Atamira Dance Company's's beautifully crafted new Te Houhi - The People and the Land are One draws on intricately connected layers of dance, video imagery and narrated text to share poignant ancestral stories from dancer and choreographer Maaka Pepene's Ngai Tuhoe lineage.
Pepene himself is downstage right throughout proceedings, an intriguing, shamanistic figure who appears to morph through a series of leadership roles - tohunga, priest, military leader, peacemaker - along with being the choreographer's grandfather, and the ancestor for whom the wharenui, Te Houhi is named.
The wharenui (design John Verryt) is present throughout as a glimmering, skeletal form along the back wall of the stage. Above it hangs a narrow horizontal video screen which shows a continuous stream of animations (videographer Louise Potiki Bryant) ranging from photographs of Urewera locations, to steadily morphing abstract patterns drawn from traditional designs, and photographs of the actual pou of Te Houhi. A steady, resonant drumbeat is heard throughout the work, at times doubling or speeding up, accompanies by percussive sticks and stones and an ambient drone, and at time replaced by strings (composers Paddy Free and Stephen Hussey).
Like a Renaissance triptych, the work is structured into two smaller sections which act as bookends for a more substantial core, at the same time creating an overarching narrative which links all three together. An interspersed voiceover narration ensures that the key aspects of the overarching story are not missed, and the stream of video imagery subtly draws attention to the symbolic interconnections between the various elements.
Te Ao o Neheraa (the ancient world) establishes a relatively untroubled past, the Ngati Haka Patuheuheu people living in harmony and respect for the land and one another.
