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DANZ QUARTERLY Issue No 12
No 12 – July, August September 2008
The Choreography of Rugby
By Raewyn Hill
New Zealand choreographer, Raewyn Hill, is currently Artist in Residence, School of Dance at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, and recently created a project linking dance and rugby, with support from both the New Zealand Consulate-General in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union. Reflecting on this project, issues of dance, rugby and national identity emerged for her.
I developed a dance work and photographic exhibition focusing on links between the athleticism and beauty of contemporary dance and rugby. Although the connection between dance and rugby seems unusual, for me the relationship is clear. When watching rugby I see an athletic dance played out on a big scale. At ‘full pace’, both dance and rugby appear as continuous action, however, when either discipline is captured in a still frame, there is time to examine an instant where players and dancers alike create remarkable arrangements of the human form.
The project used photographs taken of the Cathay Pacific/Credit Suisse Hong Kong Sevens 2007 as stimulus for choreography and foundation for the exhibition. Ten images of both dance and rugby, photographed by Hong Kong local Garrige Ho, were displayed in the foyer at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in the week prior to this year's Hong Kong Sevens, and the dance piece was performed as a unique event in conjunction with the exhibition opening.
From a dance perspective, this project was an opportunity to challenge stereotypes, which particularly here in Hong Kong, continue to exist around dance as being a domain of the feminine (or at least the traditional notion of femininity). I wasn’t wishing to ‘de-masculinise’ rugby – nor overtly recast contemporary dance as ‘butch’ – but instead to highlight the physicality evident in some dance, which may come as a surprise for audiences new to the art form.
By investigating rugby from an 'artistic' standpoint, there was an opportunity to highlight the beauty of movement demonstrated in the sport. Rugby is played with such power, style, skill and passion, backed up with fluid physical movements. The sort of dance that I like, and that I like to make is just as physically powerful, yet with the dancer providing an emotional input and concern for aesthetic form.
As well as examining both dance and rugby, my own sense of identity came under inspection during this project. Not just rugby was transplanted from its own ‘environment’ and re-examined within a new context, also my own relocation from New Zealand to Hong Kong came under personal scrutiny.
I feel more of a New Zealander in Hong Kong than I do at home – not just because I make up a minority – but in Hong Kong it is enough just to say ‘I am a New Zealander’. In New Zealand, conversely, I am constantly searching for my identity in everything that I do and everything that I am. I search for my identity within the work that I create for my own project-based company, Raewyn Hill and Dancers, justifying myself and my place at home, and feeling that although I am a 5th generation New Zealander somehow that is not enough.
Any New Zealand artist working overseas is an ambassador, not only for the country’s art, but also for the nation as a whole. Therefore, I am content that my identity as a New Zealander is intensified whilst here in Hong Kong. I believe this project, combining dance with rugby, which is such a significant part of our cultural fabric, resonated as a distinctive voice from a New Zealand artist in Hong Kong.
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