Immersed in land, water and nature

Jack Gray's trip to the Far North inspired his latest work. Photo / Jinki Cambronero

Q Theatre will break new ground with Mitimiti, which opens Tempo

Jack Gray, indigenous dance artist, choreographer and cultural advocate, grew up in a typical working-class family on the Te Atatu peninsula, but with a haunting sense of connection to the tribal lands of Mitimiti in the Far North, even though he had never visited them.

So, in answer to the universal question of "where do I come from and where am I going?" he had only an imagined concoction of oceans, tides, dunes and isolation.

Then in 2010, his grandmother passed away and Gray was given his whakapapa. How to read it and understand its deep and esoteric wisdoms presented a mystery - and the start of a journey which manifests this month as Mitimiti, the opening work for Tempo Dance Festival 2015 at Q Theatre.

Gray describes the past five years as an exercise in "intelligence collecting", not just about a place but in how we make meaning from our experiences, the physical, emotional, mental and intuitive.

The first and obvious part of his journey was to physically visit the settlement of Mitimiti. He took along members of his other whanau, Atamira Dance Company.

"It is an epic and beautiful part of our country," he says of the remote coastland settlement in the Hokianga. Originally home to two or three thousand people, including the family of New Zealand artist Ralph Hotere, the population is now just 60.

On his arrival, Gray proudly spoke to the gathering of locals on the marae of his connection to the place through his great grandparents. His oratory was received with "something worse than suspicion". He labels, without judgment, the disappointing "so what" reaction to his heartfelt declarations of kinship, as "apathy".

In 2011, Gray received an AMP National Scholarship and travelled to the United States to share his question of "where did I come from" with other indigenous people, and to enter their discussions on legacies of inequity, social justice and on how people can have their say "within their own paradigms".

Everywhere he went, New York and Hawaii, Mexico and Canada, he found "broken treaties, places where the spirit has been ripped out of the people and a yearning for this dialogue".

Gray found himself in the role of a Maori representative of Aotearoa, as a guest teacher at the University of California Berkeley and University of California Riverside and a sought-after speaker internationally. He has been invited to be next year's Artist in Residence at Asia/Pacific/American Institute at New York University.

He also returned to Mitimiti, again with a crew from Atamira, determined to illustrate to its residents the sincerity of his caring for the place and its sacred stories by rebuilding the wharenui, in association with the television series Marae DIY. Mitimiti,the show, a culmination of Gray's personal and groundbreaking process, also promises to break new ground in regard to contemporary dance in New Zealand.

For the first time, Q Theatre will present as an open space, with not a chair to be seen. And there will be no karanga to open the show, which breaks an established tradition for Maori dance performances.

The audience will instead be welcomed with the fragrant ritual of burning kauri gum, will be invited to make claim to the ground on which they stand through a giant, shared chalk drawing and will be free to choose their vantage point as the performance takes place all around them.

Water is a significant element in Mitimiti and a "spring" will be created within Q Theatre. Stories will be related, including the arrival of Kupe in the Hokianga, the country's first migrant, and how his wife came to bestow on it the name of Aotearoa. But the telling will not be in spoken words.

"A big part of the show is in creating a space to make the audience relate and react in a whole different way," Gray says. "I want to 'embed' the experience, rather than 'show' it and I hope that people will feel the meaning, rather than think it. Maori culture is a translation of the land, and it only exists in relationship to nature. So many things about it are misunderstood."

A giant overhead platform on which images are projected is just one of the features of the design from a team that includes Lisa Reihana (AV), John Verryt (set), Vanda Karolczak (lighting), Rosanna Raymond and Ruth Woodbury (adornment) and Francois Richomme (sound).

Performing from Atamira are dancers Bianca Hyslop, Nancy Wijohn, Gabrielle Thomas, Te Arahi Easton and Matiu Manuera. Guest artists include Frances Rings, from Australia's Bangarra Dance Theatre; Mitimiti locals Robin Kamira and Waimihi Hotere; Jordan McConie; Dakot-ta Alcantara Camacho and Louise Potiki Bryant.

Tempo Dance Festival

What: Mitimiti
Where and when: Q Theatre, September 30-October 3 at 8pm
Online: tempo.co.nz