Life and Limbs

Almost a quarter of a century since dance group Limbs first wowed audiences a retrospective show brings back memories. BERNADETTE RAE explains.

They were talented, passionate about dance and inspired. They made their debut in 1977, when audiences like that at the New Zealand Student Arts Festival at Victoria University greeted their zany, young and contemporary Kiwi style with wild enthusiasm.

By the time they bowed out in 1989, possibly burned out but certainly victims also of the troubled economic times, they had created no less than 200 original pieces of choreography. And they had set a bench mark for popularity, never quite reached again by any group of dancers in New Zealand.

"We were beautiful, sexy, gorgeous," says an unabashed Mary Jane O'Reilly, co-founder, with Chris Jannides, of Limbs, its artistic director from 1978 to 1986, and organiser, two decades on, of the Limbs retrospective 2001.

"If people couldn't relate to dance they related to us, personally," she says.

But Limbs had more than lithe bodies and pretty faces. The list of company names reads like a who's who of New Zealand's contemporary dance alumni: Mark Baldwin, Brian Carbee, Catherine Chappell, Cath Cardiff, Shona McCullagh, Debra McCulloch, Kilda Northcott, Sue Paterson, Marianne Schultz, Susan Trainor, Tairoa Royal and Douglas Wright all made their early mark with Limbs.

The company also travelled: to the United States, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Hong Kong and Japan and were always given the warmest acclaim.

In 1980 critic Jennifer Dunning wrote in the New York Times: "Their blend of classical ballet, jazz, acrobatics, modern dance and improvisational techniques is that true and rare fusion of styles that achieves something beyond its parts: streamlined movement with the energy of jazz dance, the elegance of ballet and the thematic focus of modern dance. Add to that wit, a refreshing simplicity of approach and a very stylish sense of slapstick and you have Limbs."

"It was fate and timing," says O'Reilly, of Limbs' beginning. "We were a group of people with similar needs. We had been away travelling overseas. Back home, New Zealand could only offer dancers the Royal New Zealand Ballet company, or movement theatre. Impulse, a contemporary company was around, but we had a very different aesthetic and we wanted our own aesthetic."

What sustained the group was sheer hard work. Rehearsals burned through mornings and afternoons. There were three or four lunchtime performances, typically in schools and shopping malls, each week. And at night the dancers were busy teaching.

O'Reilly was also responsible for administration in the early days, made all the Limbs costumes and for some time ran a leotard business as well.

"In those days all our resources were shared," she says. "Anything anybody earned or had went into the pot. It was very cooperative. Well, it was the 70s."

The teaching developed into a busy school and Limbs' community dance classes created a new audience for its professional performers.

O'Reilly also names Dorothea Ashbridge, who took over teaching the Limbs company ballet classes when O'Reilly quit that function to focus more on her own performance, as a sustaining force for Limbs.

"Dorothea had a special way of just expecting excellence," says O'Reilly. "I think I am still trying to please Dorothea."

In 1986 O'Reilly gave birth to her daughter, and left Limbs. She suspects that many of the baby boomers, who had formed a significant part of Limbs' audience, also went home to nest at that time. A dance company is directly responsive to society, to the community around it, she says. "We had the crash in 1987. That affected Limbs, of course."

There was also the fire that ripped through the company's Ponsonby premises, funding difficulties, increasing debt.

O'Reilly, now coordinating the dance programme at the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Auckland, with Jennifer Shennan, has gone back to the earliest days of Limbs' success for the retrospective. She has chosen works for their simplicity and direct messages, for the great sense of joy in dance that was always at Limbs' heart and for their freshness, fun and brevity. No piece is longer than 15 minutes.

Dances have also been chosen to suit the "new" Limbs company of Sean McDonald, Tim Fletcher, Kelly Nash, Justine Hohaia, Dolina Wehipeihana, Paora Taurima, Debbie Fulford and Natasha Alpe.

And O'Reilly has decided, just two weeks out from opening night, that she would like original Limbs dancers Kilda Northcott, rehearsal director, and Shona Wilson, who has been co-teaching the Cunningham technique with O'Reilly, to perform. Chris Jannides, head of dance at Unitec, has also been invited to dance.

Wilson, full-time mother of three girls for the past seven years but yoga-fit, will dance with Taurima in the Limbs classic Melting Moments and in Talking Heads. Northcott, whose dance discipline has always been legendary, will appear in Games and a solo piece Perhaps Can, a dance that she and O'Reilly used to share.

"It," O'Reilly announces with glee, "is going to be neat."

* Limbs retrospective 2001 at the Maidment Theatre, October 27 to November 3, and the Wellington Opera House, November 9-10.