Category: freelance dance

Virginia Kennard has taught across a range of disciplines and genres since the age of 14. She recently taught AJDA senior level jazz dance syllabus at Impact Dance and Stage School, Ōtautahi, and jazz dance and improvisation techniques for NASDA.

Her first role was assisting Paula Hunt in teaching Pre-Primary ballet students, aged 4-6. She was a mathematics tutor to Year 11 students during her final year at high school. Virginia taught mathematics and social studies on and off for the Victoria University of Wellington Centre for Continuing Education between 2001 and 2009.

Virginia is a contemporary dance, jazztastic aerobics, improvisation, and Muscle and Bone tutor for Movement Art Practice from 2019 to the present where she also manages a community workshop program. Virginia taught contemporary dance technique and contact improvisation in Glasgow through Dance House between 2010 and 2011, contemporary dance and improvisation as part of the Wellington Freelance Dance Collective between 2011 and 2013, and dance at Standouts Drama, Dance, and Singing in Te Whanganui-a-Tara between 2013 and 2016.

A particular teaching highlight was Jazztastic Dance Aerobics during the 2020 and 2021 NZ Lockdown via Zoom (see featured image).

Other classes and genres taught include Contact Improvisation, Improvisation, Burlesque, Stretching for Dancers, Classical Ballet, Choreography for Actors, Pilates, Yoga, plus How to do your Taxes as a self-employed NZ-based arts contractor.

Performance research by Virginia Kennard

What does it mean to look and to be looked at?
Reversing the Gaze
Looking in to look out, looking back

  • Video how do i look? for explicit: implicit, The Porn Project, Auckland 2013
    Movement performance by Virginia Kennard
    Sonic composition by Emi Pogoni
    Vocal artists Vincent Konrad and Rose Blake
  • Performance installation The Lady Garden
    Featuring live naked women as desexualised objects, asking the audience to renegotiate the lens with which they use to look at women and women’s bodies
    World premiere, Matchbox Studios, Wellington, December 2012
  • Notes on looking
    to and fro
    , Artspace, Auckland 2014
    Short + Sweet Dance Festival, Auckland 2014
    The Menagerie, Fringe Bar, Wellington 2015
    you occupy my body by looking, Toi Pōneke Gallery, Wellington 2015
  • Spoken word performance What is body positivity?
    Poetry in Motion, Heaven Pizza, October 2013
  • Pole performance Voyeurist
    Performed for The Pole Room, Sci-Fi Fantasy show, Fringe Bar, Wellington 2015
    Mashup by Betty Lightbulb

Virginia Kennard has trained in the art of pole dance on and off since 2009 in Oxford and Edinburgh, but became serious after starting classes at Body Electric Pole Studio, Wellington.

Performances include

  • The Pole Room, Sci-Fi Fantasy, 2015
  • Show Some Love, Fundraiser Cabaret for Wellington Women’s Refuge, 2015
  • The Pole Room, Elements of Pole, Fringe Bar, 2015
  • NZ Amateur Pole Performance competition, 2015

Photo credits:

  • Maggie Bloom, 2015 [featured image]
  • Rex Ostil Bustria, 2015
  • Rex Ostil Bustria, 2015
  • Maggie Bloom, 2015
  • Alex Angileri, 2014
  • Maggie Bloom, 2015
  • Rex Ostil Bustria, 2015
  • Rex Ostil Bustria, 2015

Since graduating from the Wellington Performing Arts Centre (now Whitireia Performance Centre) with a Diploma in Commercial Dance: Distinction, Virginia has performed in various choreographies and works, in Auckland, Wellington, Glasgow, and Melbourne. She continued her dance training at UNITEC pursuing a Bachelor in Performing Screen Arts majoring in Contemporary Dance, honing her choreographic skills and creating work for Tempo Dance Festival.

Performance experience includes:

Photo credits:

  • Serene Lorimer, for Circular Persuasions, The Performance Arcade, 2012 [featured image]
  • Kristy McCormick Art and Imagery, for Untitled Queer Commercial Dance Show by Jeremy Haxton, 2015
  • Cameron McMillan, for Yes. No. Maybe? by Alana Yee, 2012
  • Ashley Church for BLOOM by Marisol Vargas, 2014
  • Zoe Platt-Young, for Hallelujah Society by Mariya Kupriyenko, 2014
  • Serene Lorimer, for Circular Persuasions, The Performance Arcade, 2012
  • Kristy McCormick Art and Imagery, for Untitled Queer Commercial Dance Show by Jeremy Haxton, 2015
  • Jeremy Brick, for PARTY by Juliet Shelley, 2012
  • Robbie Sweeny, for Turbulence by Keith Hennessy, 2011
  • Aidan Grealish, for Yes. No. Maybe? by Anna Flaherty, 2012

CONTACT

Get in touch with Virginia.

Name
Email
Message

Your message has been sent.
Error! Please validate your fields.
© Copyright Virginia Kennard 2016