Staying true to yourself – sparkly, silly and a whole lot of fun
The Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) is coming to Queenstown at the start of April with a show for the kids. Dazzlehands, the award-winning story of the persuasive pig who won’t take no for an answer, by Wellington author and illustrator Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan, is a hot favourite with young audiences, on the mat at pre-school and as a much-requested bedtime story.
Lauren Byrne is the RNZB education and community engagement manager, and creative director of Dazzlehands. Her role was to develop the creative vision, storyline and overall theme for the ballet, working with choreographer Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson to transform the book into a live production. She says it’s been super fun to bring the book to life – it was meant to be danced and was an obvious choice for a children’s ballet.
“The Pig has become somewhat of a celebrity here at RNZB, with the whole organisation invested in and excited about the creation and performances of Dazzlehands,” Byrne says. “We worked closely with author Sacha Cotter and illustrator Josh Morgan throughout the entire process to ensure we stayed true to the spirit and intention of the story.”
The story explores a range of themes including staying true to oneself, having confidence in who you are – even if that’s different from what other’s expect – and not giving into peer pressure. It does all of this while being sparkly, silly and a whole lot of fun.
“In our ballet, we meet a Farmer, Pig, Chicken, Cow, Sheep, and even a Flamingo. Each character has a strong personality that we developed from the illustrations in the book. Throughout the story, the Farmer asks the animals to practise their animal sounds, but Pig never does as he’s told. Instead of oinking on command, he rolls through an array of different “hands”. As the story progresses, this frustrates the Farmer more and more.
For the ballet, we also introduced the Sheep and Flamingo as extra characters, inspired by details in the book’s illustrations. We loved the playful absurdity of having a Flamingo living on a farm.”
Guillemot-Rodgerson is a Principal Dancer with RNZB as well as the choreographer for Dazzlehands. His main job for this project was to make up all the moves, ensuring they were exciting enough to keep kids interested throughout the entire show. He’s been dancing since he was four years old and moved to a boarding school in the USA, where he really got into dance. His favourite part of creating Dazzlehands was getting to fuse ballet with all the different dance styles that he grew up loving.
“Dazzlehands is such a great book with dynamic words, and illustrations that really do jump off the pages,” Guillemot-Rogerson says. “It was really helpful having so many great dance adjectives and dance shapes in the book to use directly, and to expand into solos and group dances for all of our characters. It was fun taking ‘train hands,’ or ‘rain hands’ and seeing how many different actions we could come up with, and it’s cool to see the kids working it all out during the show and learning so many of the moves.”
They chose a children’s-specific ballet for a few different reasons, one being that part of RNZB’s mission is to get ballet to as many New Zealander’s as possible. Typical ballet can be a little daunting for some children and at times a bit long, so the aim is to open people’s minds to ballet and make it accessible.
“This is a great way to test out if you enjoy ballet. It is really affordable and it moves fast! We've made it easy to follow the story and there's enough variety that if you aren't enjoying the Farmer's Angry Hoedown dance, it won't be long before the next character arrives with something entirely different. It’s also great for all ages, pre-schoolers and beyond! Seriously, do not miss out. You will get swept away on the Pig's journey, as he shoots from the sty to sky-high. Also, adults please come too, we've tried to make it just as enjoyable for you. We've got gumboots, a great mullet, even an optometrist's appointment! So many impressive athletic and artistic feats and great farm animal puns throughout as well!”
Dazzlehands will come to Queenstown Memorial Centre with shows on Saturday, 4 April, at 2pm and 3.30pm, and on Sunday, 5 April, with shows at 10.30am and 12pm. The show runs for 45 minutes, and tickets and more information can be found at rnzb.org.nz/show/dazzlehands-2025
