Ballet Noir’s Shona Wilson - the comeback queen ‘on point’ at 63

Dancer Shona Wilson, who is returning to the stage for Ballet Noir, a contemporary take on Giselle. Photo / Michael Craig

As a young dancer, Shona Wilson’s glittering career took her from Auckland to New York and Tokyo. Now 63, she’s back on stage as the Ice Queen in Ballet Noir, a contemporary take on the classical ballet Giselle. She reflects on the challenges of ageing in front of the dance studio mirror.

You have to be absolutely driven to do dance. Otherwise, forget it. I’m lucky to have a symmetrical body that’s genetically the right shape and can take a thrashing. I haven’t missed a single performance in my career through illness or injury, so I’ve been very lucky. Touch wood, because that can change in a nanosecond.

I love ballet — the physicality, the agility, the excitement, the speed and the beautiful classical lines. Dancing en pointe is exhilarating, that fine point of balance right on the edge of control. But for some people, it causes terrible distress because they’re trying to fit their bodies into an ideal that’s very narrow.

There’s a danger, especially for children doing ballet classes, in watching yourself grow from childhood to adolescence, judging yourself in the mirror every day. One of the [contemporary] dance companies I worked with in New York didn’t have mirrors in the studio. That was actually very helpful, because you were more in the moment.

Wilson at 63, currently rehearsing for a new show, and as a young professional dancer four decades ago. "Your body might get older, but that desire to move doesn’t change." Photo / Michael Craig

I remember seeing the Paris Opera Ballet doing a Twyla Tharp piece as part of a triple bill in New York at the Met. And while they were exquisite, there was something much more exciting about the contemporary dancers, because they were themselves and that was more powerful. These days, fortunately, the two forms are much more intermingled. Every body and every personality is valid.

My mother had a record called Nights at the Ballet and when I was little, I used to put it on and dance. It was just in me somehow. My beautiful teacher in Hawke’s Bay, Jean Ballantyne, was very elegant and very kind. I haven’t had scary ballet teachers. Putting people down just isn’t productive.

I never felt comfortable with the very traditional ballets, the miming and the princesses and all that stuff. It just was too restricting. I’d only been at the New Zealand School of Ballet for seven or eight months when Limbs [one of New Zealand’s first contemporary dance companies] held auditions in Christchurch and I got in. I was 18 — and I didn’t stop dancing professionally until I had my first child at 34.

Dance has been an integral part of Wilson's life since she was given her first tutu as a preschooler. Photo / Michael Craig

Ballet Noir is a contemporary version of Act 2 of Giselle, using the original music, so it’s about love and heartbreak. I’m the Ice Queen, who’s quite imperious. She’s been betrayed by men and she’s angry, but the reality of life is that men have been betrayed by women as well. There’s a taste of film noir, with black and white imagery, and at the beginning, the girls are dressed in beautiful 40s suits. Later, they whip off their tutus and use them almost as weapons.

When [Limbs co-founder and choreographer] Mary-Jane O’Reilly approached me two years ago for an earlier version of Ballet Noir, I hadn’t done a show for 20 years.

It was huge coming back, not only physically. The thing I found hardest was the memory. You forget how sharp dancers are, it’s like putting together a 3D jigsaw puzzle. Being on stage is intense and it’s also very revealing if you make a mistake, so you’re vulnerable. It’s exciting, but it’s also terrifying.

Wilson as the Ice Queen in a scene from Ballet Noir.

Hanging out with the younger dancers in the studio has been wonderful. I feel inspired and uplifted watching them. Not envious at all because I’ve already done it, and I know how hard that life is.

These days, I don’t get too involved in looking in the mirror, because dancing is more about how you feel. I think if that’s in you, your body might get older, but that desire to move doesn’t change. Whenever I listen to music, I always have movement going on in my head.

– As told to Joanna Wane

• An early member of Limbs Dance Company in the 1970s, Shona Wilson performed with leading companies in New York and Tokyo, and later worked as a fashion stylist for women’s magazines. She now teaches yoga and manages the Kate Sylvester store in Ponsonby. Ballet Noir, choreographed by Mary-Jane O’Reilly, is on at Auckland’s Q Theatre, October 27-29.

Clothing: Kate Sylvester lace “Pola” dress and blue ruched “Birdie” top. Black skirt Wilson’s own.