Black Grace's new works range from theatrical to mythical

Sean MacDonald, left, Louise Potiki Bryant and Daniel Cooper have choreographed new works for Blace Grace. Picture / Greg Bowker

Tamihana Paurini is an explosive presence in the spectacular line-up of male energy that is Black Grace. A bullet head tops a compact muscular body. He dances with passion, enthusiasm, total commitment.

"I'm a free mover - I like to grab the moment when I'm on stage," he says. "I get exuberant. I tend to get carried away. I am always being told to 'pull it back, Tamihana!' "

A company veteran, from 1999, when artistic director and Black Grace founder Neil Ieremia spotted the then-dance student at Unitec and offered him a place in Black Grace, Paurini is now one of the company's most senior members - and performing in all three works that make up this year's Black Grace and Friends programme.

Originally from Levin, Paurini started dancing aged 19, beginning his training at Whitireia Polytechnic. There he fell in love with contemporary dance, and after two years was guided towards the course at Unitec. Two years into that course he was spotted by Ieremia.

"At first I was just asked to join the company for a project called Fia Ola, which was performed here and then in Noumea. I had just a week and a half to learn the piece," he says. "It was a shock introduction to professional life."

But when he was offered a permanent place he immediately accepted - and six years on has danced with Black Grace at Jacob's Pillow, twice, and on Broadway, to resounding acclaim.

Paurini is relishing the three very different works that make up this year's " ... and Friends" programme. Two are choreographed by company members Sean MacDonald and Daniel Cooper, the third by guest Louise Potiki Bryant, from Atamira Dance Collective and creator of the intriguing Ngai Tahu 32.

MacDonald's work is very theatrical, says Paurini, Cooper's more a work of pure movement and dance, and Bryant's a combination of the two.

MacDonald's On the Off Chance is a collage of pictures of different events in one life, like snapshots recurring in a dream. A huge pile of chairs on stage represents, he says, the tangle of memories that accumulate in a person's brain throughout their life, and later need to be sorted, deciphered and worked through, to establish some meaning.

The images are frenetic and bizarre and frequently humorous - a human horse dancing, toy sheep, Aussie fella meets Kiwi Sheila, a singing doll.

Paurini describes Cooper's Behind Is as "all movement, elegant, almost languid, and dealing with choreographic shapes and patterns that all convey a feeling of loss". The work was inspired by Joy Cowley's poem Head and Heart - the concept of there being those two entities within each person, and the constant battle between them for supremacy of logic and reason or emotions and passion.

Bryant's work is titled Night Blooms and explores the magic of the traditional Maori spirit world, aligned to the night (Te Tatau o te Po) or the subconscious mind, and the birth there of new ideas to be realised the next day, when the sun rises.

The dancers are Black Grace members Sean MacDonald, Daniel Cooper, Tamihana Paurini and Abigail Crowther, plus guest artists Liana Yew and Solomon Holly-Massey.

* Black Grace & Friends, Concert Chamber, Auckland Town Hall, April 25-30