A Time To Dance
From its brave beginnings with minimal resources in 1953, to its proud standing today as an innovative company of
international reputation, Jennifer Shennan traces the colourful past of the Royal New Zealand Ballet in A Time to Dance:
the Royal New Zealand Ballet at 50.
For ballet lovers of any age, these richly illustrated pages are sure to bring memories flooding back of productions
great and small over the years. A Time to Dance is both historical survey and souvenir album in one.
“Writing this 50-year history proved a wonderful chance to revisit so many memories of fabulous nights at the ballet.
The company’s repertoire runs the full gamut of drama, tragedy, comedy, experiment and sensuality. It has been a
privilege to revisit and review that achievement,” said Jennifer Shennan.
Beatrice Ashton’s 1978 book, The New Zealand Ballet: The First 25 Years, summarised the company’s pioneering
achievements to that point, so it is only fitting that in this jubilee year a new book should look back over the whole
history of our national ballet company.
Jennifer Shennan currently teaches dance anthropology and Pacific dance studies at both Victoria University and the
University of Auckland. A long time reviewer of dance, Jennifer was a pupil in the children’s ballet classes taught by
Poul Gnatt in the Auckland Operatic Society Hall in Grafton Rd in 1953, and remembers him as an inspired, inspiring
teacher.
True to form, the company is currently touring the nation’s highways and byways with a 50-centre tour of the country,
New Zealand Post Tutus on Tour, until 5 April 2003.