KEY POINTS:
Michael Parmenter's first new work in a decade opened in Wellington last week and he is a little puzzled by the response.
"The critics seem to be responding to individual dancers, rather than the work itself," he says. "So there is a lot of 'this bit was nice' and 'that bit went on too long'. But nothing on the work as a whole."
He doesn't want to sound grumpy but it's clear he would like more feedback on the work overall and how it fits with his back catalogue.
"One of the most frustrating things with dance in New Zealand is that we don't have a tradition of viewing works more than once. People don't tend to go back and see a work again and so they only have an hour and a half to get their heads around the work."
When he lived in New York, he would see his favourite choreographers' works again and again but it is not the done thing in this country. Parmenter adds that the ephemeral nature of the art form is compounded by the fact there are no repertory dance companies regularly performing choreographers' works.
"Of course the upside to that is there are plenty of exciting young companies who are doing very entrepreneurial things but it would be great to have both. At the moment, we are losing the brightest and best dancers and choreographers to Australia and Europe. They have to leave because they have to go where the regular work is."
Given this economic reality and that even established choreographers have to invest significant time and cost into creating contemporary dance, Parmenter says it is sometimes easy to think it's not worthwhile creating new works. "Oh dear, I am sounding like a grumpy old man after all."
With Douglas Wright and Neil Ieremia, Parmenter has a reputation for being a passionate protagonist for athletic modern dance that includes lots of contact partnering, floor work, and explosive, often brutal, sequences.
He understands people grouping the three together because he agrees there is a energetic boysiness to all their work but he points out that they each have "very different voices" and that there is extraordinary work being done by female choreographers.
In the past, all three have had reputations for being intense taskmasters.
Parmenter says it was probably fair in his case but with Tent he was looking for a new way of working.
"I don't want to reject my previous works but I don't feel I have to prove myself as a choreographer any more. With my master's studies I have been looking at a new way of working that is not about imposing your movements on a dancer."
By working with each dancer's movements and allowing improvisation, he says the process has been more enjoyable and relaxed than it would normally be. He thinks the finished piece has "a looser palate" and more moments of "articulate and delicate dance" than previous works but is adamant it is still recognisable as a Parmenter piece.
"The key idea behind the piece is the idea of a tent being a metaphor for the body. It's about the fragility of the structure and its exposure to wind and rain and the elements. The body is also fragile and exposed to the world. So this piece is also about our bodies and how they traffic us through the corporeal world and how we relate to other bodies."
He says these themes of community, fragility and our bodies run through all his works along with an intensity of movement. Tent features eight dancers and while there are tender and delicate moments, Parmenter says it is an intense piece that requires much from the dancers who perform for the entire hour and a half.
Dancing in Tent are former Parmenter collaborators Craig Bary and Claire Lissaman who join Victoria Colombus, So You Think You Can Dance runner-up Justin Haiu, Sarah Foster, Moss Patterson (Black Grace, Atamira), Destiny Stein and Christopher Tandy from the British company, Diversions.
Parmenter's new techniques have seen the dancers working together with one as a provocateur and the other responding. The movements are filmed, then join a "library" of movements that feed into the work. A behind-the-scenes film is on www.tentdanceproject.com and the process was supported by a Creative New Zealand Choreographic Fellowship.
Performance
What: Tent by Michael Parmenter
Where and when: Maidment Theatre, Oct 13-18, 8pm; Oct 19 at 6pm
On the web: www.tentdanceproject.com
