A Raptor in Dunedin

A collaboration between a poet, choreographer, dancer, and a composer, this show mines the depths of grief, faith, and growth. Rooted in place (Ōtepoti Dunedin) and in distance (between Ōtepoti and the home of a distant lover), this performance is about how sometimes the cost of profound connection is breaking open the heart like a summer fruit – in the dead of winter. The exploration is presented in the body, which is where these connections are born and reside: through dance, sound/music, and poetry. 

Audiences can expect a profoundly emotional exploration of investment in the connections between people – lovers, family, friends. The show will begin outside of the theatre, a performative promenade in which the audience integrates and finds their seats in a collective river of movement.

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Poetry: Kim Cope Tait

Music composition: Maddy Parkins-Craig

Choreography: Sofia Kalogeropoulou

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Bios 

Maddy Parkins-Craig

Dr Maddy Parkins-Craig is a Senior Lecturer of Music at the University of Otago. She holds a DMA in Studio Production, as well as a MusB(Hons), both from the University of Otago. Maddy works as composer, songwriter, music producer and multi-instrumentalist, and has performed with a diverse range of ensembles around Aotearoa. Her composition New Mountain was recorded by the NZSO in 2024, and her debut piece for string quartet, TwentyNineteen, received the Music Award at the 2023 Dunedin Fringe Festival.

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Sofia Kalogeropoulou

Sofia Kalogeropoulou is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Performing Arts, University of Otago. She has a long-standing international career as a dance educator, dancer and choreographer. Sofia enjoys collaborating with artists from diverse fields to create interdisciplinary contemporary dance, physical theatre and immersive installation art works. Selected works include Anderson’s Localisation (Dunedin Arts Festival, 2025), TwentyNineteen (Dunedin Fringe Festival, 2023), Cartographies of a future (Dunedin Fringe Festival, 2023), The Air we Breathe, the Air we Fear (Arts+Science, 2022), The Motorway and La Panamericana (TAHI Festival; Dunedin Fringe Festival, 2019).

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Kim Cope Tait

Kim Cope Tait holds an MFA in Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts (2000). She has a chapbook of poetry called Element (2005, Leaping Dog Press) and her full-length collection of poems, Shadow Tongue, was published with Finishing Line Press in 2018. Having lived in California, Hawaii, Switzerland, Vermont, and Colorado, Kim now lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin and has just submitted her PhD thesis in English Literature.  Her creative work has appeared in Landfall, Bad Apple, SWAMP Magazine, Two Thirds North, Axon, The Spinoff (The Friday Poem), Poetry Aotearoa Year Book 2026, Calyx, Counterfutures, and the Cimarron Review.

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