Taonga: Dust, Water, Wind at SkyCity Theatre

Taonga: Dust, Water, Wind investigates what we hold precious in life. Photo / Supplied

Choreographer Louise Potiki Bryant's Aunty Rona was given as a baby to her maiden Great Aunt Emma to raise. Now 82, Rona is still living in Kaka Point on the South Island's Catlins coast where she grew up and has lived most of her adult life. It is the vivid memories of Rona's childhood that have inspired Potiki Bryant's new work for Atamira Dance Collective, Taonga: Dust, Water, Wind.

Talking with her elderly relative while helping her record her whakapapa caused Potiki Bryant to question just what are the taonga, the treasures, in our lives. Her conclusion is that it is the small, perhaps mundane everyday moments that can emerge as special, and that reflections back on a long life frequently focus on the connections with people made during youth.

In Aunty Rona's case, the story also spotlights the special relationship that can occur between an older woman, of grandmotherly years, and a young girl.

The new work falls into three parts categorised as Dust, Water and Wind. Dust explores the magic and intuition of Rona's life with Emma, the older woman reading the behaviour of fantails and the odd hooting of the owls to foretell the death of a brother, long before the news officially came.

Traditional Maori music and instruments, performed by the authority on the subject Richard Nunns, add to the authenticity of the work. In this first section, with the three male dancers of the company appearing as bird/men hybrids, stone instruments are featured, with Nunns coaxing a haunting tone from a big pounamu mere, by rubbing its surface in a figure of eight pattern with another, smaller stone. The dancers also play, more percussively, musical stones.

Ritual and memories to do with the river at Kaka Point and the sea are explored in the second section, Water. Although Rona's upbringing was more European than Maori in many ways, Maori customs were still strong and, in this section, Potiki Bryant uses intricate and ritualised finger, hand and arm movements, as she recreates Rona's life-long involvement in the preparation of kelp bags for preserving mutton birds. Nunns uses gourds, shaken, blown and tapped in the accompanying music.

Bone flutes and other wind instruments are used in the final Wind section. The wind would shake the old Potiki house of Rona's childhood so badly the family would flee to a tent in a more sheltered position, says Potiki Bryant. Emma also credited the east wind with healing her breast cancer.

Atamira fields a cast of six dancers - three men and three women - for the new production. Costumes are by Kirsten Kemp, additional soundscape is by Paddy Free and video design is by Louise Potiki Bryant.

Auckland Festival

When: March 12-15
On the web: www.atamiradance.co.nz