DANZ QUARTERLY No 4 June 2006
Reviews
Home, Land and Sea
Hamilton Gardens Summer Festival, Hamilton
17 February 2006
Reviewed by Sue Cheesman
Donn Ratana’s black and red PVC pipes of differing lengths were in sharp contrast to the trees framing the space almost like a backdrop. Seated on blankets enjoying picnics, we were hushed by the arrival of nine performers. Entitled Home, Land and Sea I pondered … the connection to the sea seemed tenuous for a performance set amongst the trees in Hamilton Gardens on a glorious summer evening.
A warrior approached from a distance wielding the taiaha, honoring the ground and the sky in slow sustained motion. Each performer had differing Maori designs on their faces, created by visual artist Cherie Waititi. The live sound of guitar and bong gong drum was mixed together with the constant traffic hum giving it a distant urban underlay.
Several reccurring motifs collected the dancers together in formations which seemed to anchor the dance to the surroundings. Bodies wrapped around each other in supporting structures produced some challenging moments for the performers. At other times the dancers retreated holding sculptural poses in the gaps connecting land to trees to PVC installation.
Simple manipulations of the bamboo poles drew attention to cross patterns, building the energy. Luscious hip movements, hands fluttering, sculptural shapes and movement motifs dissolved and reappeared sometimes framing a solo performer.
I was captured at points by the play of light and wind on the shimmering costumes of blue and green hues enhancing the movements and creating moments of aesthetic pleasure. The sun produced its own stunning light score as dancers moved in and out of shadow.
With a diversity of experience amongst the performers, the choreography worked to celebrate this difference, often with solo work. The return of the warrior to repeat his movements, closed the performance.
World of Grace
Michelle Powles, Titirangi Beach Hall, Auckland
26 March 2006
Reviewed by Dagmar Simon
An evening of readings, dance, photography and music – a winning experiment.
World of Grace was an inspiring evening of interdisciplinary work by Michele Powles.
Firstly a short film featured, the result of a choreographic work undertaken during Platform 2004 depicted the inter-relationship between three generations of women including close shots of feet, hands, water and crystal, put together with overlaying colours and New Zealand landscapes.
The main part of the event unravelled the stories of three women, recited live by different readers. These text were excerpts from a novel Michele is writing as part of a Masters degree. The first story was based on Mary Jane Bennett, a female lighthouse keeper in the 1850s. The second features Antoinette, a fictional immigrant who came to Aotearoa on a horrendous sea passage, and lastly there was Grace in contemporary Dunedin. They all struggled with feelings of loneliness, somehow lost in the world, but fighting on… and surviving.
The recited text was accompanied by music, photos or improvised movement, all created in response to it.
Sometimes two, at other times three of these elements happened simultaneously. The photos comprised stark images of rusty ocean liners, New Zealand landscapes and weather, and canned food. Gripping music by Charlotte Rose came and went, never overbearing. The improvised movement by Min Kyoung Lee, Miriam Marler, Clare Luiten and Rachel Atkinson was sometimes beautiful and supple, sometimes blunt and haunting, and sometimes so compelling that for moments it subsumed the text for me. Music, dance and text together seemed an overload at times, with the dancers occasionally picking up cues from the music.
World of Grace was a courageous experiment that was enjoyable to watch. It successfully evoked empathy for the women’s situation and their emotional struggle.
Also it had a distinctly ‘made in New Zealand’ feel it due to its emphasis on landscape, climate, water and isolation.
Experimental Night Owls Three
Late Night Choreographers, Auckland
February 2006
Reviewed by Sue Cheesman
The “Late Night Choreographers” format of providing a platform for experimental interdisciplinary work in different venues offers these night owls a multitude of possibilities and challenges. If one of the objectives is to give the opportunity for a wide diversity of individuals to showcase their work, then this is clearly evident in the LNC shows I have seen.
Alleluyah Arcade in K Road had its audience seated facing the large panoramic bay windows somewhat eclipsed by the Sky Tower striking its pose. However one of the re-occurring difficulties in some of the venues used is how do you utilise the space to best advantage and still have the audience see the entire dance, especially the floor work. This particular night the performance area did not shift; instead I moved several times in order to see.
