The New Zealand Dance Company (incorporated as The New Zealand Dance Advancement Trust) is an Auckland based, nationally focused contemporary dance company.
The company sought to break the paradigm of dance companies operating on a project by project basis, presenting work by one choreographer, and moved instead to a sustainable model of presenting a variety of choreographic works.
The New Zealand Dance Company (NZDC) was founded in 2012 by former Limbs Dance Company member Shona McCullagh and the founding General Manager Frances Turner. Like Limbs, the NZDC company commissions work from New Zealand and international choreographers. Part of the mission was to support new talent and utilise dancers and choreographers who had left New Zealand. The founding production was the Language of Living, featuring choreographers Michael Parmenter, Justin Haiu, Sarah Foster-Sproull and Shona McCullagh.
NZDC has developed more than 27 new works by choreographers from New Zealand, Australia, Holland and South Korea and has toured internationally including to the Holland Dance Festival, Australia, Germany, Liverpool, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Canada.
In addition to a professional Company, NZDC has a Youth and Community Engagement Programme of weekly classes, masterclasses and workshops for all ages and levels â including an over 60s Feisty Feet class.
In 2011 Creative New Zealand funded the new venture of The New Zealand Dance Company and Westpac bank sponsored.