Dancer finds her inner goddess

Choreographer Ann Dewey has a reputation for works that are joyful, energetic and fun. Photo / Supplied

A multiplicity of Kens, plastic Barbie's man, hang from the rafters overhead. But they provide only a brief distraction from the real action in the Leigh Hall on a mad May morning. Choreographer Ann Dewey and the select handful of dancers that make up her Spinning Sun dance company, version 2011, are hard at it below. Liz Kirk, Liana Yew and the riveting Julie van Renen, a local dance teacher committed to country life but who should be "discovered" immediately, meet Bach's Cello Suite, a riff of Eastern European Gypsy music, and a wild punkfest from 15-year-old Pearl McGlashan and friends.

Dewey's new work is Shine Lady. Striking images of the Madonna and the Hindu goddesses Kali and Pavarti fleetingly emerge from the rich cadenza of carefully crafted movement that spills across the wooden floor in this brief preview.

Shine Lady has turned out completely differently from what Dewey planned, she says. A three-month-long research project last year started out to examine the possibility of making completely abstract movement. Her theme for the inquiry was to be plate tectonics and the motion of micro organisms.

There is an explanation for the bizarre inspiration. Dewey grew up in both England and upstate New York, the daughter of geologist John Frederick Dewey, a major force in developing the theory of plate tectonics, and of Molly Dewey, a well-regarded botanist and researcher of fungal biology at Oxford University.

"So I grew up with the idea of how the plates of the planet move," Dewey says, "laterally, pushing together, ripping apart, or twisting - and in any combination of these directions."

She was also "always looking down Mum's microscope" and no stranger to Brownian Motion and the quivering quality of life's building blocks, at so many magnifications.

"On a micro level things move so fast that the eye only picks up points, so it all appears very staccato," she says. "Most of the movement in Shine Lady originates from these two sources. I don't really know how the goddess thing happened. We were just mucking around with some lengths of cloth and, suddenly, there was the Virgin Mary.

"We were trying to find pure movement abstracted from nature - and we found something that is common in all nature," she says of the divine infusion.

So has the work remained "pure and abstract?" Dewey thinks not. "I think the conclusion is that it is impossible for the human body to make truly pure movement. There will always be an emotional component - either in those making the movement, or in those seeing it."

Dewey began her dance career in England, met Douglas Wright when they both danced in company DV8, came to New Zealand with a first New Zealand husband, and danced with Wright's company here, later working with him as rehearsal director.

Her own company has produced stunning works: Nine Daisies, Flicker and her serenade to knitting, Left and Right, which have all met critical acclaim, and built her reputation on an exceptional vision and quality of work - joyful, energetic and fun.

In Shine Lady she has worked with composer of extraordinary soundscapes Charlotte Rose and visual artist Mike Petre, who contributes a set of magical light boxes, described by Dewey as her "fourth dancer". The role of all those Ken dolls is not yet disclosed.

Performance

What: Shine Lady

Where and when: Leigh Hall, May 18-21; Tapac, Western Springs, May 25-29