What: You Better Run Boy.
Where and when: Herald Theatre, September 8-12.
On the web: www.buytickets.co.nz or www.blackgrace.co.nz
After choosing his proteges, Neil Ieremia spent the next few days trying to get rid of them.
"We haven't lost anyone yet," laughs the taskmaster and creative director of contemporary dance company Black Grace.
"Maybe I'm not as mean as I thought."
That hard-headed approach was necessary to prepare the high school and tertiary students for the reality of showbiz - helping Ieremia devise and rehearse You Better Run Boy, a bullying-themed production at the Herald Theatre from next Tuesday.
Since July, the 16 young dancers who make up this year's Urban Youth Movement have been expected to turn up to nightly rehearsals - many of the students travelling for up to an hour to get to the inner-city dance studio - and again for seven hours on Saturdays. The idea behind the dance boot camp is to offer an intensive learning experience to those who would not otherwise get the opportunity.
The dancers are aged 17-22 from Papakura to Long Bay. Some are dance students; others have no experience.
"The pressure of having to create and put on a show, there's a nice tension in that," says Ieremia. "Having a deadline for a group performance means it's also about goal-setting and communication. It's not about turning out dancers as such. If they want to be trash collectors they can. But it's about them doing their best at something so they can look back and know how much they've achieved."
Ieremia still can't believe the popularity of the dance boot camp when it started more than 10 years ago. After a choreography and dance project at three Auckland schools folded, he offered anyone interested the opportunity to come to the studio under his house one Saturday a month. Twenty kids showed up to that first class; Ieremia says they cut off auditions this year at 100 because they simply didn't have the time to audition any more.
He also says he didn't necessarily pick the best dancers, choosing instead the best characters, those with the most robust attitudes, including 19-year-old Thomas Fonua from Onehunga High School.
Since the age of 7, when his mother took him to see a Black Grace performance, Fonua has wanted to join the dance group.
"I loved that they were these brown guys dancing, and they weren't skinny," says the Samoan rugby player and ballet dancer.
He's used to verbal bullying because of his talent "but I don't let it affect me", he shrugs. "It's what you get at primary school."
With dancing on the brain, he's more than happy to front up to the intensive rehearsals. "When you dance you get to express yourself through the body, which is a great way to get out all the negativity."
Santana Schmidt, a 19-year-old from St Dominic's High School in West Auckland, agrees. She gave up her place on her school's premier netball team to join the group. The bullying theme also rang true for her after she was accepted.
"A lot of girls said stuff about me that was quite catty. Really mean stuff - I've got no dance experience, I'm not fit enough. I just ignore it. I hear it all the time but it's not worth my time."
You Better Run Boy has the visceral excitement you'd expect from Ieremia's choreography - hands slap and feet stomp in complex rhythms, bodies charge through the air and collide in slow-mo, themes are explored through the metaphor of movement. But ultimately, this is the students' show. As a starting exercise, Ieremia asked them to write poems based on their ideas about bullying. Some of the results surprised him. One boy wrote about the bullying tactics of advertisers pushing dietary products, and the depressing effects this can have on those getting the message. Another wrote about a violent husband bullying his wife.
The dance itself escapes the cliches of the playground too. The guys come loping out of the sidelines as apes, with the girls watching, birdlike, as an amusing, animalistic expression of how they see themselves.
The idea is not only to hone their physical skills but to challenge their thinking and self-inquiry.
"There's a student who, when he first came to class, couldn't focus," says Ieremia. "I took him to task last week and the difference was incredible. He went to school and for the first time he finished his assessment."
It helps that Ieremia has talked to his students about his own tough times.
"It's changed my life," says Fonua. "I see things in a different way. When the going gets rough, it's not about how you fall, it's how you get up."
For Ieremia, playing the tough choreographer is as much about teaching his budding young dancers a few life lessons, namely commitment, focus and discipline. And if you don't listen intently enough, or make a mistake, it's down on the ground for push-ups.
"I get nervous. You have to be switched on and really listen," says Schmidt. "You can't take things personally. It's hard work."
