each day, both personally and work-wise. So much so, that I would not dare to ask myself what day it is, without consulting my phone's calendar. LOL. My internal work-clock has also continued with the dual time-zone sensitivity, as I need to connect with NYC on various fronts. 

Paul Taylor Dance Company's NYC opening gets a pic in the London Times!

Then there is always my interest in what is happening with friends and associates around the world, as Jamaica recovers from hurricane Melissa, Paul Taylor Dance Company starts their three week performance season in NYC, companies and dancers with whom I have worked in England and continental Europe are opening their own seasons with world premieres and new direction, even more dance associates are producing new shows and programs in India, and of course, I want to see performances here in New Zealand! 

But about getting stuck-in to my primary project here to teach and coach Black Grace dancers to perform Paul Taylor's iconic Esplanade! Taylor's choreography has been recognized for its transferrability to other dance companies with very different training and aesthetic appeal from Taylor's namesake company. Determining exactly what that means varies dramatically from one instance to another, yet the process always begins with getting simply teaching the dancers the steps, musicality, and their individual paths in space. In words, this can seem like the lion's share of the work that needs to be done. However, for a choreographic work to truly come into its own life on stage, each and every dancer needs to embody their roles in the dance to perform as though every step, gesture, and shift of weight is a spontaneous and intentional choice. If you have ever had to memorize a speech or a poem written by someone else, and then have to recite it as though it is your own thoughts without reading the words... this might approximate what I, as a staging director, am asking of dancers preparing to dance a Taylor work.

Here's an interview that Alan Granville did with me from his home base in Wellington. My phone surprised me today by having this image pop up on my "feed". 

Stuff NZ/new-york-new-zealand-black-grace

A distinguishing factor of how I teach dances is that I do not have a script with words for the dancers to take home and learn their choreography. This is actually a wonderful thing about dance as a performance art, that is transferred to dancers directly by a staging director. When I come in for a rehearsal, I do my best to know each and every dancer's steps, patterns, rhythms, and musicality that I intend to teach that day. As I teach each role, I may need to take time to adjust the dancer's approach to the phrase we are working on, intending to add layers to their personal execution. I liken this approach to reading the title of an old Dr Seuss collection of writings and cartoons, The Tough Coughs as he Ploughs the Dough. It is one thing to read the words, and quite another to pronounce them to be understood as intended, even though the sentence may not make complete sense. 

English speakers may well pronounce each "-ough" word with a different accent and still be understood. So too, dancers can perform moves with their own unique idiosyncracies while projecting the intent of the choreography, when care has been taken to clarify the movement's roots and development. And how an audience perceives a dance can then be colored and interpreted by audiences culture and personal references. I think that great dances can mean different things to different viewers.

I've so much more to write about this process, but let's suffice to say here that in this initial teaching phase, I have been engrossed in preparing for each day's rehearsals. And then it is both exciting and exhausting to have my knowledge challenged and absorbed by the dancers, where we have built every second of a thirty minute long dance. We finally have a rough sketch of the whole, and this coming week will be time to carefully fill in the detail and let the dancers find themselves in each successive run of the work, as well as to come together as an ensemble cast in the dance, not forgetting that they also have a world premiere by Neil Ieremia that will form the other half of the performance program.

I took the opportunity today, Sunday, to treat myself to see a play at the ASB Waterfront Theatre, and find a nice restaurant for dinner. The play was Tiri: Te Araroa - Woman Far Walking by Witi Ihimaera and it is performed in both te reo Maori and English. By the way, it took me far longer than I care to admit, to learn that te reo Maori is the appropriate classification and that "te reo" simply means "language". My ignorance aside, I loved the production, the play and the two actresses who performed. 

However, it is my lack of understanding te reo Maori that stikes a chord with my approach to bringing an American choreographer's work to be performed by New Zealanders. As a child, I attended Catholic masses in Latin before I ever understood that Latin was a language, and not just a complex religious chant. I went to operas sung in German and Italian before supertitles were a thing. I think I have always been aware that there is so much more to communication than simple words. And I suspect that I actually missed many of the nuances and details of the storytelling today. Yet the acting and direction, along with the how the dialogue blended the two languages kept me engaged and able to follow the primary arc of the play. I also admit that I love to attend live performances with as little preparatory research as possible, hoping to be surprised by Art that transcends the hours and years that went into creating the moments I would be witnessing. Can I be that audience who is deeply affected through the craft and skills of the cast and creative teams? Will the performance mean something to me without a full understanding of the language being used? 

