10th Anniversary Tour 2007

Media Release

Touch Compass dances around North Island for 10th birthday celebration

Renowned New Zealand dance company Touch Compass celebrates its 10th anniversary in Auckland from October 17, 2007 with a four centre North Island tour. The company’s most memorable works have been selected for this retrospective showcase, including the outstanding and critically acclaimed work - Lusi’s Eden. Over the last ten years audiences have been drawn to the beauty and skill of this ground breaking company, unique for its integration of professional dancers and choreographers with and without a disability.

Highly regarded for their innovation and “flying”, which sees wheelchairs and dancers suspended and swinging above the stage, the company creates work to challenge public perception of “what dance is and who is a dancer”. The work that has resulted has earned Touch Compass the reputation as a pioneering and ingenious contemporary dance company.

A decade ago, artistic director and founder Catherine Chappell returned home from the United States to experiment with her newly learned contact improvisation skills. Touch Compass was created in the same year and in 1997 the first Touch Compass season proudly premiered at Auckland’s Maidment Theatre. 

Lusi’s Eden is a theatrical journey which sees the heroine Lusi Faiva trade her electric wheelchair for a harness, to fly her to freedom across the stage and high above the audience. This physical and metaphorical flight of fancy inspires and uplifts audiences, who identify with the liberation of spirit which is captured by this poignant and exuberant work. “Lusi’s Eden [is] a precious gem, polished and flawless and brilliantly lit from the heart within.”  - Bernadette Rae, New Zealand Herald, 2001.