A Southland highland dancer will take the stage for the most challenging performance of her life this week as she undertakes the Solo Seal examination.

Dawn Anderson, a 23-year-old legal secretary who lives just outside Invercargill, is one of four dancers from around the country who will sit the prestigious exam in Queenstown on Friday (September 18) night. 

She began highland dancing as a four-year-old and was initially taught by Helen McKay at Tuatapere. Since age 14 she was been taught by Jolie Hazley, of Invercargill.

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Although some Southlanders have sat the exam in the past, it has always been after leaving the province, or their teacher has been from further north. This is believed to be the first time a locally resident dancer, taught in Southland, has entered.

The Solo Seal examination is the highest attainable qualification for the New Zealand Academy of Highland and National Dancing and is notoriously difficult to attain. Candidates must perform four dances before an audience, and a panel of three examiners who assess each performance for technical excellence. It is not a competition. Candidates are not rated against each other, rather they are assessed for a technically optimal performance. The Solo Seal is only awarded to those candidates who all three examiners agree meets the exacting criteria across every one of their four dances.

Many dancers have sat the examination over the years – some multiple times – but only 23 have ever attained it, the last being Lewis Gibson, of Christchurch, in 2018.

Common to all dancers who take on the gruelling challenge, Miss Anderson said preparation over the past 12 months had been all-consuming. Striving to achieve technical excellence had meant breaking steps down to individual foundation movements and was like learning all over again.

“One of the really big things was having my weight in the right place. I was always [centred] way too far back. But it’s made such a difference to all these other little things. It’s obviously a massively important thing that we’ve just missed the entire time.”

A lot of that fine tuning has been courtesy of video lessons from former Southlander Sue Gill, who now lives in Christchurch, and who is a past Solo Seal examiner. Mrs Gill is also one of Mrs Hazley’s former teachers.

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“She’s just got such a wealth of knowledge of various things that, I guess they’re not explicitly in the theory books, they’re just kind of known. And she has all of that knowledge, it’s great she’s passed it on,” Miss Anderson said.

Normally the Solo Seal examination performance is open to the public but COVID-19 restrictions have not only disrupted preparation and lessons, but the current Level 2 restrictions means the audience size is capped at 100, meaning only those directly involved with the candidates or highland dancing community will be in attendance. 

It’s particularly disappointing for those involved, considering it was to have been the highlight of a weekend-long Academy conference and dance development workshops, hosted in Queenstown for the first time ever by the Southland Teachers and Judges group, of which Miss Anderson and Mrs Hazley are both members. Instead, it’s a different kind of first, with the conference postponed until next year and the Solo Seal effectively being held behind closed doors.

“It is a little disappointing but in the end I’ve got the most important people there, so at least there’s that,” Miss Anderson said.

In the audience, each candidate will have a small contingent of friends and family, while Miss Anderson’s backstage support crew comprises Mrs Hazley and her close friend and fellow highland dancer Megan Luckin who, as luck would have it, is a massage therapist.

“Megan is massage therapist, she will be nutritionist on the night feeding me things, and hopefully provider of sanity because I think Jolie’s going to be very nervous as well.”

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Miss Luckin’s support – both professionally and personally – has been essential in the build-up. Miss Anderson ruptured her right achilles tendon during a competition performance in 2016 and for the past year her left achilles has also been playing up, causing some anxiety. Massage, coupled with physiotherapy and acupuncture, have been regular calendar appointments for which Miss Anderson said her employer Eagles, Eagles and Redpath had been extremely accommodating.

Evenings have been filled with two or three dancing lessons a week, and she’s also taken up yoga for increased flexibility and relaxation.

“In between I’ll mix it up at home with a core workout or general leg strength workout – various things like that.”

Miss Anderson will be performing the Irish Jig Double Time, Sword Dance, Irish Hornpipe and Seann Triubhas. Also performing will be fellow candidates Britney Moore, Brooke Smith and Annabel Watts. 

After a full-on year of preparation, it will be over all too soon. 

Then follows the nervous wait for their assessments to arrive in the mail.