Online exclusive
In My Double Life, Kiwis – and some international guests – share the side hustles, hobbies or dual careers that keep them busy. Here, dancer/choreographer Ross McCormack, a 2017 Arts Foundation Laureate who’s worked all over the world, talks to Dionne Christian about returning to a career as a builder. He first worked in building as a teenager before leaving for a career in dance. It was Covid that saw him turn back to the trade and now he combines dance, acting and building.
“So, there was one week when I was building a deck then I finished work on the Friday, flew to Queenstown during the weekend to work with Dame Jane Campion on The Power of the Dog, and on the Monday was with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons teaching them how to waltz.
Often, the people I’m doing building work for find it a bit of a novelty: ‘Oh yes, the builder will be back but right now he’s working with Jane Campion and will return to finish our back fence soon.’
My dance colleagues from places like Europe, where they have things like artist wages and bigger funding sources, are quite surprised by it all and find it hilarious and puzzling. They’ll say, ‘Ross, why are you doing this? Surely you can just stop and dance,’ but I’ve got twin boys now – they’re 10 months old – and a mortgage.
In New Zealand, I would say only a very small handful of elite artists can support themselves, and they’re the ones who have a wage, through something like teaching. In dance, they’re the people in admin.
When Covid hit, you had to adapt fast. I’d never written a grant application before because I was always part of a group and had the luxury of having a producer or companies who could do that, or I was making work for festivals.
Suddenly, I had to write the applications myself and I couldn’t do it. It was like a skill I hadn’t evolved. I have new admiration for the New Zealand artists who, to their credit and strength, can.
So, after the first lockdowns, I took some hard-earned money out of a savings account and tooled up.
I started by doing jobs for family and friends and branched out from there. I’ll take on work that’s non-consented because to do work that requires council consent means you’ve finished a builder’s apprenticeship, and I didn’t do that. Dance won out over building before I was fully qualified.
At high school, St Bede’s in Christchurch, I did tech drawing, woodwork and art and I was quite good at maths, so those things went well together. They didn’t offer dance or drama, apart from an end of the year pantomime type thing, so I went to the Christchurch Drama Centre and I joined a ballet school. I also changed high schools so I could do more drama.
My older brother, Lindon Puffin, is a musician and I would dance a lot at his gigs. They were quite a performative group, so they’d set up little scenarios and I would dance. I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was just trying all these things, but when it came to getting a job – finding a career – I started an apprenticeship in North Canterbury, building houses, and kept the dance and drama on the side.
I was about 17 or 18 when I started getting more serious about ballet. That’s maybe a bit late, but it wasn’t too late. I got accepted to the New Zealand School of Dance, and everything went from there. I remember going on tour just before I graduated from the NZSD and the first builder I worked with – he was only a young guy – turned up to see the show. He’d thought what I did was super odd but, at the same time and in a funny sort of way, he was quite proud. Anyway, he turned up to see the show - it was the first dance show he’d ever been to.
I graduated in 2001 and had pretty much danced ever since, including in Australia then Europe and back to Australia. I arrived back in New Zealand around 2016 and made work with my own company, Muscle Mouth.
Thanks to Auckland Theatre Company, and getting the lead in Amadeus, I’ve been able to do more acting. That was big, a huge challenge, but I enjoy doing some dance, some theatre.
So, I’d spent the better part of two decades full time as a dancer before Covid came along and upended everything. It means now when I say about work that I’m going to ‘pick something up’, that something might be a hammer as well as dance or acting.
I know I’m fortunate to have something I can fall back on, but it has to be said that there are times when I feel like I’ve failed or missed a beat, and because of my inability to diversify and adapt to the way of working, I’ve found myself outside the work that I feel super qualified in. I remember being under a deck, working on some plumbing and digging a trench in the rain. And I had some earbuds in, listening to Bach and a piece of music that I toured to Europe. I got really upset, really sad, and there, digging in the mud and the rain, felt very far from where I’d been.
Would I want my twin boys to be builders or dancers? Well, you know, I wouldn’t want to eliminate anything. It sounds like the clichéd answer, but I just want them to be happy, positive, and to follow what they love to do.”
Ross McCormack’s dance work Matter will be performed in the Tempo Dance Festival 2024 at Q Theatre, Auckland, on October 17 & 18. It is part of the double bill Rua, which also includes work by Louise Pōtiki Bryant.
