The boy who never grows old

Sir John Trimmer brings a wealth of experience to the part of Captain Hook, and veteran Shannon Dawson returns from retirement to play the pirate Smee. Photo / Maarten Holl

Superb dancing, several spectacular solo flights, crisp and frequently funny characterisations, fabulously flamboyant costumes and sets by the late Kristian Fredrikson and an original score of dramatic clarity and aural wit make the Royal New Zealand Ballet's Peter Pan far more than just a bit of panto fluff for the Christmas season.

Created by master choreographer Russell Kerr in 1999 and restaged in 2002, the work is 10 years old, and like Peter Pan himself, shows no sign of growing old. Tinkerbell delights afresh as one gorgeous if rather naughty little fairy. Sir John Trimmer's Captain Hook is magnificently, tap-dancingly mean. Roll over Hootchy Kootchy Girls, for the lineup of glamorous "Stars". Beware the tick- tocking crocodile - and marvel at the Neverbird, Tiger Lily, Braves and Squaws, the dramatic Sun King and the tumbling, bumbling host of Lost Boys.

Meanwhile and backstage, there is a distinct atmosphere of show reunion. Kerr, now nearing 80, might be using a walking stick - discarded of course for his curtain calls on Wellington's opening night - but remains as sharp of eye and clear in his verbal instructions as ever. "There will be no more choreography out of here," he declares, indicating the arthritis in his knee with just a touch of curmudgeonly irritation.

Toby Behan, one of the original two "Peters", has taken leave from his post-ballet career as a web developer for an innovative IT company, to return as Kerr's choreographic assistant for the season.

Behan, says Kerr, was the one who demonstrated and taught the company all the steps, before Kerr's arrival a few weeks later from Christchurch. Few if any of the current dancers were around for the last Peter Pan season.

"I trusted him completely and he has been so faithful to the original concept, but at the same time breathed into it some new life," he says. "You have to be able to pass things on to a new generation of dancers and then let them take it over in their own way." Kerr's choreographic trademark has always been his ability to bring authentic and lively characters to his stage, and to tell a complete story. "The dancers of today are technically wonderful," he says, "and contemporary works endlessly challenge dancers' technique. But a narrative work can be a new challenge for them, with its demands for complex and believable characterisation. And comedy can be the most difficult thing to put across." But he professes delight with what has been achieved.

"Assistant choreographer," insists Behan of his current role, "is overstating things just a little. The choreography is Russell's. I might have made some minor alterations and Russell has been very generous and open with his ballet."

Kerr has long played an important role in Behan's dance career, as one of his early teachers, mentor and guide. "It has been one of the most honouring things I can imagine," Behan says of their latest relationship, "for this man I have looked up to all my career saying, 'Treat the ballet as yours - go with what you think'."

Behan thinks the company has achieved its most important demand for Peter Pan - the characterisation required of each role to bring out the magic of the story, its childlike but not childish qualities, with full-on but not over-the-top enthusiasm.

"I think this company has the potential to be the best of the three," he says. "I have never laughed so much. I have laughed constantly at what everybody is doing right across the stage."

The acting experience and stage presence of Sir Jon Trimmer is always an inspiration to the younger dancers, as is the return for this Peter Pan of Shannon Dawson, reviving his role as the wannabe-wicked but actually cute and cuddly pirate Smee. The role was created on, and largely by, Dawson in 1999 and is the only role in the ballet for which there was no prototype.

Dawson retired from dance five years ago and took a job in a bank. He had always felt a little scathing about "corporate life", he admits, and purposefully pursued the experience, strictly for the experience. Five years on he has decided it is definitely not for him, an "agonising" alternative for a dancer and creative sort of person. He took leave of absence last year to perform another comedic role in the RNZB's Don Quixote. This time the leave will be permanent.

After Peter Pan he will be exploring, he says, his potential as a male dance teacher "below the tertiary sector".

Composer Philip Norman is also back, happily trimming minutes from his original Peter Pan score. Modern technology has cut the time previously needed for some scene changes, he explains, so several musical passages have had the chop. Norman is nothing less than amiable about it. It is more usual than not for music for ballets to be so treated, he says. He might have been, he admits, a tad more proprietal with a brand new work, but the cuts are minor and even the youngest audience members will appreciate the music with its signature sounds for key characters and events: like a wind whistle to create the "whoosh of wind" that accompanies the Darling children's flight from their nursery, the "variable tone hooter" which is standard equipment for those hunting the Canada goose, as the Neverbird's hilarious theme. A tinkling bell for Tinkerbell, of course, and pan pipes for Peter Pan. And for Smee? "A cowbell, followed by a bird tweeting," says Norman.

Performance

What: Royal NZ Ballet production of Peter Pan
Where and when: Municipal Theatre, Napier, November 28-29; Aotea Centre, Auckland, December 2-6; Founders Theatre, Hamilton, December 9-10.