Dance fans have a chance to see the work of former Hawke's Bay dancer turned designer Donnine Harrison up close this coming Friday night.
Harrison designed the shimmering, space age-like costumes for Satellites, one of five pieces in Allegro: Five Short Ballets, currently touring the country and being performed by the Royal New Zealand Ballet in Napier on Friday.
Satellites, partly inspired by the artists of the Bauhaus movement, was choreographed by her husband Daniel Belton, also an ex-dancer and with whom she co-founded Good Company Arts with in Dunedin in 1997.
Harrison left Napier for the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington at the age of 17, having spent the previous 12 years as a very enthusiastic pupil of the Shirley Jarrett & Anne Bradley Academy of Dance.
Improvisation classes were a particular highlight, she recalls. "Learning to create my own movements made me fall in love with dance even more."
By the end of her first year at dance school, creating had become a calling, and she graduated in 1989 with the Choreography Prize, to be followed in later years with the Creative New Zealand Tup Lang Choreographic Prize.
She and Belton met at dance school and spent six years based in London collaborating on projects including dance films, a forerunner to what became Good Company Arts. They work in a multi-disciplinary way encompassing a broad range of creative fields, including dance, haute couture, visual art, music and digital media, bringing in specialists as required.
The couple also have a reputation for producing innovative films, which have been well received at dance festivals.
As a former dancer, Harrison knows exactly what materials will work. For Satellites, all the costumes were made by the RNZB's costume department, to her specifications, including silver discs held by the dancers that work like extensions of what they are wearing.
They also worked with kinetic sculpture and sound artist Jim Murphy, motion graphics artist Jac Grenfell, composer Jan-Bas Bollen, and regular Good Company collaborator, dancer Verity Jacobsen in the role of choreographic assistant.
"Daniel and I have a shared vision which makes things easier than if we have someone coming in. Daniel got some beautiful movement from the dancers, and because he is also a visual artist he sees things differently."
Comments about Satellites so far indicate audiences are enjoying it. "As a choreographer of contemporary art you want to make your audiences think for themselves, whatever their interpretation of it is."
Allegro: Five Short Ballets, 7.30pm Friday, Napier Municipal Theatre. Tickets $40-$70 from Ticketek
Visit www.goodcompanyarts.com