Preview: Footnote Dance at the Sky City Theatre

What: Footnote Dance Presents: Made In New Zealand 2009.
Where: Sky City Theatre, Thursday.

Footnote Dance is very wholesome, curiously adolescent after 25 years of existence, and not very sexy.

Enthusiastic, joyful, adventurous and inarguably an important nurturer of talent, yes. But in spite of the calibre of some of the choreographers - Michael Parmenter, Raewyn Hill and Malia Johnston rate among the country's finest and all contribute works in this season - their programmes never quite deliver an adult frisson of excitement, tingle the spine or bring a rush of blood to the head.

Perhaps it's a Wellington thing?

Perhaps it is the lovely, worthy and much respected Deirdre Tarrant giving a little programme outline at the beginning that sets a school assembly sort of mood? Grown-ups can surely afford and read the perfectly good printed programmes. Perhaps it is the very breadth of the programme?

Seven works this time, from seven very different choreographers, are handled, no sweat, by the six very fit performers. But this format makes the experience very much a sampler rather than a truly satisfying one, and keeps Footnote forever skimming along the surface.

Michael Parmenter's work, I Don't Mind, set to Dudley Benson's exquisite and haunting songs, was the gentle triumph of the evening. A duet for two men, it evolved from a workshopped focus on improvised partnering. The result is touching, tender and totally absorbing and was beautifully performed by Jesse Wikiriwhi and Francis Christeller.

Raewyn Hill's Nest, inspired by her observations of men in Hong Kong taking their caged birds to the parks, was another expected highlight.

Sarah Knox as the bird and Wikiriwhi and Jeremy Poi her dark-suited keepers presented a melting and poignant exploration of restriction and surrender and the ever present impulse towards release.

Malia Johnston's Crash Test Dummies featured music by Eden Mulholland and the company's three men in an artful four-part essay on the effect of different forces on the body. Katie Burton's Carry The Boy hilariously explored traditional gender performance roles, but the work had a vaguely unfinished feel.

There were some powerful images in Wikiriwhi's debut choreography, Little Sister, evoking his mother's childhood experiences in an orphanage. Tarrant's The Time of Our Life was a characteristically cheap and cheerful opener while Sarah Foster's beautifully tangled tribute to embroidery brought the evening to a close.