Rua is a double bill of contemporary dance, the first rooted in ancestral landscapes and ritual, the second a surreal fluid dreamscape.
The New Zealand Dance Company and their contribution to this years Tempo Dance Festival Te Rerenga O Tere 2024.
In Transit
Choreographer Louise Potiki Bryant has toured this around the world to some acclaim since 2015.
The stage has a solitary male to begin, close to naked with flesh coloured underwear. Balancing a long stick on his head and holds this prolonged pose. It could well be hovering above his head.
The full ensemble form themselves into a cohesive group after first gracefully racing around the large stage.
Bianca Hyslop, Brydie Colquhoun, Eddie Elliot, ‘Isope Akau’ola, Jeremy Beck, Katie Rudd.
The sticks could be weapons, but they are too long and slender. They invoke a spirit force of their own as the sit balanced on still bodies.
Only in one aspect, as balance requires the constant movement and adjustment of muscles, joints, limbs and spatial position.
This energy exists whether in motion or in suspended animation.
Two male figures come together in an intertwined dance. Constant and kinetic movement with grace.
Contrast with a solitary dancer. Gradually all the others place their sticks across his limbs, head and torso. He needs to alter position to accommodate each one whilst conveying the image of stillness.
This is what the wood element imposes. Energy is in constant flux with matter.
Ancient Māori mythology is centred on the separation of Ranginui (sky father) and Papatuanuku (earth mother) by Tane, the god of forests.
Matter
Choreographer and set designer Ross McCormack.
The same dance troupe with the addition of Aleeya McFadyen and Aylin Atalay.
Five large metal totems across the stage. They could be as mundane as streetlights without a lamp. Their presence suggests monoliths channelling energy.
The dim lighting and the motionless presence of a dancer at their base, as if hypnotised, invokes the spooky atmosphere of Paranormal Activity.
The original movie was a masterclass in post-Hitchcock minimalism and suspense. The less you see the greater the foreboding and almost unbearable tension.
We are blasted into the abyss by short and extreme blasts of low register noise. A monster machine, or the security agencies trying to blast out a cult community.
From attracting one, they attract a group.
Some ascend and take up the position of a crucifix. For a moment the image of a ritualised lynching flashes up. A sacrifice would possibly be more accurate.
The dance breaches the stage, and a player escapes out of the artificial world (The Truman Show) and makes her way up the seats. Only to be drawn back by the consciousness of the dancers. Ends up the pole again.
At one stage, the totems come down and a dancer wears them like huge artificial levers. We are in the logic of dream.
A dance of the totems. The publicity photo of a dancer supporting a pole on an angle, references the iconic raising the American flag at Iwo Jima. Itself a staged event.
The image has resurfaced again in the (now) infamous captured photo of a bleeding Trump and the secret service surrounding him.
In Rua by the New Zealand Dance Company, we watched two masterful and compelling dance performances.
Rev. Orange Peel