The first performance was Suzanne Cowan’s Hestia, an interesting study for two dancers based on female Greek archetype personalities. Social dance vignettes bridged conversations between these two female heads – lioness, giant bird and wild child were glimpsed in the click of the fingers. A single prolonged sound and striking pose concluded these snapshots of “dancealogue” between goddesses. Who prevailed - joy or disaster?
Visible skin, black hair, vivid red costumes and slap rhythms all contributed to The TV and the drums and gave the performance a Pacific feel and Kapa Haka intensity. The movement vocabulary and structure of the dance strongly reflected choreographer Sachiko Miller’s background and training within Pacific dance forms. This piece journeyed far with undertones of Greek epics.
Flish in contrast was a solo performance created and danced by Kristin Carlson. She is a very accomplished performer with an articulacy that sculpted the space as she performed. The single light bulb and pointed finger motif returned frequently in different ways giving a quirky ambience. With a swing of the bulb, the light went out and the dancer fell, ending a night of different works with much to ruminate on.
Late Night Choreographers
4:20 Karangahape Rd, Auckland
March 2006
Reviewed by Briar Wilson
This was a new venue for LNC and it had a good vibe. It had a bar and tiered seating to see what was only just an adequately sized performance area, and there was a tingle of danger if you were sitting in the back row with a deep nothing behind you.
The first piece on the programme was Naressa Gamble’s Moving On. Arriving on stage with a large suitcase, it turned out that Gamble was a multiple bag lady. Dealing with these bags was more performance art than dance, with bags of all sorts being thrown around. From handbags to suitcases, we got the whole range. But one could not say this of the dance movement; that needed more development, as somehow it didn’t really hit home.
Julia Sadler was next with her pure dance piece Moth for three dancers -- and how well they danced. Clad in whitish-grey floaty garments, they made the most of the limited lighting options. The choreography for Geoff Gilson’s long rakey body was a good contrast to the duets for Tamsyn Russell and Sadler, whose choreography demonstrated an originality that was not forced, but was well developed and properly explored in a professional way.One would not say of this piece that it needed cutting – all of it was a real pleasure to watch.
The final piece was Snapshot - theatre, with text from Lexie Matheson and convincingly performed by Brooke Peterson. This was a monologue from a clever, fraught misfit who was playing around with telling different versions of the truth against a suggested background of misunderstanding, gender confusion, failure, drug taking, etc. One can only hope that if the protagonist was someone real, they have now moved on.
Here Lies Within by
Raewyn Hill
Opera House,
Wellington
5 May 2006
Reviewed by Jo Thorpe
Raewyn Hill is lucky to be able to choreograph on the Footnote dancers. These six professionals are strong, committed and prepared to take risks. Throughout their performance of In Time of Flight (a re-run of a three year-old work) and Hill’s new Here Lies Within, their near-faultless dancing gives full expression to the choreographer’s intent. They leap and fall, spiral and writhe, speak and act, are still or frenetic, stiff or plastique as the choreography requires. And the company now in its 21st year, has built a loyal, nationwide audience.
Here Lies Within uses twelve pieces of NZ music to help examine the beauty myth a la Naomi Woolf. Hill’s programme notes insist that ‘society is blinded by the idolisation of physical perfection’ (though I’m not convinced that society per se is blinded. The media may be obsessed with the images it chooses to project, but there are multitudes of women out there who are more discerning).
Building on her 2005 piece The Ugly Duckling, Hill’s new work opens with Po Atarau’s Now is the Hour, inviting us to think - the hour for what? Women in white slips and men in flesh-coloured jockeys are lifted in turn onto the hands of the other dancers and carried forward and through a moving frieze of bodies before being placed down like mannequins in an illuminated shop window. This motif is repeated over and over again, suggesting an assembly line or conveyor belt - at the end of which? Manufactured beauty.
All the tools of the cosmetic industry are here - the high heels, corsets, hair driers, bottom moulders, razors, shaving creams, suggestively inflated balloons, smeared lipstick, the little black dress, and of course the fashion parade. Strutting the catwalk are Mr Penis Augmentation, Miss Cheek Implantment, Miss Vaginaplasty (you get the drift...) accompanied by voice-over details of the perceived benefits and number of surgery hours required to complete each operation. (The quotes are apparently taken from a book by Virginia Blum whose name just has to be a pseudonym.). It culminates in a duet of frenetic physicality in which all body parts are punched and pummelled as the music builds to a shrill drilling. Enter the ugly duckling - now new swan (Halina Wolyncewicz) who rolls on the floor and arches into a glorious backbend, the epitome of the organic ‘natural’ beauty Hill wants us to admire.
