Week two of the Auckland Fringe Festival for dance lovers opened at the Basement with Wellington-based Jen McArthur's insightful and exquisite Echolalia, a beautifully crafted, sensitively delivered presentation of a day in the life of Echo, a young woman on the autism spectrum. When the challenges of the day overwhelm her and when her irrepressible spirit breaks out, Echo dances through her bedsit, with leaps and turns and sheer delight - so inspiring to behold.
Wellington-based Rifleman Productions have brought two separate works to Q Loft in their double bill, which comes to a close tonight. At 7pm is the now decade-old award-winning Terrain, a boutique-scaled work featuring segments of densely crafted, intricate and awesome choreographic manoeuvres in tiny spaces.
Developed by Malia Johnston and Guy Ryan and toured extensively by them in New Zealand and Australia, it has now been passed on to Anita Hunziker and Luke Hanna.
Terrain gently and deftly explores the relationships between a man and a woman and their interactions with a continuously transforming environment, reflecting some themes from Gulliver's Travels in its use of miniature objects that contrast with the apparently huge humans.
Beautifully presented by Hanna and Hunziker, the dancing is set against an eclectic collection of tracks played on vinyl records, many of them ballads.
