KEY POINTS:
Atamira Dance Collective goes from strength to strength and is now the hotspot of contemporary dance in Auckland. First-time choreographer Maaka Pepene does everything right in this Year of the Veteran work, which cleverly and dramatically vignettes the world at war and war's human face.
Pepene's six years in the New Zealand Army Infantry, and his close bonds with the grandfather whose World War II diary is the source of the work, gives him huge insight into his subject.
With a cast of five terrific dancers, a great score by Paddy Free which incorporates 1940s songs - and the Maori Battalion Marching Song - he follows the experiences of three country boys who serve time in Egypt and Italy, and the lives of the women who wait for them at home.
The words of Jack, the diarist, read by Jarod Rawiri while the handwritten pages are projected on to a screen, sometimes crumpled or flickering to evoke the difficult conditions under which they were penned, link a series of varied danced episodes.
The soldier scenes in which Sean MacDonald, Peter Takapuna and Jack Gray go through parade ground drills and combat exercises are stunningly performed: authentic, respectful, and sometimes humorous. The violence of war, while a powerful presence, is overshadowed by the bonding between the men. Back home the girls are not merely weeping and yearning either: their making of "thingamebobs for watchamacallits" in war effort headscarves is hilarious. Then they join the Navy.
The final scene is a gorgeous and touching requiem, to Albinoni's Adagio, beautifully conceived and performed.
Sean MacDonald shimmers throughout, not just for his masterly performance but for his total immersion in the drama of his role as father/husband/brother.
Nowhere is his subtle artistry and power more present than in the sequence where three soldiers stoically suffer the heat and flies in an Egyptian desert. With blank face and fixed gaze he goes through a choreographed swat-scratch-brush-wipe routine that is almost unbearably empathetic.
