New Works 2002: at the Herald Theatre

By BERNADETTE RAE

There is something special about Black Grace. It makes you love them. It leaves you a little breathless and a lot inspired.

It is something more than the beautiful bodies in flight. It is more than the splendid voices they offer in a heart-stopping sung prayer that opens this collection of work.

And it's more than the art, the technique, the captivating rhythm, the show.

There is an integrity in Black Grace and an honesty of endeavour that gives the gems in their repertoire a patina of perfection and their lighter pieces a positive glow.

This new programme includes five offerings choreographed by five of the dancers, which is everyone bar the new apprentice Jeremy Poi.

The finale is a special preview of artistic director Neil Ieremia's new work in progress, titled Surface, which will premiere in full form in next year's Taranaki Arts Festival.

The excerpt performed, based on the traditional Samoan tattoo (acquired by Ieremia's father, now in his 60s), is evocative.

Another choreographic standout is Sam Fuataga's 4 Men Running! blending hip-hop technique with an element of fear, to make a work that speaks deeply and intelligently of street culture and young men's lives.

Mal Tevita's work, Q, set to Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, from Soloman, also has an element of hip hop as he reflects on his first experience of contemporary dance with a hilarious sideswipe at the conventions of the classical discipline. Tai Royal, Taane Mete and Sam Fuatago have it down to a T.

Mete's solo work Remnants, to Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, is ambitious, beautifully performed by Mete, and only slightly overwrought.

Royal explores the after-effects of love in Smug and Tamihana Paurini goes swimming in Designs.

Wedding Speeches and The New Man The SiLo Reviewer: Francis Till

The first half of a double-header, the hour-long one-hander Wedding Speeches features Millen Baird playing a smorgasbord of characters representing both sides of the aisle in a disaster of a wedding involving two hugely dysfunctional families.

Some parts of this are grotesquely interesting but the characters need more work, especially when they reach for the heart or anything like deeper meanings.

Directed by Tim McLachlan, the work has good promise but in this iteration the presentation is uneven, the tension is superfluous and the resolution unconvincing.

Still, Baird is funny, which keeps the hour lively.

The evening's second offering, however, The New Man by Reuben Pollock, is a nearly perfect little treat. Lots of action and character development, a plot with clever twists, strong dramatic tension, excellent resolution, clever lines, sex on stage (you won't forget these encounters - bravo to Cherie Leonard as the prostitute and Barnie Duncan as Tod the Trannie), a loud gunfight, an insane and engaging villain named Finger (Ray Trickitt), a sensitive thief (Paul Paice), and our protagonist Mark (Mike Lowe), a self-seeking, soul-searching sandwich maker from Queen St who wanders into the wrong bar to dictate a memo about why his wife has left him.

Michael Lawrence directed this fast-paced coming-of-age story for would-be grown-ups in which meek Mark takes an energised overnight wander down K Rd and other nefarious streets on his way to becoming a new man by a forced shedding of his New Man skin.

Along the way there's robbery, much drinking, many charged encounters, piles of cocaine, a police chase, guns, thugs and philosophising of a generally inoffensive, slightly purple sort about the nature of women, men's inadequacies, and the promise of love.

A mosaic, the work is held tightly together by a series of brilliant snapshot scenes in which a marvellous police detective (Lorraine McDonald) interrogates Mark about the events of his transformational evening.

Highly recommended.