Dancer and choreographer Michael Parmenter is one of six recipients of The University of Auckland’s Distinguished Alumni Awards for 2010.

The awards are for graduates who have made outstanding contributions to their professions, their communities and the nation.

Associate Professor Ralph Buck, Head of The University of Auckland's Dance Studies Programme, says "This award is indicative of the respect that the wider community has for Michael’s choreography. The Dance Studies Programme is very proud of Michael and delighted that The University of Auckland recognises his dance achievements with such esteem.”

Michael’s international career spans nearly 30 years. He has performed with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company and Stephen Petronio and Dancers in New York, Compagnie Ljada in Switzerland, and a variety of companies through Australia and New Zealand. 

His choreography ranges from innovative solo works to large-scale opera-house productions, in New Zealand and internationally. He has choreographed works for the Footnote Dance Company and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, collaborating with acclaimed New Zealand composers.

He graduated from the University with a Master of Creative and Performing Arts with first class honours, focusing his research on the phenomenology of movement. He is currently undertaking his doctoral study conjointly at Auckland and the University of Paris 1, Sorbonne.

Michael has received numerous prestigious awards and scholarships, and is a renowned teacher and public speaker.

He and five others will be presented with their Distinguished Alumni Awards in Auckland at gala dinner on 5 March.  

On 6 March he will address the University’s Distinguished Alumni Speaker Day (12noon-1pm, Owen G. Glenn Building, 12 Grafton Road). 

In a presentation on “Gestures of aliveness” he will discuss his change in focus from choreography to theoretical research. He will explain how the particular area of his current investigation — the relation between the phenomenon of life and dance practice — seems to provide a key to a more fundamental relation between personal experience and the larger world.