Get ready for some fancy footwork

By BERNADETTE RAE

There's Spanish and Latin American dance promising pulse, passion and panache. There's contemporary dance with a traditional Chinese flavour. There's breakdance fused with hip hop and kapa haka. There are dance films and dance with pictures. Classical Indian dance. Boys' dance. Late-night dance and end-of-year-student dance performance rubbing shoulders with stunning dance made by some of Australasia's most highly regarded professionals.

Auckland's fourth annual dance festival, code name tempo, kicks off with a gala opening at the Concert Chamber at the Town Hall this Friday night, showcasing the huge diversity of dance events to come.

"We celebrate diversity," says Sonja Bright, festival director. "It is an open festival, so anyone can take part. We encourage as many dance forms as possible and we hope to build new and appreciative audiences.

"We do not want to be a festival of dancers just dancing for other dancers."

From small beginnings three years ago, tempo 2003 now has a higher profile, even though it follows on the heels of AK03 and had to move its dates to avoid competition for venues in September, which means some community events have taken place.

Dynamic NZ Arts Foundation Laureate Shona McCullagh is festival chairperson. Fellow Laureate Douglas Wright is a patron. There are plans for tempo next year to include links with the Otago Arts Festival, and The Body, Christchurch's dance festival, to create a national circuit for performers and perhaps attract more visitors from overseas.

Highlights for this year include:

* Fine Line Terrain, a work by Sue Healey Company. Healey, originally from New Zealand, has been at the forefront of Australian contemporary dance for the past two decades. As artistic director of Vis-a-vis Dance, Canberra and Sue Healey & Co, she has created more than 30 works for film, live theatre and site-specific performance.

International tours include Glasgow, New York, Boston and four major commissions by the Aichi Arts Centre, Nagoya, Japan. This is her first major production in New Zealand. Fine Line Terrain is part of her NICHE series, which has included an award-winning dance film, a solo dance, a gallery installation, the Aichi Arts Centre commission for 12 Japanese dancers, and the film Circumstance.

She brings five dancers with her to Auckland. Healey describes Fine Line Terrain as "dance in precarious space ... detailing the geography of inhabitants, in a space of many fine lines. The work reveals the depth and complexity with which we perceive space, from tangible architecture to inner imaginative terrain". Plays: November 12-16, Concert Chamber, Auckland Town Hall.

* Greenland, Sean Curham Dance. A premiere. Sean Curham has been a vociferous member of the contemporary dance underground for the past 10 years, as choreographer and dancer, and now teaches at the Unitec School of Performing and Screen Arts.

Greenland "centres around the common question of identity, set in a fictitious land and a temporary rearrangement of reality". With sound design by Charlotte 90 and dancers Sean Curham, Liz Kirk, Megan Adams, Anna Bate, Stuart Armstrong and Geoff Gilson. Plays: November 20-30, Tapac.

* Solace, a contemporary dance performance by Jack Gray. Gray graduated from Unitec in 1998 and was a founding member of the experimental Maori-based Atamira Dance Collective three years ago. He won scholarships to Vienna in 2001 and France last year, and created a contemporary poi dance called Undercurrents that was performed in Malta, Greece and Britain last year.

Solace is a duet, performed with Justine Hohaia, which "reflects the painful beauty of being separated from a loved one over long, real and imaginary distances" and is Gray's first foray as an independent contemporary dance artist. Plays: November 6-8, Tapac.

* Rhythm Constructionz - foot percussion for a new generation. Choreographer Linda McFetridge claims this is the first show of its kind in New Zealand. McFetridge is an actor, dancer, choreographer and occasional stunt performer who began performing at the age of 6 and gave up a career as a flight attendant because her toes just wouldn't stop tapping. She teaches tap dance and works in film and television.

She is joined in Rhythm Constructionz by dancer and assistant choreographer Jodie Russell, Richard Cesan and Amanda Chan, promising young dance stars both in their last year of secondary school, and 8-year-old Shannon Wilson. Plays: November 4-8, Tapac.

* Late Night Choreographers, CO-ED (Collective of Emerging Dancemakers). Six independent choreographers show how strange things happen at night in six new short works incorporating contemporary dance, acting, animation, video projection and light suits. The choreographers are Peter Vosper, Alexa Wilson, Matthew Gillanders, Beaue-Simone Frost, Mat Gibbons and Tania Bond. Plays: November 13-15, 10pm, Tapac.

* Boys Dance Jams 2003, the Boyzdance2 network. An opportunity for boys aged 5 to 15 to experience dance in an all-male environment, with skilled and motivated male tutors. There will be classes in contemporary dance, hip hop, breakdance, capoeira, jazz, street tap and Maori and Polynesian dance. Classes are $5 an hour or $20 for the day. There will also be workshops for educators and adults on introducing and developing boys' dance, and a concert by the Boyzdance2 group and invited guests at the end of the day. Plays: November 9 at Tapac and November 23 at Te Wananga o Aotearoa.


* What: tempo Festival of Dance

* When: October 31-November 23

* Where: various venues; ph (09) 836 7644 or Tempo