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Tame Iti was in for a surprise during his first trip to London when he took an early morning hike along the city's riverside cultural strip, the South Bank.
"I saw this person running towards me and I thought they might be [a problem], but then she says to me, 'Kia ora, cuz'," he laughs. "And it was like, 'Oh shit, Maori in London!"'
Iti is touring Europe as part of Mau Company's Tempest II, staged last weekend in London at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank as part of Lift, the London International Festival of Theatre, which this season is showcasing indigenous artists from the Pacific region.
"We've been to Belgium, Spain, Portugal, all the old colonisers, so coming to Britain - to London - is like the last of the beasts for me," says Iti, who seems unaware that the Houses of Parliament can be glimpsed in the distance behind him as he sits outside the Queen Elizabeth Hall. "It's interesting just to be here."
Neither a recreation of Shakespeare's classic play nor a dramatisation of the struggle of the Tuhoe people, Tempest II explores the issues of native sovereignty and unlawful detention in a post-9/11 world. It alludes to the controversial imprisonment of Ahmed Zaoui as well as Iti's arrest last October during the so-called anti-terror raids in Ruatoki.
The veteran activist was only able to travel to Europe after a High Court hearing in May relaxed his bail conditions.
"For me, it deals with what I consider the emergency," explains Mau founder Lemi Ponifasio. "A tempest is a hurricane, a storm. So what do you do in a storm? I want to talk about the suspension of rights. Ahmed Zaoui is a clear example in New Zealand. The courts should decide, not the politicians. This is happening all over the world, not just in New Zealand. States are taking away the rights of people, which is why I perform in Vienna, Brussels, wherever because it's happening there as well."
Indeed, the one country where the Samoan-born, Auckland-based choreographer struggles to find an audience is in his adopted homeland, although the original Tempest was part of last year's Auckland Festival.
"They don't want to listen because the theatre I speak about is not like their run of the mill commercial thing," he says. "They are still trying to be British in New Zealand but the real art of the world is no longer that. New Zealand doesn't encourage a culture of meaningful arts. The arts in New Zealand are organised around entertainment so if it's not entertaining in the sense that it is challenging then it's considered bad art. That's why I take my art away."
Ponifasio recognises the importance of performing at prestigious venues like the South Bank. "I don't want to come and dance at the bloody mall," he says. "I need to dance in the powerful places, where the powerful people are making decisions about us. You can come and dance here; nobody can stop you. I don't come here to show my song and dance, I come here to say something."
Drawing inspiration from German writer Walter Benjamin's 1940 9th Thesis on the Philosophy of History, which in turn examined Paul Klee's 1920 painting Angelus Novus, Tempest II takes its cues as much from David Lynch's unsettling surreal, Gothic films as traditional forms.
"The real interesting thing about showing this piece of theatre in Europe is that the people's reactions have been very sharp," says Iti. "People think they are coming to see The Tempest or some dance performance, but they are not, and it's not kapa haka either. The language of theatre is enormous. It's international, it doesn't matter what language you speak."
Although impressed by the combination of striking images and the electronic log drum-inflected soundtrack, the audience on the night I attended - mostly made up of expat Kiwis including many London-based Maori - seemed confused by the obliqueness of the performance's portentous metaphors.
There was also an unintentionally funny and rare warm moment early on in the piece when the ensemble's only female member, playing the Angel of History, let out the first of several interminable wails only to be greeted by a crying baby.
Ponifasio claims that Tempest II depicts Iti not as "the poster figure of fear portrayed on the television" but as a family man struggling to feed his family.
However, non-Maori speakers were left nonplussed by the monologue he delivered during a rousing haka towards the end in the final of his two fleeting appearances. Dressed incongruously in a suit, he spat venomously on the Queen Elizabeth Hall floor as if it was Her Majesty's doorstep itself.
"Theatre is a very interesting thing for me being an activist and a Tuhoe; creating a place where we are able to share the stories of what has happened to us," he says. "The issue here is not really about Tame Iti and it's not Tuhoe. It's about indigenous people. Indigenous people in our country have been marginalised over the last 150 years. But despite all of that, we need to be seen to be moving on too. We are not going around the world being all cry-baby about these things. It's taking these stories to another level."
