Performance: Our Back Yard - Black Grace Dance

Maidment Theatre

Review: Bernadette Rae

Neil Ieremia takes the national sport, cultural identity, our international image, the very heart of Godzone, and gives it a good old once-over in his hilarious and clever new piece of dance theatre, New Religion, which occupies the second half of the slick new Back Yard programme.

Naughty Neil has got actor Bruce Hopkins slung up above the stage in a reclining chair, chafing on just like one and a half million other male souls of our land, in the wee small hours of a Big Game Day.

Except Hopkins' passion is coloured purple in a selection of sonnets from the great bard, including a finale that sings the certain praises of Black in very superior style.

But you will recognise the gist, all right!

Meanwhile, on the lower layer, Black Grace's dance team proper, decked out in crushed velvet pantaloons, are joined by beefy actors Oscar Keightly and Geoff Dolan, as a pair of know-it-all coaches, endlessly verbalising - just like those endlessly boring real ones on TV.

The grandest of music plays as that familiar drama, all centred on an egg-shaped ball, is reflected out from a dozen sharply cut facets, laying the country's very soul quite bare.

The message may be too much for genuine hardcore fans to take - but the alienated minority will enjoy the perspective, and the dancing is fantastic.

It should be compulsory viewing for all makers of sports programmes and sports page editors.

In the first half of the programme is the beautiful In Moving Memory, which Auckland has not had the pleasure of seeing before, and Ieremia's Deep Far, which has pleasured us quite frequently, and does so again.

Sandwiched between the two comes Creek Boys, a collaborative creation depicting the young male growing up in Cannons Creek, Porirua, suitably embellished with obvious, autobiographical insight and an original music composition by DJ Manuel Bundy.

All in all, Black Grace have never looked so good - to a man. But Player of the Day still has to be the multi-talented Sam Fuataga, for his vocal contributions, Break Boy cool - and true communion with that leather ovoid!