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.