So far so good. But Hill has a tendancy to repeat successful movement phrases. I have no problem with recurring motifs when they are used to good effect, but by the end of this one-hour work I had seen the ugly duckling put her hands to her chest, unfold her arms like wings and fall into a deep lunge a few too many times.
But the dancing always impresses. Halina Wolyncewicz and Sarah Knox have beautiful fluidity and expression. Andrew Rush and Lance Riley excel in characterisation - and in providing well-timed, convincing sound effects. In Front Lawn’s How You Doing, Riley’s Moses Pendalton-type looseness is in perfect sync with the music (though I was puzzled that a song featuring two men has Riley dancing round a kind of wedding-cake doll) and his seamless exits and entrances make for a humorous and memorable performance. Hannah Stannard convinces in all her roles, and Anita Hunziker is required to read aloud the complete Ugly Duckling story - though at times this is difficult to hear.
In Beautiful Lady a woman smeared with lashings of lipstick hooks up with a lascivious male who’s been lurking at the edge of the dance floor. As if to suggest big-breasted women have all the fun, her huge balloon breasts are willingly subjected to exaggerated kisses, caresses and tweaks.
In the slick jazzercise scene, the dancers seem to enjoy not having to go to uncomfortable places - as they must in the Gareth Farr piece in which the ‘sexpot’ is raped and degraded. Or the bulimia scene with its endless trays of pink lamingtons and a dominating force-feeding male. Disturbing at first, this scene goes on too long. Indeed, I often feel during the course of the evening that the choreography continues or repeats simply to fill in time until a particular track has ended.
Lilburn’s Canzona for Strings 1 and 2 accompanies the (for me) somewhat flat finale. With its acrobatic lifts and falls and a recognisable movement motif from Hill’s previous works, the repetitive choreography suggests - as it does in the beginning - a treadmill of constructed images.
According to the programme, Here Lies Within was created over four weeks. Given more time and some judicious shaping, this work could provide a more satisfying night of dance than the one I saw premiered.
Dance at the Wellington Fringe
February – March 2006
Reviewed by Lyne Pringle and Tania Kopytko
Some thoughts...
There is a sweetness to Java Dance Company that can sometimes get in the way of this company’s dedication to presenting dance work that is full of vigor and energy. They are a tight ensemble – evidence of the commitment they have made to working together. In Snapshots they dance their way through a stylish evocation of era’s gone by: There are some strong choreographic moments; a solo by Sacha Copland with an ironing board, a clever blues trio, innovative use of a kitchen table and a solo with rubber gloves but generally the piece lacked depth. It is something this group of women are capable of but are yet to discover - the potency of content.
Kilda Northcott’s ‘Youth Dance Company’ is a misnomer if you look at the majority of people involved but if ‘youth’ is interpreted as a young and open heart then this name works for the company and their offering to the Fringe: Sweets 1,2,3 was just that.
Helen Leckie spoke about New Dance Group – and showed film recordings of that group from 1946 & 1948. New Dance Group ceased once Philip Smithells moved to Dunedin - to shape the lives of so many of today’s venerated dance practitioners. Then Sue Patterson and Paul Jenden evoked more eras gone by in their recollections of life in Limbs and Impulse in an afternoon event organised by the National Dance Archive – a fantastic initiative to make history live. Impulse preceded Limbs in the mid 70s but died before Limbs in the 80s. Impulse was from Wellington and more intellectual and content driven than Limbs who had sexier unitards and more charisma and found their way to longer more content focused works, exquisitely danced, before they folded. They were both ground breaking companies. It was a special occasion, celebrating these pioneers.
We were shoulder to shoulder in the Footnote studio for Perforum where the mechanics of creating dance are demystified. Personally I love this kind of performance in the rawness of a studio where you are right in there with the sweat of the dancer, the squeak of their foot-tape on the floor, the Director of the company on the floor working the cd player and the choreographer - in this case the fabulously generous Jeremy Nelson - leaning on the bars looking nervous as the dancers navigate their way through a dance only completed that morning. There is an immediacy and humanness here that somehow gets lost in a ‘theatre’.
