Francis Christeller is one of a handful of Kiwi dancers who don’t have to worry about where their next pay cheque is coming from.
FOR the past three years the 24 year old has been employed as a fulltime dancer with Footnote, New Zealand’s longest running professional contemporary dance company. He’s welcomed the consistency of working with the same company, and the opportunities. As well as working with some of the best in the industry he’s toured the world with Footnote,  most recently to Antwerp and London.
“For dancers in New Zealand there’s work for some of us, but not for all,” he says. “I’ve been one of the lucky ones.”
Chisteller started dancing at the age of eight when he joined a friend who was attending jazz classes at the Hutt City Dance Centre.
“Mum was wondering what to do with me on a Monday night after school. She decided to send me dancing, so off I went.”
As well as jazz he worked at hip hop styles before, at the age of 14, began attending ballet and contemporary classes at Footnote founder Deirdre Tarrant’s dance studio in Wellington.
“I found my pattern of dance at the Tarrant studio and now my life is absolutely encircled by contemporary dance. Contemporary dance is very broad and has a bit of almost every other dance involved.”
After completing his schooling at the Raphael House Rudolph Steiner School in Belmont, Christeller headed to the Queensland University of Technology where he studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance. A five month exchange to Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan followed. It was in Taiwan that he first met Antje Pfundtner, and when he won the inaugural Eileen May Norris Dance Scholarship in 2009, in between Footnote commitments, he headed to Hamburg to study further under the internationally recognised German choreographer.
Christeller believes it’s important for anyone hoping to make a career of dance in New Zealand to do some study overseas.
“You really need to go abroad to gain more experience. There’s a lot to learn and not all the information gets disseminated back to New Zealand.”
Some aspects of New Zealand dance are unique, influenced by long-time dancers and choreographers such as Michael Parmenter and Douglas Wright, he says.
“These guys have taught and choreographed almost everyone so their experience and style has had a great impact on the New Zealand contemporary dance scene.”
That New Zealand style, he says, incorporates Pacific cultural influences with a sense of inventiveness and a willingness to take risks. And while as a small country we have little impact on the world dance stage he says New Zealand dancers have been influential in Australia.
“Many of our dancers go to Australia where they’ve been very successful working on some of the top projects there. We’ve a reputation for having a unique Kiwi energy and for being very hard working and creative.”
Christeller himself plans to head back overseas at the end of the year to the UK and Europe. He has nothing in particular lined up but admits to having “just a few contacts”.
“I just want to see where the wind takes me,” he says.
But he has a few engagements here first. Christeller will perform in Footnote Dance’s fifth annual Made in New Zealand production this week. The show features four new collaborative works from leading New Zealand choreographers including Julia Milson, Victoria Columbus and Malia Johnston. Christeller says he’s particularly excited about dancing in Malia Johnston’s full-length work body/fight/time which playfully explores images of collision, impact and conflict and how our bodies define us. Johnston has produced the work with writer and director Emma Willis and musician and composer Eden Mulholland.
“Body Fight is really a series of poems in movement,” Christeller says. “John Verryt has created a moving set, there’s some exciting lighting by Brad Gledhill and audio visual from Rowan Peirce, all complemented by a weird quirky soundtrack where Eden Mulholland has fused together orchestral pieces, semi-operatic songs and contemporary indie pop.”
Christeller says he was involved in the development of the work two years ago and has assisted “polishing” it into an exciting multi-media performance.
“There’s something very special as one of the dancers in the original development to come back to it after that initial performance.”
Footnote Dance, Best of Made in New Zealand, The Opera House, September 21-22