Britain’s Wayne McGregor is one of the most exciting choreographers on the world stage, and the New Zealand premiere of his Infra, created for London’s Royal Ballet in 2008, represents an artistic coup for the RNZB. Choreographed for an ensemble of twelve uniquely gifted dancers at the height of their powers, and set to a slowly drifting, soulful score by Max Richter, Infra is a profoundly moving meditation on the loneliness, connections and consolations that lie beneath the teeming surface of the city. Julian Opie’s mesmerising LED artwork echoes the constant movement of the dancers below as a steady stream of anonymous figures walk purposefully towards destinations that are forever unknown.

Choreographer in Residence Sarah Foster-Sproull (Despite the loss of small detail, Artemis Rising, Ultra Folly, The Autumn Ball) creates To Hold, her fifth work for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, collaborating closely with the dancers to create a ballet that takes a new look at the astonishing machine that is the human body: shape shifting, endlessly inventive and always greater than the sum of its parts. Music by Eden Mulholland generates a surging, primordial sense of ‘becoming’ in the work, pushing and pulling the dancers through the space with urgency and power.

Following the dazzling impact of her Aurum (Venus Rising, 2022) and Logos (Lightscapes, 2023), RNZB alumna and Resident Choreographer at The Australian Ballet Alice Topp creates High Tide, her first original work for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, inspired by the music of Icelandic multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds. High Tide is a tender depiction of the never-ending morphosis from birth to death and is inspired by the human condition: growing pains, growing apart and growing together and learning to love and live with the light and shade, youth and age, within us all.

Alice’s regular collaborator Jon Buswell, one of the Southern Hemisphere’s most distinguished and creative designers for dance, will again work with Alice to transform the stage into a living sculpture of light and shadow with the dancers as its heart and soul.