Douglas Wright is an openly gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 dancer and choreographer in the New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 arts establishment from 1980 until his retirement from dance in 2008 on the occasion of the publication of his first book of poetry, Laughing Mirror (see below).

Wright was born in Tuakau

Tuakau

Tuakau is a town in the Franklin district, and is part of the Waikato Region in the North Island of New Zealand.The town serves to support local farming, and is the residence of many employees of New Zealand Steel at Glenbrook....

, South Auckland in 1956.
From 1980 - 1983 he danced with Limbs Dance Company

Limbs Dance Company

Limbs Dance Company was established in Auckland, New Zealand in 1978, emerging from a lively whirl of artistic and cultural activities in the country's largest and most multicultural city...

 and choreographed a number of works on the company before travelling to New York where he danced with the Paul Taylor Company, 1983–1987 and London with DV8 Physical Theatre

DV8 Physical Theatre

DV8 Physical Theatre is a dance company based at Artsadmin in London, UK. It was founded in 1986 by an independent collective of chiefly modern dancers. It is led by Lloyd Newson, whose intent has been to have a different approach to most contemporary dance than other existing companies...

, 1988. Returning to New Zealand in 1989, he formed the Douglas Wright Dance Company, with which he created more than 30 major works, touring New Zealand, Australia and Europe. Reviews of many of his dance works can be found in Sidestep, the archive of New Zealand dance writing.
In 2003 Wright was the subject of an award-winning feature-length documentary film, Haunting Douglas, directed by Leanne Pooley

Leanne Pooley

Leanne Pooley was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, she immigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1980s and began working in the New Zealand television industry....

 for Spacific Films.

He has written two volumes of semi-fiction/semi-autobiography, Ghost Dance (Penguin, 2004 - Montana Awards Best First Book of Non-Fiction, 2004) and Terra Incognito (2006), also hosted an inaugural one-man exhibition of his paintings and multimedia sculptures, and in October 2007 a poetry collection, Laughing Mirror was published by Steele Roberts. With the launch of Laughing Mirror, Wright announced his retirement from dance. Subsequently, during 2010 he workshopped material towards a new major group work commissioned for Auckland Festival 2011, which premiered on 16 March 2011 at The Civic Theatre as rapt.

Choreographic Works

• 1981 - Back Street Primary (poetry, J Frame; mus. Talking Heads), Limbs Dance Company, Auckland
• 1982 - Late Afternoon of a Faun or Thrilled to Bits (solo, after Nijinsky; mus. Debussy), Limbs Dance Company, Auckland
• 1982 - Baby Go Boom (mus. Holiday. Armstrong, Farnell), Limbs Dance Company, Auckland
• 1982 - Kneedance (mus. Anderson), Limbs Dance Company, Auckland
• 1982 - Walking On Thin Ice (mus. Ono), Limbs Dance Company, Auckland
• 1982 - Aurora Borealis (mus. Ono, Anderson, Hagen), Limbs Dance Company, Auckland
• 1983 - Land of a Thousand Dances
  Land of a Thousand Dances
  "Land of a Thousand Dances" is a song written and first recorded by Chris Kenner in 1962. The song is famous for its "na na na na na" hook, which was added by Cannibal & the Headhunters in their version of the song in 1965, whose version peaked at number thirty...
  
