RNZB is taking Macbeth to the stage—and this is unlike any Shakespeare seen before
There is a particular electricity in the air when a choreographer takes on a story that has lived for centuries—especially one pulsing with desire, danger and delirium. For choreographer Alice Topp, Macbeth isn’t simply Shakespeare translated into dance: it’s a full-bodied plunge into the thrill of human want, told through movement that doesn’t just speak—it hits. ‘It’s a timeless story—ambition, control, power, guilt, passion—those themes are forever relevant,’ she says.
But what excites her most is not the political machination nor the superstitions. It’s the physicality of a mind under pressure. It’s the choreography born in the tremor between a decision and a downfall. Macbeth marks the Australian choreographer’s first full-length creation for the Royal New Zealand Ballet since she once danced in the company’s ranks herself. It arrives on the back of works like Aurum and Logos — crystalline, muscular, emotionally acute—that introduced RNZB audiences to her distinctive choreographic language. Now she stretches that language across an entire narrative spine. ‘What once felt intimidating has become exhilarating—having Shakespeare as a blueprint gives the choreography a real spine.’ This Macbeth trades coronations for velocity. The rise is fast and glittering; the movement, a tightly wound coil of seduction and ambition. Alice, after all, is drawn to how emotion lives in the body before it reaches the tongue. ‘In a story ballet, every glance, every touch, every turn of the body becomes language—that’s the thrill for me, making text physical.’ So the witches aren’t simply supernatural: they are catalysts in motion. The banquet scene isn’t polite pageantry: it’s tension radiating through shoulders and jawlines. Lady Macbeth doesn’t just wash imagined blood from her hands: she is caught in a choreography of unravelling. And all the while, there is no ‘definitive’ ballet version of Macbeth. That absence has given the choreographer permission to reinvent. ‘There’s no mainstay ballet version of Macbeth, which gives us this rare creative freedom to really define what it could be.’
The production’s creative team—including composer Christopher Gordon—is building a world that amplifies the dancers’ bodies. Gordon’s new score layers orchestral swell with a propulsive edge, underscoring movement that is sleek, sharp, sometimes almost feral with longing. Costumes and staging carve out a glamorous universe where success can feel choreographic— practised, poised, performed—until it cracks. ‘Collaboration is my favourite part of the job—we’re building these characters from the ground up, from what they’d wear to where they’d go for a drink.’ There’s a celebratory audacity to the project. A confidence that ballet—with all of its sweat, stamina and storytelling—is the perfect container for a tragedy that runs hot. This is not a dusty classic revived; it’s a psychological thriller danced at full tilt. And for Alice, returning to RNZB is a deeply personal jolt of joy: ‘To return to the company where I began at 19 feels like a full-circle, pinch-me moment— New Zealand holds a big piece of my heart.’ It’s that sense of homecoming, of bodies in space rediscovering each other, that might be Macbeth’s greatest secret. Beneath the power grabs and the night sweats, there is community— dancers breathing together, pushing into the unknown together, risking together. In Macbeth, the party may be brief before chaos descends. But while the lights are bright and the music surges, RNZB’s dancers get to fly—and Alice Topp wants us to feel every thrilling second of the ascent.
Macbeth is in season from February 25 until March 21 in Wellington, Auckland, Dunedin and Christchurch. Tickets are available online now.
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