Taiaroa Royal

Taiaroa Royal is a New Zealand dancer and choreographer. Royal co-founded the contemporary Māori dance company Okareka with Taane Mete. As a dancer he has performed with New Zealand companies the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Douglas Wright Dance Company, Atamiria and Black Grace. He has choreographed contemporary dance and also music videos including for Evermore and Ardijah, and for the World of Wearable Art (WOW) in Wellington. He is a 2023 recipient of an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award.

Early life and education Royal identifies with the iwi Te Arawa of the Rotorua and Bay of Plenty regions, Ngāti Raukawa, Uenukopako and Kāi Tahu of the South Island. As a teenager at age 15 he won a disco dancing competition in the Bay of Plenty.

Royal is a graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance, finishing in 1984.

He has choreographed operas for New Zealand Opera.

Awards In 2008, Tama Ma, produced and danced by Royal and Taane Mete, won four Tempo Dance Festival awards including ‘Spirit of the Festival’, and was also voted ‘Best Dance’ by Metro Magazine's "Best In Auckland".

In 2017, Royal was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to travel to Cincinnati, to undertake choreographic research with Exhale Dance Tribe to start developing a united choreographic language and voice. In 2023, he received an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award.