Dance in any style

Press, 25 February 1987, Page 21

Dance in any style

Dancers need to be proficient in all areas of dance if they want to make a career for themselves, says ballerina, Louise Hawke. Hawke, a New Zealander who now works in Hong Kong, says there is too much rivalry between the different dance codes in New Zealand.

“It upsets me when I read things in magazines, of dancers in one aspect of dance taking pot shots at another aspect of dance. I think it’s totally unnecessary.

“These days we all need to do everything and we all need to do it together.”

If New Zealand dancers are to succeed • overseas, they need to have a good grounding in classical ballet, jazz and contemporary dance, Hawke says. “The point is that in Europe and the States, you have to be able to do everything. Your body has to be capable of coping with whatever job you end up in. To get a job, you have to be able to dance in any style that’s asked of you.” Dance teachers have a large part to play in encouraging pupils to learn more than one style of dance, Hawke says. “In the past, there has been a fair amount of

pressure from teachers to just learn ballet. And the contemporary dancers, I notice, are tending to look askance at the ballet technique and say ‘ballet does this to you, and ballet does that.’

“Kids have got to learn to have an open approach, and the only way they can do that is by example.

“There has to be encouragement from the teachers, to say ‘I cannot give you this, but why don’t you go and see so and so. They can give you what you need.’ ” Hawke says there is a potentially very important role for the Arts Council in making teachers available to students. “I think it would be very worthwhile if they had a selection of the very best teachers and choreographers on a retainer basis. If groups wrote to them saying ‘we want to do a little concert,’ they would say ‘fine, we will send you so and so.’ ”

This would provide employment for talented dancers, and make sure students were taught by a variety of good teachers, she says. Hawke is in Christchurch until the end of April. While here, she is teaching and dancing with the Southern Ballet.