Knitting marathon has dancers in stitches

Spinning Sun dancers rehearse Left and Right. Photo / Supplied

The box airmailed from Oxford, England, was simply labelled "leaves". There had been other similar boxes sent from the same person, a scientist conferring with colleagues here about leaf moulds and vineyard fungi. So this new consignment was of interest to vigilant Customs officers.

Inside, however, they discovered the leaves, though botanically correct, were knitted - and destined for contemporary dance company Spinning Sun's new work Left and Right, for which all costumes and large parts of the surprising set have been crafted on needles, from yarn.

The mother of Leigh-based choreographer Ann Dewey, now retired from her academic post as a botanist at Oxford University, has been one of 25 enthusiastic volunteer knitters.

Subsequent deliveries were labelled "knitted leaves", says Dewey, who along with her five dancers, has also been involved in the production of scores of gorgeous garments in rainbow hues - flirty skirts, cabled vests, frilled over shirts, beanies.

Wallpaper, even, and maybe carpet?

Dewey, the consummate dance artist, whose works in the past - Nine Daisies (2000), Queen Camel (2003), Paper Tiger (2007) and Flicker (2008) - have all glowed with the finest patina of care and polish, loves making things almost as much as she loves dance.

Last year she set herself the challenge of not buying anything at all that she could make. She failed - miserably - she confesses, but will repeat the exercise in a year when she is not so busy, for the new streams of inventiveness the experiment nevertheless invoked.

The knitting began 18 months ago, some of it in 8-ply, first french-knitted into finger-fat strands, then woven on needles like baguettes, to produce a texture distinctive enough to show up on stage. These garments are still flexible - but heavy.

The idea for a work with knitted costumes and set first arose two decades ago when Dewey, then 20, was dancing with an English company that travelled extensively and where new ideas for extremely portable sets and costumes were always being sought.

Too much a junior at the time to advance her idea, the concept lay dormant until two years ago.

"It still seemed a good idea," says Dewey. "And after Flicker I found something about pattern and rhythm that I wanted to explore in my next work."

Left and Right, wrapped in yarn, was also created with Dewey setting her dancers such tasks as "loop, slip, pearl", she says. The result is sinuous, fast and snappy, extremely rhythmic and set to a significantly text-based soundscape by Charlotte Rose, with lots of input from writer and dramaturg Jo Randerson, and a surprising and kinetic set.

The work premiered in Leigh this week, with a special performance for the volunteer knitters and a season that concludes there tomorrow. It opens in Auckland on Wednesday.

Leigh is a hotbed of artistic expression, says Dewey, with many fine artists in residence and popular music venue Saw Mill Cafe just down the road from Spinning Sun's hall. Dewey moved there five years ago, in retreat from city life.

"It is logistically more difficult to work away from the main centre," she says, "but the advantages are rich and many.

"I realised after making Queen Camel that I need three months to make a work - not the usual six weeks. That's a difficult thing, because you need funding to employ dancers for that long.

"But I understood that people need time to process things in their bodies. I know I need time to germinate ideas, stir things, sit and let it all settle. I work much better in the country, away from distraction, in quiet."

The Leigh Hall on a June morning is colder than its three bar-heaters can assuage. Big bright woollen things look very inviting. Dewey knits and talks and watches her rehearsing dancers with an eagle eye.

"Well, it's far cheaper than a space in Auckland," she smiles.

Performance

What: Left and Right, with Spinning Sun dance company
Where and when: Tapac, June 17-21