--Lyne Pringle
Emporium by Corrupt productions was performed in true fringe style – the shop window of Clothes retailer Rex Royale. There is a lot of material which can be explored in “consumerism” and this work could be developed further, however the audiences gathered outside enjoyed the fusion of dance, music, singing and fashion props.
Unsolved crimes of Art Part 1 by Alexa Wilson was performed at the BlueNote bar in Cuba Mall. A provocative work in an unusual but suitable setting, included a satirical take on dance funding. It was well performed, though a little long, coming second in the Fringe dance section with Java Dance. Anja Packham taking best dancer within the Fringe best performer category.
The Life of Eileen straddled theatre, trapeze and dance and was given credit in the fringe theatre category, however it was a well conceived piece based on the performer – Eileen Strindberg great grandmother’s difficult life story, with the movement well integrated in the narrative.
Lingering Still by Strident Dance company - Claire Martin, Carrie McLauglin and Justine Cooper who choreograph collaboratively, was described as a dance installation. The dance studio at the Wellington Arts Centre with white plaster walls, alcoves and shelf were used well with the movement and projected etched images by Gabby O’Conner. Dialogue, sound, visual arts and beautifully choreographed dance, integrated seamlessly to tell the stories of the characters who recounted their life’s dreams and missed opportunities. Strident deservedly won the best dance section of the Fringe Festival.
ILLUSION PALACE Chapter One -
Wilhemeena Gordon and Co
Maidment Studio Theatre, Auckland
31 March 2006
Reviewed by Briar Wilson
Enticing pre-show marketing did not lead to disappointment! The audience was greeted in the lobby by the busty epitome of sexy red and blackness - The Ringmaster in fishnet tights - and viewed onstage, a large person-sized birdcage. Indications of the sex and surreality to come.
The visuals read “Once upon a time in the desperate kingdom of love…” but the story did not end in this show. This was Chapter One, and a sequel will be based on ideas from the audience as to how the story should end.
Gordon’s feat as director, producer and choreographer was no mean one.
As director she pulled together contrasting ideas and many talents so that the stage was never dead and a lot happened. She is to be congratulated for producing a show that did not look low budget, and also for the delightful many paged programme that did not cost an arm and a leg to buy.
As choreographer, Gordon used twenty dancers sympathetically, drawing out their talents in allowing each to make the basic movement pattern their own; she achieved effects by harmony and not by a drilled sameness. Experienced in butoh, she is not afraid to wait for things to unfold.
This flow of movement came within a light-hearted framework of fantasy, a “sexy, gothic fairy tale” - the surreal spiced with sexual references. The Grand Evil Queen called for her “precious pretty pussies” – the Dancing Princesses, and then for her “boys” - the Unicorn Riding Wolfmen. There were pussies in the birdcage, and a very real gorging on cream buns that was hard to watch.
The serious part of this journey was undertaken by the character, Lost, danced beautifully by Miriam Marler, and it may well be that it is her fate that will be determined by the audience response.
Book Review: Terra Incognito by Douglas Wright (Penguin, 2006)
Reviewed by Jennifer Shennan
Penguin Books report that sales of Terra Incognito are doing extremely well - and they are looking forward to displaying it at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. Fingers are no doubt crossed that the rumoured interest of a European agent to tour the production of Black Milk ( to which Terra Incognito is the programme essay) to Europe will come to fruition.
The choreographic process is well documented in several books - I think of The Choreographic Art by Peggy van Praagh and Peter Brinson as a mighty achievement. Some choreographers produce essays for printed programmes that have a life longer than the season in question - I think of John Neumeier’s work at Hamburg Ballet, and treasure his programmes (cost four euros) – as exquisite models of what every company could aspire to but few bother to do. In the absence of notated scores, such programmes are as close as one gets to primary documentation of dance, and it always astonishes me that the genre is so unstable.
Terra Incognito is a remarkable and troubling document of dance-making, yet also worth reading as autobiography. Wright charts the course of his precarious health across some two years, offering glimpses of our society unlikely to be found elsewhere. Once over the worst of his health crisis, you can sense the inevitable urge in Wright to choreograph his experience, not as an escape from boredom but rather an inevitable pull as the moon controls ocean tides. Read it and be glad that, despite its rocky ride, a New Zealander in your lifetime can offer these insights into his choreographic process.
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