Lori Gilchrist, ballet dancer
LORI GILCHRIST finds parallels between her two greatest loves – dancing and diving. Before she goes on stage, the Royal New Zealand Ballet dancer gets the jitters as she waits in the wings. Similarly, when the petite ballerina hovers above the sea with her diving tank strapped to her back, she feels petrified.
Once beneath the water or gracing the stage, though, the 28-year-old feels truly alive. ‘‘Once I start dancing, I let myself go, and I really feel free. It’s the same when I’m diving – it’s like a magical, dreamlike place,’’ she says.
In fact, the opportunity to explore New Zealand’s underworld was a big incentive for Gilchrist to leave her hometown of Leeds, England, and venture to Wellington to join our national ballet company this year. She had spent a decade dancing with the Northern Ballet and touring with the company and felt it was time to try something new.
She’s one of five new dancers joining the Royal New Zealand Ballet this year.
‘‘Since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a ballerina and I haven’t been interested in anything else,’’ she says.
At the Northern Ballet, she danced some primary roles, as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, Isabella in Wuthering Heights and Cleopatra.
Under the artistic direction of David Nixon, the Northern Ballet is very theatrical, putting on ballets like Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In fact, Nixon’s production, A Christmas Carol, will be staged by the Royal New Zealand Ballet from October, when costumes and sets will be sent over from Leeds. Says Gilchrist: ‘‘I’ve only recently finished performing it so that will feel quite odd as I’m used to seeing the faces of the Northern Ballet dancers on stage.’’
She has also danced in Giselle, and since arriving in Wellington a fortnight ago has started rehearsing it again. The company is touring it as part of a fourcentre tour of the United States from the end of the month.