A waterfront view of Auckland...

... and the view in the other direction.

As dance artists, we often ask audiences to try and not look for meaning, but to simply allow themselves to respond to the experience as it unfolds. Yet the culture of viewing the world in which we grew up, or where we find ourselves most comfortable, may have nutured us to try and conform to what we are told, rather than react to non-verbal cues with our unconscious affinities and understandings of our own selves. If a performance of any kind connects with audiences of myriad backgrounds and verbal understanding, isn't this the kind of Art we should all aspire to experience?

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

Know yourself first... and find perspective away from home...

 It has been a full week since I landed in New Zealand to work primarily with Black Grace Dance Company in Auckland, to stage Paul Taylor's Esplanade on their current dancers. However, with the support of the Fulbright Specialist program grant that is supporting my time here, I am able to connect with other dance organizations both in Wellington and in Auckland. So earlier in the week I was able to fly down to Wellington where I caught up with old friends, introduced myself to the Fulbright New Zealand team in their main offices, teach a couple of dance classes for the Contemporary Dance majors at New Zealand School of Dance. I did this all before returning to Auckland to get started with dance rehearsals on Thursday and Friday. 

Maori totem atop Mt, Victoria lookout, Wellington.

It can be easy to forget that certain things from my day-to-day life need to be addressed as I continue my work as an Arts administrator, teacher, and stager (regisseur). First is keeping track of the time difference between New York and Auckland, and having internet access, as advancing global telecommunications infrastructure now sets us up to work remotely from most parts of the world. Then there are things like doing laundry, having work space to prepare for classes and rehearsals, as well as scoping out where to find the food and drink that I might rely on as habitual comforts. I am lucky that I cannot consume alcohol (as my physiology does not tolerate it, though I have had many days when I thought a stiff drink might have been in order. LOL), but I can be very cranky without a good strong cup of coffee. Thankfully coffiee is relatively easy to come by in New Zealand. It was a slightly harder challenge in India, and part of the adventure of travelling for work is knowing what we might need to be our best each day. 

Air New Zealand helped me hop between Auckland and Wellington.

More to the point is knowing how best I do my work. While I have a great capacity to work long hours and stay focused, I also know that I have my methods to achieve specific tasks like preparing to teach nine different roles for a dance in which each role rarely does the same thing at the same time. I cannot cram my preparation into any single unbroken session, so having the freedom to take a walk in the neighborhood, or watch a distracting video series is a necessary device for me.

New Zealand is such a beautiful country marked by unique plants, birds and geology, and it is easy to see from most neighborhoods in the two largest cities on the north island. 

A view from Wellington Botanical Gardens.

As I was teaching the young students at the New Zealand School of Dance, I realized how closely my own history of growing up on the island of Jamaica and making my way around the world as a dance artist might parallel some of these young dancers' stories to come. Early in my life, I learned that my Jamaican identity was marked by my accent, and that accented language is more often than not the marker of a community, a culture, a nation, and so on. I also recognized that dance is a language whose vocabulary has roots in from many different sources that often gets obscured because it needs to be passed on directly from dancer-to-dancer, not unlike oral histories without the benefit of a written document.

End of the day with dancers in the pre-professional training program at NZSD.

When dance chooses to be viewed as a performative Art, it is well served to appeal (or at least be accessible) to audiences beyond its native community. I think of this as being analagous to how modern dramas have evolved from Greek or Shakespearean traditions. Dance as an expressive Art is well served by its practitioners acknowledging and using its available history. We are all a product of our life experience to date, which means that there is little we can do that isn't reflected in our accents, how we write, how we greet each other, and so much more.

My hope is to play a small part in the future of young dancers who might not easily access the knowledge I have had the privilege to live in my life and career. I am able to provide access to the legacy of Paul Taylor through his dances and his own background training and influences. Beyond that, I think I am well suited to observing and learning from working with moving bodies. 

Satellite image of hurricane Melissa approaching Jamaica on October 29, 2025

As news of hurricane Melissa making landfall on my birth home of Jamaica, I was reminded of how important it was for Jamaicans to leave the island to experience the world. At the same time, I grew up with such a strong identity that I never questioned my Jamaican-ness, and I hold this in common with most Jamaican's I have encountered globally. There can be no denying the devastation that Melissa will have left behind, and no matter the aftermath, I am proud to remind the world that I am a living part of the island's legacy around the world. 

This blog (FNZdance25.blogspot.com) is not an official site of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author (Richard Chen See) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.