Feet First - On the road with Footnote Dance
By Deirdre Tarrant

Footnote Dance is one of the busiest arts organisations in the country with a regular annual touring schedule that takes them from Warkworth to Winton performing for audiences in theatres, communities and schools.

The cultural return to the identity of New Zealand from the relatively small CNZ investment of $200,000 is incalculable. The dancers of Footnote are not only excellent dancers but also have the skills and intellectual interest and ability to be fully integrated into the developmental process of choreography. Job stability and professional security are optimum goals internationally for all dancers and a very small number of the thousands of graduating students from a myriad of tertiary programmes actually get work and can say that they are working professionally in the industry.

In NZ there has been a funding and life style leaning towards project dance works but the downside means that the talent and energy that is there in young highly trained dancers often dissipates in an environment that relies on self-generated dance projects.

Time spent consolidating your craft and learning the skills of the workplace are important in order to build a career and to have an ongoing sense of personal worth.

Audience development is one of the key factors in finding ways to engage the community in the arts. Participation and information are key parts of any strategy to develop audiences and Footnote provides both throughout the country. Choreolab is a three-week series of master classes and workshops that focus on exploration of both technique and imagination used in choreography.

Perforum and Watch this Space - Maatakitakihia Mai Tenei Waahi have both been really successful initiatives in terms of facilitating dialogue and taking NZ dance to a different audience in gallery venues already associated with pushing boundaries and defining our cultural identity.

All the Footnote works are made by New Zealand choreographers, most use NZ music and all are a vehicle for the voice of their choreographers. Footnote CDs of New Zealand music are two of the best music resources available for dance teachers.

This year the repertoire programme has included works by Moss Patterson (Te Ngaru), Guy Ryan (Trio for three Penguins), Katharina Waldner (Slip) and Katie Burton (to look for as due proper or necessary). More substantial choreographies this year were Raewyn Hill's Forgotten and Amanda Miller's India's Army.

2004 has been particularly interesting in terms of audience reaction. Reviewers have all been positive with personal views well articulated and feedback from the dance community has been fascinating. The tall poppy syndrome is alive and well and the Kiwi innate defensiveness also.

Choreographer Amanda Miller came here with the generous support of the Goethe Institut and as a founder member of the Frankfurt Ballet and director of the prestigious Pretty Ugly Co in Germany. Her Choreolab for the company promised and delivered an experience very different from the way any of the New Zealanders worked. Her choreography had excellent reviews but industry feedback showed polarised opinion from rave to revolting. But it has been good to have contemporary dance here in NZ pitched against such an international and outside influence.

Dancing in an ‘island paradise' gives us a fascinating diversity of context but there is the danger of an introverted and self selected style and the Goethe partnership has served us well to force another look at what and who is making NZ dance. Art needs to set challenges, and India's Army did just that, physically, mentally and in its development and presentation. It created much comment.

At the other end of the reception scale has been Moss Patterson's Te Ngaru. Not a negative to be heard, urban, rural, sophisticate or student - this has been a stand out. The cultural interface and kowhaiwhai inspiration, the Golden Bay music, the gorgeous costumes (contemporary dance doesn't always have to be done in men's undies!) and the soaring energy and lines of this work have gathered praise wherever it has been danced. Te Ngaru has struck a chord everywhere as reflecting what we like to think we are all about.

Hill's work Forgotten provides beauty and questions our own perceptions. Compelling and curious have been constant reactions, but this is a city dance and did not strike the same chords in the country.

Burton's work for 2004 provoked strongly negative response and irritation from many, particularly where there was opportunity for discussion. It also was favourably reviewed and clearly hit home with some. Her exploration of stillness was particularly difficult for non ‘dance' audiences and students to deal with and unrest was often the order of the day.

Waldner's Slip amused and entertained and generated much opinion and discussion. Students loved it from the littlies who adored the paper bags and Halina's escape moves, to serious dance fanatics like RNZB General Manager, Sue Patterson, who found the vocabulary new, interesting and quirky.

Ryan's Trio for Three Penguins (an irritating tautology that teachers commented on all over the country) was light and easy. One of our best school letters came from John A. at Carterton School who wrote, "The funny part was the ‘penguin dance' and it was my favourite part. (But I was waiting for a chippie packet to come out with a bluebird on it)"

Highlights of touring this year were the West Coast where Paul Maunder coordinated a week of visits for West Coast REAP and also the fabulous snow in Queenstown as both Erynne and Lance had never been on the mountain in the snow before.

Climbing Mt Taranaki after performing at Ohakune was a wet and wonderful bush treat, as was dinner with friends Gill and Chris in Nelson where on a rare night off we sat down to a veritable feast of seafood! Having actor Edwin Wright in Forgotten was a treat too.

Worst moments included ‘those crinolines' in Auckland where opening night was a costume nightmare, excess baggage fees in the South Island where costumes and woollies weighed way too much! Four beds and five dancers at WOW made for some caring, sharing moments and driving in the van to reach some wonderful country schools was lovely but fairly fraught at times as the roads were seemingly endless!

The innovative programmes that the company offers in schools throughout New Zealand have been hugely popular and the kinetic learning provided by dance enhances and adds to every performance we do for students. My Stone - Paper - Scissors was the theme of this year's school programme and thousands of students have watched, wondered and had-ago at the dance activities that can be developed from this choreography.

Skills and composition structures have been tried out and mastered with contexts for study covering everything from 20th Century inventions to the Olympics. One of the magic aspects of a Footnote visit to a school is the interface with these talented dancers in a face-to-face situation.

Facilitating dance experiences is their personal passion. As well, they are performers who create the stage magic and provide the students with an experience of contemporary dance.

Footnote is a company that takes being professional in all areas of its delivery very seriously and it also provides one of the few opportunities for full-time employment in dance in the country. Places are at a premium and as well as developing new work and maintaining an excellent technical standard, travelling and meeting a wide range of new people in the arts and in schools is a special feature of being a Footnote dancer.

The dancers for 2004 were Debbie Fulford, Halina Wolyncewicz, Erynne Gleeson, Hannah Stannard and Lance Riley. Their training is extensive and includes tertiary qualifications from the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington and the International Ballet Academy in Christchurch.

Many of our leading dance artists have spent time in Footnote and Hill, Patterson, and Ryan are former members of the company. This company should be one of New Zealand's most treasured arts resources as the only company fully committed to developing and presenting a repertoire of New Zealand made dance and music.

Footnote is nurturing a generation of young learners who are equipped and confident to use their minds and bodies and who can be adventurous and creative as they problem solve within their own dance experiences and see the very best that the country offers. This is a real outcome for Footnote and its large and diverse audiences.

They dance through the country north to south and east to west with their performances and education programmes that all have a unifying theme, to focus on process, progress and production and to excite using the art form of contemporary dance!

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