Designer Kristian Fredrikson a Force of the Stage

Wellington-born stage and costume designer Kristian Fredrikson is celebrated in a new book by renowned Melbourne dance writer, curator and historian Michelle Potter.

Fredrikson, who was born in 1940, took art classes at Wellington Polytechnic College before working as a designer for a small, amateur operetta company in the capital. He then left for Australia, where he established a career as a designer for dance, opera, theatre, film and television that would span five decades, Dance Australia reports.

Fredrikson met the then-emerging choreographer Graeme Murphy in the 1970s, and made his first work for Murphy’s Sydney Dance Company, Shéhérazade, in 1979. It was during the 1970s that he began working with The Australian Ballet, an association that lasted until the year of his death in 2005. During the 1980s he was enticed back to New Zealand to design works for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

In 2005, the then-artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Gary Harris, said, “Kristian was a creative genius whose breathtakingly beautiful work took audiences to another world. He [was] the ballet designer in New Zealand and Australia who everyone has looked to for his knowledge, skill and experience. His work is rich and layered with real depth, quality and class.”

Kristian Fredrikson: Designer will be available from July 2020.

Original article by Dance Australia, March 23, 2020.