  (mus. Small, Pickett), Limbs Dance Company, Auckland
• 1983 - Sorry to have Missed You (mus. Tartini), Royal New Zealand Ballet, New Moves, Wellington
• 1983 - Ranterstantrum (mus. Branca), Limbs Dance Company, Auckland
• 1983 - Dog Dance (solo; mus. Cage), Douglas Wright, New York
• 1984 - Threnody (solo; mus. Penderecki), Douglas Wright, Auckland
• 1984 - It's Not Unusual (mus. Tom Jones), Douglas Wright and Brian Carbee, Auckland
• 1984 - Cubist Cowboy Shootout (with Brian Carbee; mus. various), Auckland
• 1985 - Halcyon (mus. Vivaldi), Limbs Dance Company, Whangarei
• 1986 - Parallel (mus. Busby), for two gymnasts, New York
• 1987 - Hey Paris (mus. Ayler, Hirt, Nancarrow), Douglas Wright and Dancers, New York
• 1987 - Quartet (mus. Vivaldi), Douglas Wright and Dancers, New York
• 1987 - Faun Variations (solo; mus. Ravel), Paul Taylor Company, City Centre, New York
• 1988 - Now is the Hour (mus. McGlashan and various), Limbs Dance Company, New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, Wellington
• 1988 - Aria (solo, text Dostoevsky), MJ O'Reilly, Auckland
• 1989 - How On Earth (mus. various), Douglas Wright Dance Company, Auckland
• 1989 - a far Cry (mus. Bartok), Australian Dance Theatre, Adelaide
• 1990 - Passion Play: A New Dance (with Kilda Northcott), Wellington
• 1990 - Gloria (mus. Vivaldi), Douglas Wright Dance Company, Wellington
• 1990 - I Am A Dancer/Gloria (documentary film/dance, dir. Bollinger/ Oomen), Top Shelf Productions, TV1 national television broadcast, Sunday Arts
• 1991 - As It Is (mus. Bartok, Laird), Douglas Wright Dance Company, Auckland
• 1992 - Beethoven (mus. Beethoven and the Shangri-Las), graduating students of the Performing Arts School, Auckland
• 1992 - The Decay of Lying (text, Wilde; mus. Lully), The Royal New Zealand Ballet, Wellington
• 1992 - Elegy for Jim, Leigh and Bayly (solo, mus. Wilson), Artzaid Benefit, Wellington
• 1993 - Forever (mus. various; film Graves; design Pearce), Douglas Wright Dance Company, Auckland
• 1993 - Elegy for Jim, Leigh and Bayly (dance film; dir. Graves), New Zealand International Film Festival, Wellington
• 1994 - As It Is - A Fragment (for television broadcast, dir. Graves mus. Bartok, Laird), Dance and the Camera, Television New Zealand, national broadcast, TV1 Work of Art
• 1995 Forever (dance film co-directed with Chris Graves), TV1 national television broadcast, Work of Art
• 1996 - Ore (solo), Next Wave Festival, Auckland
• 1996 - Ore (dance film; co-directed with Chris Graves), International Film Festival, Wellington
• 1996 - Buried Venus (mus. Farr and various; design, Pearce), Douglas Wright Dance Company, New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, Wellington
• 1996 - Aida (directed by Wright), Victorian State Opera, Melbourne
• 1997 - Forbidden Memories (a work for theatre based on a novel by James Purdy with design by John Verryt), Auckland
• 1997 - Cunning Little Vixen (directed by Wright), Opera Australia, Sydney
• 1997 - Rose and Fell (mus. Part, Gubaidulina, Mussorgsky), The Royal New Zealand Ballet, Wellington
• 2002 - Inland New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, Wellington and national tour (mus Juliet Palmer, video Florian Habicht, costumes Tanya Carlson, text Douglas Wright and Peta Rutter, design John Verryt )
• 2006 - Black Milk (mus. David Long, design and costumes Michael Pearce, lighting Robert Ghesquiere, text and banners Douglas Wright )
• 2007 - Tama ma duet commissioned by Taane Mete and Taiaroa Royal as the second of five sections comprising a larger work of the same name which premiered in the Concert Chamber, Auckland Town Hall, October 2008, subsequently toured New Zealand, and began international touring commitments in 2010.
• 2007 - a small dance for the children's theatre work Rumplestiltskin (Phineas Phrog Productions)
• 2007 - He then choreographed a dance especially for his niece Sarah
• 2011 - rapt - commissioned by Auckland Festival