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All eyes will be on Amata, the new work from the new Black Grace when it opens later this month. Last year all but one of the previous company resigned, dancers and administration staff included, leaving founder and artistic director Neil Ieremia with sole trouper, Abby Crowther, and the rest of his stellar company in tatters.
So what is the face of the new Black Grace?
There is the new studio downtown, in the Britomart precinct: an open airy space in an old building, partitioned with stretches of sparkling white canvas. Black Grace's former headquarters were buried away behind Karangahape Rd and were dark, almost subterranean.
A full rehearsal sees a set of jaunty ponytails flying as lithe young female dancers catapult across the floor like bullets, to the insistent rhythm of their master's clapping hands. The work in progress, a remake of a segment of Objects, first glimpsed last year as a trio for men, is metamorphosing into a piece for nine girls.
The new Black Grace company has 12 dancers, all female, and mostly graduates from dance schools here and in Australia.
The new face of Black Grace is pale, not even brown.
"But I am here," jokes Ieremia. "I am black and they are graceful."
Gone also is the spectacle of other rehearsals observed, where a tight team of mature men, who had stretched and sweated and made magic together for more than a decade, appeared to create movement experimentally, with their slick bodies and combined experience.
Today it is choreographer Ieremia making demands, watching for the right responses. Correcting, repeating, meting out a measure of praise from his place at the front. Twelve sets of eyes focus intensely on him. It is a serious matter, stepping into the vacated Black Grace shoes.
Beyond the stretch of white fabric new people man the computers, telephones and other paraphernalia of administration. There is a new board of governors. Creative New Zealand funding remains the same. The restructuring process involved was huge, "bigger than Texas", says Ieremia, but it has resulted in "a much better working environment for everyone. I have a contract. Basic things like that, that were never in place before. Now it's all clear and clean."
The new work Amata means beginning.
"It is a new chapter, a new phase in the journey," says Ieremia. "At the end of last year I lost a great deal, professionally, personally, across the board. I was faced with the decision, do I walk away, apply the skills I have to another area of life? But I decided, actually I was compelled, not to do that."
Amata is a personal piece, he says, inspired by "a bagful of images in my mind, like little snapshots of moments taken over the last 15 years - but snapshots that come complete with smell, sound, flavour, feel."
Those intimate moments include his holding one of his closest friends tight, through shakes and trembles, as the friend learned his father had died; of Ieremia's confused hurt when another close friend neglected to visit him in hospital and being astounded to learn six months later that it was because the friend did not know what Ieremia would feel about being visited; about giving his oldest, closest Black Grace friend a watch and his response.
"It was my last conversation with him," he says. "It was conducted almost in sign language."
And then there is the moment also of Ieremia alone in New York after the triumphant performances at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. "Externally everything was looking so good - and I was at the loneliest point of my whole life."
Amata may mean beginning but it is very much about Ieremia processing things from the past.
"We have all read it, but I have really learned that we are all on a journey," he says, "and some of the places the journey takes you are very difficult places to be.
"I have learned to accept some things about myself and to change some other things. I have learned to listen to my creative voice, to have faith in that voice again, and to not try and subdue it. I am learning about being a leader - a good leader - again."
He has also changed his working process, taking more risks in that artistic process. Gone are the "long, long" discussions with dancers about source material, he says.
"I am now trying to convey what I want to the dancers quickly and efficiently and waiting to see if they are able to produce that for me. That is not how I did things in the past."
He has faith in the new Black Grace dancers as well, inspired by the level of their training and their strong classical base. "It enables me to focus on the work, instead of acting as a rehearsal director," he says.
And while there is much sadness still in Ieremia's eyes, in the content of Amata there is also a sense of rediscovery, of excitement and expectation that comes from a new beginning.
Amata is not a mournful piece, he says. Costumes are by Elizabeth Whiting, the design by John Verryt, echoing in part a gorgeous landscape by Gretchen Albrecht. A Pacific-based musical score includes full-on drumming, Jack Body composition and sections of rare, pre-missionary chanting from Tonga.
"After going through so much I want to see something really beautiful," says Ieremia, "something pleasing to my creative eyes, something to make me really happy."
What: Amata, with Black Grace
Where and when: SkyCity Theatre, March 21-25
