KEY POINTS:
After nearly 50 years on the job, most people are ready to put their feet up, but New Zealand's most tireless dancer is just limbering up for his next big assignment.
Sir Jon Trimmer, the Royal New Zealand Ballet's 68-year-old leading artist, has been accorded the honour of his first title role in "well nigh 20 years" in the company's 2008 season.
He will take the part of Don Quixote and be on stage for most of the production.
In recent years, Trimmer has played pivotal, but smaller character roles, such as the shoemaker in the ballet's current performance of Cinderella. But next year the company wanted to mark his 50 years of association with it, with something a little more dramatic.
The announcement that he would take a specially tailored lead role has thrilled the veteran, who joined the company as a teenager just four years after it was founded.
He danced to acclaim overseas before returning home where, with his wife Jacqui, he has been a mainstay of the company since the 1970s.
"I was absolutely excited," he says of the Don Quixote honour. Acting has been a sideline for Trimmer and Don Quixote, "a role in his mind", is ideal.
"I won't be throwing myself around the stage," he admits.
Trimmer intends to keep dancing as long as he can, though these days he gets a more relaxed rehearsal schedule. "If I'm needed, I'm there."
Next year, as well as Don Quixote, the ballet will tour two other big works, Red, a triple bill by Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo, and a rerun of Romeo and Juliet, first staged in 2003. That production was choreographed especially for the Royal New Zealand Ballet by Briton Christopher Hampson, before being toured to England and winning accolades.
Hampson returned to New Zealand this year and again teamed up with designer Tracy Grant Lord to breathe new life into the Cinderella story.
Trimmer is this weekend back on stage at Auckland's Aotea Centre as the ballet winds up the Cinderella tour. "There's been a lovely response from the audience," says the evergreen professional. "It's a fun part, that's what I like doing."
