Hannah O'Neill in a 2019 production of Variation de Serge Lifar. Photo / Agathe Poupeney, Opera National de Paris
Last week it was announced New Zealand dancer Hannah O’Neill reached the coveted ‘etoile’ status within the prestigious dance company Paris Opera Ballet. Alice Peacock, a London-based former NZ Herald reporter, caught up with O’Neill along with two other dancers from Aotearoa making moves on stage and screen overseas.
Hannah O’Neill was taking her bow on the stage of Opera Garnier in Paris, hand-in-hand with her dance partner Marc Moreau, when she realised something momentous was about to happen.
Shortly after dancing George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial, she and Moreau were named the two new etoiles, or star dancers, of the Paris Opera Ballet. O’Neill recalls turning her head to see Alexander Neef, general-director of the opera, emerging from the wings of the stage with the company’s director of dance, José Martinez.
“José gave me a little look just before Alexander announced my name, and I sort of started to understand what was happening. Then I heard my name … It was literally a dream come true.”
O’Neill is the first Australasian to reach the coveted danseuse etoile status, the highest rank a dancer in the company can receive. The promotion came 12 years after she arrived in Paris aged 18, having graduated early from the Australian Ballet School to take up a seasonal contract with its esteemed French equivalent, the world’s oldest ballet company.
Born in Tokyo, O’Neill’s foray into dancing was at Kishibe Ballet Studio, when she was 3. Speaking to Canvas over the phone from New York, where she is enjoying a week-long holiday, the dancer says the discipline she learned in her days at Kishibe helped shape her practice today. She lived in Japan until the age of 8, when she moved to New Zealand with her Kiwi father Chris, a professional rugby player, her Japanese mother Sumie and her two younger brothers.
At 15 O’Neill moved from Auckland to Melbourne to begin training at the Australian Ballet School. During this time she won two major competitions, including the Prix de Lausanne, the world’s most prestigious competition for young dancers. Her success in Lausanne, Switzerland, offered global exposure and spurred her successful audition for the Paris Opera Ballet.
“The first two or three months I was still in awe, still saying ‘Oh my gosh, I live in Paris,’” O’Neill recalls. “The beauty of it all and working for the company I had always dreamed of being in. But there’s always a moment when it kind of rubs off.”
After this honeymoon stage, life in Paris became “very difficult”. Learning French was hard-going, being at the bottom of the company’s five-tier rankings meant she wasn’t dancing a lot, and there were points where she wasn’t sure if she could make it.
“It was very nerve-racking because when we did have an opportunity to go on stage it was always last minute, we were always understudying everybody,” O’Neill explains. “Most of the time you find out at 4pm, when the casting sheet comes out for the night. There was always someone who was sick or injured. So, you went in and filled in for all of these people, and you would sometimes be dancing a different spot every night. It was definitely not easy, because you’re extremely exposed on stage, and you just want to blend in.”
Near the end of a cold European winter, after six gruelling months with the company, O’Neill started to see light at the end of the tunnel. By the end of her first year in Paris, she knew she wanted to stay. She was awarded another seasonal contract before being engaged as a lifetime member of the company, aged 20. This contract secures dancers’ employment until they retire at 42.
In the spring of 2015, O’Neill danced the lead dual role of Odette and Odile in Swan Lake, which is typically reserved for etoiles. She was “so overwhelmed” to be cast as understudy and even more excited to find herself on stage in costume as the iconic swan princess and her evil twin.
While O’Neill says the promotion at the beginning of March this year still “hasn’t really sunk in”, the show must - and does -go on. Next up for the dancer is the Dante project, a three-act ballet by an English director, production for which will begin upon her return to Paris. O’Neill says she will be “taking in all the good energy” New York has to offer and going back to Paris refreshed.
