RNZB Announces Groundbreaking New Season: Home, Land & Sea, 24 July-9 August, 2025

The Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) is proud to announce its most ambitious new season,Home, Land & Sea, featuring a historic first-time collaboration with The New Zealand Dance Company (NZDC). This creative partnership brings together two of New Zealand's premiere dance institutions in a bold exploration of national identity, connection to place and our collective future.

At the heart of the season is the world premiere title workHome, Land & Sea, choreographed by acclaimed NZDC artistic director Moss Te Ururangi Patterson (Ngāti Tūwharetoa). This groundbreaking piece will feature six dancers from each company, creating a unique artistic dialogue that transcends traditional dance boundaries. The work, says Patterson, is a poetic response to Aotearoa’s complex history, our evolving national identity and the ongoing search for belonging.

“We're not creating a nostalgic version of the past or a tidy vision of the future,” says Patterson. “Home, Land & Sea is being built as a space for reflection and resistance – a place where the audience can sit with complexity, with connection and with hope. The result will be a deeply human work that moves between the personal and the political, the ancestral and the imagined. Home, Land & Sea will invite audiences to consider what it means to feel at home in this place. It will ask where we have come from, where we are going, and how we might find strength, connection and hope in one another?”

The piece is set to an original score by one of New Zealand's most iconic musicians – Shayne P Carter of Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer fame.

This collaboration represents a new chapter for ballet in Aotearoa, says Ty King- Wall, RNZB’s artistic director. “Joining the collective forces of our two distinctive companies is all about kotahitanga, about unity and togetherness, which we are so committed to. It is brilliant for RNZB to be building further the creative partnership we’ve established with Moss over the years, and to be elevating that to another level through this project with NZDC. Both in the studio and on stage, this will be such a wonderful opportunity for learning, sharing, and contemplation.”

The programme also features two additional works.Chrysalis, a world premiere by RNZB choreographer-in-residence Shaun James Kelly, explores metamorphosis and personal transformation through the transcendent music of Philip Glass.

Kelly, whose own journey from him homeland of Scotland to his artistic home in New Zealand, hopes audiences will see themselves in the work and feel each movement and emotion with the music.

“I feel that this work is relevant right now,” says Kelly. “Chrysalis is about themes of friendship, connections, relationships and self-discovery – something that we can all relate to. It plays on something that could happen in a moment, in a passing on the street,” says Kelly. “It’s modern in its look but choreographically is based on the beautiful and fluid moments of classical ballet, keeping the tradition alive for generations to come.”

That modern look comes from the stunning costumes created by leading fashion designer Rory William Docherty. "It has been a dream working with Rory,” says Kelly. "After collaborating on the concept, he has used his original artwork and unique take on traditional design to bring movement and life to the clothing.”

The third piece on the bill is The Way Alone by master choreographer Stephen Baynes. The Way Alone premiered in New Zealand as part of Tutus on Tour. For Baynes, this is a deeply personal response to the music of Tchaikovsky which has been described as ‘contemplative, thoughtful and inherently musical’ and one he hopes will raise awareness of some of the composer’s lesser-known work. “The ballet is fundamentally an expression of Tchaikovsky’s music and especially the Romanticism which is at the heart of his aesthetic,” says Baynes.

“This season embodies all that we value at RNZB – artistic risk-taking, cultural connection and dance that really speaks to the contemporary New Zealand experience,” says King-Wall. “We're creating a space where the work that we do pushes our boundaries, opens our minds, and defies expectations on what ballet is and what it can be.”

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