Listening to a piece of music Cameron McMillan knows straight away if it is something that "needs to be danced to".
He had just that experience when listening to internationally acclaimed composer John Psathas’ Helix.
"I heard it for the first time many years ago. It’s incredibly dynamic, and it’s got lots of rhythm, and lots of shifts and changes, and it’s really deeply emotional piece of music."
Having been away from New Zealand for many years, the piece touched McMillan.
"I was very inspired by the idea of this, of connection and lineage, and it’s called Helix. So, you know, obviously, there’s the double helix in DNA. It’s also about the infinity symbol, about time, kind of connecting and reconnecting. And so, for me, it had a quite a powerful resonance to the concept of the music."
The opportunity to come back to New Zealand to put together a piece for the Ballet Collective Aotearoa’s trio Subtle Dances alongside pieces by fellow Kiwi choreographers Sarah Knox and Loughlan Prior to be performed with the NZ Trio on stage was too good for McMillan to turn down.
"This opportunity to come back after a number of years to work with New Zealand dancers and have my work on a New Zealand stage was quite a symbolic moment, I think, for me."
While McMillan has returned home to New Zealand — he grew up in New Plymouth — regularly over the years, he first left aged 16 to study dance in Australia. He then returned to New Zealand to perform with the Royal New Zealand Ballet from 1997 to 2001 before leaving again to travel to Europe and take up a position as a soloist for the English National Ballet.
"I landed in London, and I’ve not left. But I’ve travelled and done many different things whilst using London as my base."
He worked with internationally renowned Rambert Dance Company for five years before going freelance and performing regularly with Rafael Bonachela’s project company Bonachela Dance Company, and developing his voice as an emerging choreographer.
Choreography has always been something he wanted to do as from a young age he was making up dances.
"I was always curious and I was quite fortunate. There were places where I was working that gave me opportunities to try things out and each time I had a go, I realised how I was completely absorbed and fascinated by the process every step of the way."
For McMillan choreography was a very different experience to dancing.
"I felt dancing was quite an external thing, like something that I was putting out for people. But choreography was much more internal. So, my creativity was being woken up in a different way. And that really pushed my career trajectory."
While he had ambitions as a dancer, he was very driven by what he could learn about choreography or dance styles through dance opportunities.
"To be quite frank, learning from different people in different ways to feed my own artistic kind of lessons somehow."
McMillan has gone on to be involved in everything from large-scale classical ballet to independent contemporary dance, film and fashion. He has created and performed the work of many acclaimed choreographers in a diverse range of leading roles including Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Princes in Cinderella, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, James in La Sylphide, Harker in Dracula, and the title role in Peter Pan.
"I’ve always enjoyed creating at home, I think, working with New Zealand Ballet was always a joy and there’s something very special about that company, even on the international stage, it has a authenticity and it has a drive and a sort of joy in its work and that is, it’s always so refreshing."
So in 2019 he came home to make Helix only to get caught up in the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.
"I was like, ‘hi, Dad, guess what?’ I was at home for three months over that time. And I probably would have stayed longer if we all knew what was going to happen in the world. It was a crazy time."
A silver lining to the situation was getting to create a dance film for the Tempo Dance Festival, with performers dancing under a Len Lye kinetic installation in his home town.
"It was a really special moment, actually. It was a nice way to kind of reintegrate myself back on a personal and professional and sort of artistic level, in a very strange time."
While he headed back to Europe for work, he returned a year later to stage the work for its Auckland premiere in 2021 only to have it hit by another lockdown.
"It got postponed and I had to fly back. I never saw it on stage. I was on Zoom with rehearsal direction and with videos checking the lighting."
The work was initially choreographed for former Royal New Zealand ballet dancer Abigail Boyle, a colleague of McMillan’s when he was dancing and performed in some of his early choreography.
"It was a very nice opportunity to work with somebody that I knew very well, but have not been in the same room together for a long time. In some ways, we created this pas de deux really around her.
"But it was very much about working with dancers that were somehow very mature at later stages in their performance career, very experienced, bringing themselves to their work. And so, it was a very special opportunity to work with experienced artists."
Back then the pas de deux he created was about a more mature woman, looking back, perhaps, considering the past, considering her future, considering where she was with "a sense of sort of gravitas and sort of thoughtfulness and strength and maturity".
The piece went on to be performed in Dunedin’s Festival of the Arts in 2021 and the Taranaki Festival of the Arts last year.
For the Wānaka performance the piece will be performed by young dancers Gabriella Hawke and Dunedin-raised dancer James Burchell (son of Dunedin City organist and choir director David Burchell) so he is reinterpreting the choreography to fit.
"What are the ways in for a younger person who’s highly skilled, but has a different approach or a different understanding of where they sit in their career or where they sit in their performance life. So, this is part of the process at the moment is working out what that will be. And I’m really excited to see where that goes, because that’s the beauty of live performance, it becomes the artist on stage."
McMillan is still living in London, where like many places around the word the arts are struggling, as it provides opportunities to work and be exposed to others’ creativity but does not feel fixed there.
"I’m always looking to try and find places that where I can grow and also try and where I can contribute to the art and culture scene wherever that is. So I realise also as a choreographer, you come with different sets of skills that can also be applied in different fields and different genres."
He has been working in opera with a stage director in the UK, Germany and Brussels helping stage works sometimes with dancers, sometimes without.
"Seeing how movement and staging and choreography can inform other art forms or other performing art forms, not just pure dance necessarily.
"It keeps life interesting and I learn and what I love the most is that there was always something to learn to feed back into my work."
A lot of his work has been focused on the body, the physicality of the body and the potential of movement and space rather than storytelling.
"It’s not really been my focus. However, having worked in opera for the past few years, I’m now starting to understand, you know, the difference between music theatre and how to tell stories and what matters to an audience, what audience needs."
To see
Subtle Dances, Ballet Collective Aotearoa and NZ Trio He Taonga Wairere, Wānaka Festival of Colour, Lake Wānaka Centre, April 2, 6pm and 8.30pm.
