Trinity Maydon on masks, movement, and making her first solo work
In July The Hannah Playhouse becomes a home for movement, experimentation, and creative heat as the Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance returns for a week of performances, residencies, debates, parties, free events, and bold new work.
Curated by Footnote New Zealand Dance and presented with The Hannah Playhouse and Toi Aro, the festival exists to nourish the future of contemporary dance in the capital: making space for artists to gather, develop, perform, and be seen.
For Trinity Maydon, that space has been transformational.
Her new solo work, A Person Shaped Thing, began its life in last year’s festival residency programme. This year it steps into the performance season as Trinity’s first full-length solo creation.
From residency to performance season
Originally from Ōtepoti, Trinity moved to Wellington in 2021 to study at the New Zealand School of Dance, graduating in 2024. Since then, she has been building a freelance practice across contemporary dance, performance installation, community work, and choreography.
“This year I was involved in Fringe quite a lot,” she says. “I was in a lot of other people’s works. I’ve worked with Untitled Warehouse Project, I’ve done two rave installations, and I’ve also worked with Wellington Community Ballet Theatre as a choreographer.”
Trinity was also part of Yaga Arts’ 'EVE' at Te Whaea and was a guest performer at the Performance Arcade performing 4 STRING - 4 LIMBS alongside bass player Alex Cooper.
But A Person Shaped Thing marks a new threshold.
The work was first developed through the Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance residency programme, which gives artists studio space and time to test new ideas. For Trinity, the move from residency to performance season has created a valuable bridge between process and presentation.
“This is where I started developing this show,” she says. “Last year I did my residency for the show, and this year I was offered one of those performance positions, which was really cool.”
For an emerging artist, that supported pathway offers confidence and guidance.
The fragile architecture of self-presentation
At the heart of A Person Shaped Thing is a question many of us might have dared to think about: how much of who we are is performed?
Trinity’s work explores self-presentation, identity, and the roles we play in different rooms. Drawing on sociologist Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical theories of human interaction, Trinity examines everyday life as a kind of performance, where we are constantly managing what we reveal and conceal.
“It’s based on the ideas of self-presentation and this fragile architecture of how we present ourselves in everyday life,” she explains. “It questions how we make genuine connections.”
The first image that sparked the work was eerie and confronting: “this faceless creature,” as Trinity describes it, “almost Slender Man.” From there, she began thinking about the “loss of face” and what connection might mean when identity becomes unstable, masked, or unclear.
Then she found Goffman’s writing.
“He uses dramaturgy to explain how we self-present,” she says. “So we have a front stage and a backstage. It’s like Shakespeare’s ‘all the world’s a stage’ — we all have our roles that we sit into.”
One idea in particular lodged itself deeply in the work.
“The attentive pupil plays the role of attentiveness so much that they’re consumed in the performance and they no longer listen to the conversation,” Trinity says. “That really got me questioning everything.”
So, does the performance ever really end?
For Trinity, the work is not only intellectual. It is physical, unsettling, and deeply human.
“I keep coming back to the question: does the performance ever really end?” she says. “Especially when you’re a dancer on a stage and you’re playing with these ideas. How does the performance end?”
In the studio, those questions become movement. The body becomes a place where ‘authentic’ and ‘artificial’ challenge each other; where the self is shaped, edited, performed, and perhaps sometimes lost.
“I hope people can relate to that sense of being lost and trying to find what is missing,” Trinity says. “I think we all have moments where we’re like, who am I?”
She hopes audiences will leave with curiosity rather than certainty.
“I think we all have an element of self-presentation,” she says. “Are we just playing this character? And why are we playing these characters?”
Simultaneous creative and professional development
As well as creating and performing the work itself, Trinity has been learning what it takes to self-produce: grant applications, budgets, collaborators, lighting, sound, marketing, planning, and the many invisible pieces that sit around the art.
“The New Zealand School of Dance is one of the highest levels of dance training in the southern hemisphere supporting the physical training and creativity of developing artists in New Zealand,” she says. “Since graduating from full-time training, it has been engaging to learn more about what goes into actually making a show. Learning how the whole production side of the show comes into play and having to step into the role yourself.”
That learning curve has been intense, but also very empowering.
“Sometimes you’re the producer yourself,” she says. “You’ll be in rehearsal and then suddenly you’re like, oh, I need to find a music designer.”
Footnote’s support has made that leap feel possible, providing support and guidance as well as connections where connections can be made. The process has also taught her to work realistically and sustainably.
Instead, the work has found its form through collaboration, resourcefulness, and clarity.
A festival with room to grow
The Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance brings together artists at many different stages of practice, from newer graduates to practitioners with more than a decade in the industry. For Trinity, that mix is part of the energy.
“You get this overwhelming sense that there are so many creative, amazing things going on.”
Trinity has been part of the festival since its first year in 2024; first through a friend’s residency, then her own, and now Trinity is proud to be a part of the performance programme. Watching this work grow has made her excited for what it could become.
A Person Shaped Thing arrives as both a debut and a beginning: a first full-length solo work, a launchpad for future development, and an invitation to look more closely at the selves we assemble for the world.
A Person Shaped Thing is presented as part of the Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance at The Hannah Playhouse – 2 July. Get your tickets here.