Douglas Wright, living for the moment

The country's top choreographer lives in modest circumstances, a reflection of the ephemeral nature of dance and the art form's struggle for support. Arts editor GILBERT WONG reports.

Statement one: Douglas Wright is one of the inaugural arts laureates who last year received $30,000 from the New Zealand Arts Foundation to help them with their creative endeavours.

Statement two: Douglas Wright will choreograph a new work for the New Zealand International Festival of Arts next year.

Statement three: He lives on a sickness benefit.

Statement four: For shelter Douglas Wright relies on a modest house for which he pays a modest rent to Housing New Zealand.

This is no "true or false?" quiz. The four statements are all true. The first two are what are usually reported - the facts attached to a substantial career in the arts. The final two are not widely known, though they reflect the situation of many in the performing-arts community and should and do jar our expectation.

Over sips of herbal tea, the interviewer tells Wright that he is dismayed that an artist of his stature, widely regarded as the finest choreographer and dancer this country has produced, is forced to live on the charity of the state. The subject is delicate and Wright is duly cautious about his reply.

"There's no way I am complaining. I have been incredibly well looked after, in the past, but I can't do full-time work at the moment."

For several years Wright has had a patron, a woman who provided financial support. As a major figure in New Zealand dance for two decades, he has received major grants from Creative New Zealand, enough to resemble Lotto winnings, to produce his work, which is exactly where the money appears to have gone. The $30,000 laureate's award was a lifesaver, he says, supporting him last year at a low point in his life.

But his patron's circumstances have changed, meaning she can no longer support Wright. The arts laureate grant has gone on a video camera for his choreography work and on the basics of living: rent and groceries. Wright, who is HIV positive, has begun a new regime of drugs. Full-time work is no longer possible.

So Wright sits, thinks and reads in his simple dwelling, his possessions neatly arrayed, a few shelves of books, a good stereo and on the wall a painting by Bill Hammond, titled The Choreographer.

How that painting came to him is a story which illustrates the dancer's take on this life. When Wright was working in Wellington with the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 1999 he spent time at the gallery of dealer Peter McLeavey, the agent for Hammond. Wright talked to McLeavey about how much he admired Hammond's work. In April he got a call from McLeavey. Hammond had a present for Wright. That was it. No other explanation.

He drove into town and returned with a Hammond artwork in the back seat. It sits in pride of place above the compact dining-room table with all the power and mystery that Hammond conveys.

For Wright that is the pay-off, the recognition from an artist he admires who realised that Wright might never be able to afford one of his works.

"To me that is the balance that comes about if you're around long enough and keep working. I have friendships with artists whom I admire who have given me so much inspiration through their work."

Oh, he says, face twisting, there is all that other stuff. Sure, he could never afford to buy a house. "Well so what, how happy is it going to make you? There's a poem by Janet Frame:

"When the sun shines more years than fear

"when birds fly more miles than anger."

[When the Sun Shines More Years Than Fear, The Pocket Mirror, 1968]

"I feel like I've gone through that. I'm not saying I won't get angry about it but I can't change it, so it's not worth getting angry about. It is true that we don't value works of the spirit and the heart and the imagination."

At 44, Wright is testament, willing or not, to the evanescence of dance, an art form that survives only in the moment of performance. The dance works he creates might exist on video or film, but they truly reside in the aesthetic and emotional memories of his audiences. Unlike old paintings, there is no market for old dances.

This year Wright has been appointed an adjunct professor of dance at Unitec's School of Performing and Screen Arts. The position, says head of dance Chris Jannides, is unpaid, save for a token honorarium. But it does mean the institution can tap Wright's experience and advice, something Wright is quite happy to give after long involvement with Unitec's dance courses as a tutor and guest choreographer. Jannides says he wants to make sure the dance students are prepared for the reality of a life in professional dance.

Does that preparation include the knowledge that they might find it hard to make a living from their art?

Jannides says, "Dance does not receive a lot of funds or public money. So people of an international standing in this discipline, like Douglas, are living in this way. There would be those who live a life that is a reflection of their status and others who are in an impoverished situation."

Jannides does see the dilemma in what he does.

"We have a commitment to educate children in the arts. That is funded by public and user pays money, but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent commitment to funding and generating the arts industry."

Unitec has 70 contemporary-dance students working towards their bachelor of performing and screen arts degrees, a result, says Jannides, of the thriving dance "industry" in the 1980s and 1990s when there were a number of full-time companies. What has happened since is the dance implosion. "There are no companies today. There are a lot of people competing for project funding. It's sporadic and unpredictable. The challenge is to regenerate that, what we had before, so there is employment and something to aspire to in terms of a career."

Wright should have the last word.

"I don't think I want an easy life. Whose life is? I feel incredibly privileged to be a person who can create things. I'm not saying that you have to starve to do that. I think our culture has such an emphasis on consuming things that to be able to create things is a gift. So I'm really happy. That's the reality.

"I don't feel that I'm part of this society, I've always been outside it."