Across the pond in London, dancer Steph Lee is on a high after the release of Dance 100, a new reality Netflix competition series. The show follows eight up-and-coming choreographers as they compete for a prize of $100,000, creating routines with 100 of the world’s best commercial dancers. The routines grow in size and intensity. In the first episode, the contestants choreograph a short dance with seven other dancers, while the finale follows the last two standing as they work with all 100 dancers at once. The twist? Lee and her 99 fellow dancers are also the judges, each week deciding the fate of the choreographers by voting for the one whose routine they liked the best. At the end of each challenge, the person with the least support goes home.
Lee, a third-generation Chinese Kiwi from Wellington, started Chinese dance lessons as a tot, later trying her hand at jazz dancing and hip-hop before joining a street dance crew, Emerge, at 13. Through her time at high school and university, the crew went to Las Vegas for the annual World Hip Hop Dance Championship six times.
In the summer of 2018, she and her then-boyfriend, now husband, Sean, packed their bags for a move to the UK and Lee launched herself into the hustle of London’s dance industry. “I left New Zealand not even knowing if I could make dance a career,” she says. “But I knew I had to give it everything I had, and I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened.”
Five years on, Lee has a star-studded resumé. The 29-year-old danced alongside Ed Sheeran in his performance opening the Brit Awards and at Tomorrowland with Bebe Rexha. In June of 2022, she danced in front of Buckingham Palace for several artists including Duran Duran and Mabel as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, during which she also met the now-King Charles. High-profile performances are nothing new for Lee, though she had never been in front of a camera, constantly, for that length of time. “I don’t know how much bigger you can get than Netflix,” she muses.
Lee is the only Kiwi on the show, but the “100″ includes dancers from all over Europe, the UK and further afield, with each one bringing their own strengths and skills from different backgrounds. Lee believes the show captures the diversity being “championed and delivered” by the commercial dance industry. “Diversity in age, culture, identity and backgrounds,” she adds. “People had come from all over the world that were part of this show, so that was really cool. It’s nice to be in a space where lots of different cultures and races are represented and it’s also a space that is very accepting.”
Days after the New York musical Guys and Dolls opened at London’s Bridge Theatre, the critics have reacted with an array of five-star reviews, describing the immersive production as “impeccable” and a “near-flawless revival”. Leslie Bowman, who is “one of the fellas” in the ensemble, will have read a few of the write-ups and is unlikely to have been surprised.
“Some people don’t read the reviews, that’s personal preference. But personally, I like to read them, I like to know what people think,” he told Canvas during a week of preview shows. “I have a feeling we’re going to get some pretty good ones.”
Bowman, 27, was born and bred in Lower Hutt, to a mum from the Philippines and dad from Nelson. His childhood years were primarily spent in dance classes; tap dancing, jazz and hip-hop, as well as ballet and contemporary dance. “Six, seven days a week, just dancing, dancing, dancing every day from the age of about 4 or 5 until I was 16, when I moved here,” he says.
A scholarship to Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom, Surrey, prompted a move to the UK, with Bowman’s parents in tow. Straight out of the college he secured the role of assistant dance captain in Thriller Live, on London’s West End, making him feel like “the whole thing was worth it”.
Towards the end of Thriller’s run, a botched backflip on stage landed Bowman in hospital with a broken collarbone, the night before he was due to audition for the hit musical Hamilton in its debut on the West End. He went anyway, dancing through an “excruciating” level of pain, and after several gruelling months of try-outs, he was offered the role of Charles Lee - George Washington’s second-in-command. The show, which is coming to Auckland’s Spark Arena in May, ran for two years.
Following a positive early reception, Bowman has already heard murmurings of Guys and Dolls - which was scheduled to run until September - being extended. It’s an exciting prospect, he says, though they might not find out for a while.
Ruminating on his success under the bright lights of London’s theatre district, Bowman acknowledges that “not everyone even gets the opportunity to try to do this.
“New Zealand is such a small country and so far away,” he adds. “For me and the couple of other Kiwis around on the West End, it’s really cool that we’ve made it this far. We’re really lucky to be here.”
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