The Dancers
Dane Head
Artist Dane Head. Photo by Stephen A’Court.
Dane Head performed with the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty in 2020, on secondment from the New Zealand School of Dance. Dane was the 2021 Todd Scholar, and he was promoted to Artist in 2022.
Dane was born in Auckland and began dancing at the age of four. He trained at Bays School of Dance for seven years and continued his training at Mt. Eden Ballet Academy for a further four years. At the Alana Haines Awards in 2017, Dane was awarded a two-week full-time scholarship at the Central School of Ballet in London. In 2018, Dane placed third at the New Zealand National Young Performer Awards and was a finalist at the Asian Grand Prix in Hong Kong. At the age of sixteen, Dane began full-time training at the New Zealand School of Dance as a Classical Major.
In 2021, Dane performed the role of Puck in Liam Scarlett’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In 2022, he performed the role of The Fab Five’s Thiery in Loughlan Prior’s Cinderella and danced in Shaun James Kelly’s The Ground Beneath Our Feet, Olivier Wevers’ The Sofa, Sarah Foster-Sproull’s The Autumn Ball and Twyla Tharp’s Waterbaby Bagatelles™. He also performed as Te Aitanga Pēpeke in Laura McQueen Schultz and Nick Schultz’s Tāne and the Kiwi. In the digital season Ballet Bites Dane performed in Joshua Guillemot-Roderson’s King of the Castle and Shaun James Kelly’s Alba.
