Black Grace's Urban Youth Movement at the Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber

By BERNADETTE RAE


Part of the audition process for Urban Youth Movement is artistic director Neil Ieremia's special "muscle and bone class" - a full-on cardio work-out with press-ups and sit-ups by the dozen. If 25 fit young things attempt it, 20 might finish and they are, in teenspeak, "wasted" by the end.

This Life, like the UYM programmes that have gone before, show just what the best of the "muscle and bone class" survivors, some of whom have no previous dance training, can achieve after several weeks of Black Grace style boot camp, in a non-stop hour of frenetic physicality, with drama, humour, daring and split-second timing. Bones would be broken if that timing went awry.

And not only do these dance rookies have to do all that, remember all that - they have to make it look like fun, smile, project. And they do.

Black Grace dancers Sam Fualaga, Mala Tevita and Jeremy Poi, and the talented new apprentices Abby Crowther and Desiree Westerland, are there to set professional standards and make sure they are kept.

Ieremia has created a complete soundscape (Blindspot, Don McGlashan, DLT & Che Fu, SJD and Supergroove, quotes from the company, his own poem) and the stage is fantastically set - a huge thicket of bush, a sturdy wooden structure that speaks of treehouse, play hut, the fort of every boys backyard fantasy, a rope for wild swinging.

But it is the process of reflection, self-inquiry and sharing that Urban Youth Movement members go through to find the dance within, which makes these performances so special.

This year their challenge was to consider a world without rules, parents, outside expectations. They dance out the possibilities, the temptations, the freedom with a feral exuberance and an honesty that admits there is also pain.

Two symbolic parent figures arrive on stage in a moment of shocking irreverence. But the ultimate conclusion is quite clear.

Rebellion is a much easier topic for styley expression than honour thy father and mother. But they do it without too much schmaltz.

And the final plea of Anchor Me! is heartfelt in the extreme.