Meryl Tankard: ‘Shanghai feels like living in the future’

Born in Darwin, Australia, in 1955, Meryl Tankard began her career at the Australian Ballet in the mid-1970s. She was a principal dancer with Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal between 1978 and 1984, then formed her own eponymous company and was later director of the Australian Dance Theatre. Her notable works include Two Feet and Furioso. Now she’s re-engaging with Bausch’s Kontakthof, and nine of its original dancers, in Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78, which she brings to Sadler’s Wells for its UK premiere, 7-11 April.



Shanghai

I went to Shanghai for the first time after [the 1989 protests in] Tiananmen Square, when it was all bicycles. I returned eight years ago and was there again last November. Now it is so exciting, so vibrant. I got a train there from Beijing that goes 350km/h. The theatre we performed in for the Shanghai arts festival was brand new with 1,400 seats, and it’s only for dance. Can you believe that? We had a packed audience, and they were young and so cool. The city is quiet, with all electric cars and pink bougainvillea growing on the freeway. The food is incredible. It feels like living in the future.

Pillion (Harry Lighton, 2025)

This is so good. It’s very rare that you go to a film and you’re actually surprised. Harry Melling plays a really shy English guy who gets picked up by Alexander Skarsgård in a bar and is introduced to the world of queer bike culture and BDSM. Both actors looked like they were having so much fun in their roles – Alexander plays the dom, Harry the sub. It’s hilarious, but at the same time sad. And it was meticulously done: it’s the director’s first feature and every shot was perfect. So you have this crazy story, but it has a really beautiful, sensitive quality. That was very enjoyable.

Lacrima

I just saw this show by writer-director Caroline Guiela Nguyen at the Sydney festival and was totally riveted, despite not having a great seat. It’s all about a wedding dress that’s being made for a British princess – 200 metres long with 150,000 individually sewn pearls. There’s a video on stage connecting between Paris, London, Normandy and Mumbai. You see the exploitation at work – the poor embroiderer in India is going blind because of his job – and their commitment to make this dress that will only be worn for 20 minutes. It was like a modern-day fairytale. The three hours flew by.

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

I just finished Roy’s memoir. It’s about her mother, who was so mean to her. Roy says she left her emotionally bruised for a lifetime. But without her mother she would never have become the writer she is. Her mother was a wild character, a radical feminist who left her husband and started a school in Kerala. She fought for women in her community to get the right to inheritance. Roy’s writing is so clear and intimate, you can’t put the book down. I loved it, and boy, she’s a courageous and inspiring woman.

Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses (Rotterdam)

We were touring in the Netherlands recently and I saw this exhibition at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. Iris van Herpen was a dancer before she became a fashion designer and you can see some of that influence in all the 3D sculpting she does. She makes the most incredible clothes, all this sheer fabric twisted like underwater sea creatures. What I love is the combination of the handwork required and the really sophisticated technology that she uses. It was pretty mind-blowing. I could have spent the whole day there.

Moon, Sydney

This is a Thai-European fusion restaurant in Sydney where I had a meal like no other. The chef was inspired by looking in amazement at the moon when he was a child in Bangkok, and that’s what he wants people to feel when they eat his food. And I must say, his steamed egg custard with tom yum broth looks like a planet when it arrives – all this steam comes out when it bursts. Every meal was like a little landscape – one of the desserts I had was like a forest with snow and moss. The restaurant itself is very small and quite unknown – it’s a little bit of a secret. But the food is amazing.

Photographs by Alamy, Jean-Louis Fernandez, Luigi & Iango, Restaurant Moon

Portrait courtesy Sadlers Wells