7 November 2025
Renowned dancer, choreographer and co-founder of The New Zealand Dance Company Shona McCullagh performed in the first production of Gloria in 1990. With GLORIA – A Triple Bill featuring in the 2026 Festival, we ask Shona to recall memories from the days of the work’s creation.
Shona McCullagh in 1990 production of Gloria
I start by asking Shona to recount her experience of the first production of Gloria and working with Douglas Wright.
“The creation of Gloria was an incredibly special experience. Douglas was on fire creatively and the dedication of the work in memoriam of Helen Aldridge’s daughter, Deirdre Mummery inspired a true celebration of Deirdre’s life, and life for all of us.
“We were really quite an eclectic bunch of dancers : Mia Mason was 5 foot nothing, Ursula Robb and I were the “tall ones”, and Douglas and Tai Royal were divinely muscular angels wrestling…
“As with all of Douglas’s rehearsal periods, it was physically demanding but incredibly uplifting and inspiring. The music was utterly sublime and the chance to present the work later in the Festival (in 1992) with a live orchestra and choir was wonderful – and such a rare experience for contemporary dancers and choreographers.”
Shona began dancing with Douglas at the inception of his company in 1987. She had left Limbs to dance for Douglas in some concerts in New York before returning to dance in the infamous 1988 Limbs production of Now is the Hour, then became Associate Director of Douglas Wright and Dancers.
“The sense of camaraderie in the company was extraordinary. We were very close as a group of people. Dancers have a special ability to trust each other and place great faith in a process and demonstrate supernatural generosity. The physical, hair-splitting risks we shared, for example, Ursula and Tai swinging Mia overhead whilst I leapt underneath the human swing meant a great reliance on and belief in each other. We never let each other down and we all shared a great love of Douglas and his wonderful, rigorous work.”
Douglas was known for pushing his dancers hard in an unrelenting pursuit of his creative vision. I asked Shona what it was like working with someone so driven.
“Douglas pushed all who worked with him to achieve their own best. He sometimes brought dancers to tears and could be ruthless in his commitment to his work, first and foremost. No discomfort, or “one more time” rehearsal was spared, and hobbling dancers with massive bruises, stinging split feet and limps were all just part of the journey to every exhausting and glorious opening night.
“But Douglas was also very funny and unbelievably inspiring in his astonishing denial of gravity when he leapt in the air. He could jump higher and then, so would we. He really “saw” individual dancers and created work on them, with them and for them. He had a wry, devilish sense of humour and he and I were very, very close friends, spending a lot of time together outside of the rehearsal room, dreaming of the next work we’d create and what the company could do.”
It’s called an ‘iconic masterpiece’, but when you were dancing in Gloria, did you have any idea of the impact this work would have in the future?
“We all knew it was special, and felt very proud to be dancing in it, but I had no idea that friends of mine and also complete strangers would still talk to me about the power of the impact of that work on them, 35 years later. My friend, composer Victoria Kelly played the oboe in the orchestra and vividly remembers the dancers giving their absolute all. The music was an absolute joy to dance to and it’s fascinating that Vivaldi’s score was only discovered in the late 1920s and only first performed in 1939.
“The Largo ‘Domine Deus, Rex coelestis’ is a duet between the solo soprano and the solo violin, and the solo Douglas created for me set to this section is really still one of the highlights of my dance career. It is sublime music and beautiful, expressive choreography full of surrender, innocence and devotion that I absolutely loved performing. I also adored performing two duets with Taiaroa - one utterly buoyant, jubilant and delightful, and the second using the same material slowed down to a gentle, very human intimacy to close the work.
“Gloria is a seminal, timeless and profoundly important New Zealand contemporary dance work that drew audiences into its heart and has remained imprinted on the psyche of those New Zealanders that witnessed it.”
It’s more than 30 years since Gloria was first staged – how is it still relevant today?
“Any celebration of life and mourning of death is of course still relevant and that was the absolute essence of the work. Douglas was not religious, but his dancing was full of reverence, joy and the power of the gift that dance is to the world. There are so many motifs of supplication, worship, adoration and ecstasy within the choreography - there really is a deep purity contained in Gloria which looking across at Douglas’s canon of work, stood out because it contained not an ounce of irony or cynicism. It’s primarily a devotional work set to a Latin text rejoicing in the passion and power of a lifeforce.
“Douglas had a gigantic lifeforce, and when he unleashed that in a performance or in the creation of a work, everyone was touched by it and still will be. It’s a vastly positive work and I think audiences need the succour and sense of restoration to order that a piece such as Gloria can bring. It’s a work that’s made a profound impact.”
Shona says she believes today’s audiences will continue to be uplifted by the work. “Gloria is a work that is deeply enriching for those who perform it and that translates and connects the wairua of the dancers, singers, musicians and of course Douglas as the creator, with its audience.
“Douglas described it as a ‘homecoming – to joy, to love and to dancing….holding death in our bodies like a sleeping child – careful as we move not to wake it’. He was also inspired by Isaiah 61:3 – ‘Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness’. It’s all in there.”
Shona also danced in the retrospective of Gloria in 1995 and recalls it as a different experience and a gift to revisit a work.
“I was very honoured to be invited back to perform it again. I’d had my first child, Arlo, so it was hard to be in the studio away from him but wonderful to be dancing and fully back in my body again.
“Motherhood is a deeper well to draw from as a performer and there are so many motifs referencing birth in the work, including the culmination of the work being a rebirth, and a new beginning.”
And finally, I ask if Shona will make the trip down from Auckland to see the new production.
I’d very much like to if my other work commitments allow – it would be glorious!”
Gloria - A Triple Bill is at the 2026 Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts from 12-14 March. Tickets on sale NOW!
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