Malaga: The Journey at the Aotea Centre

By WILLIAM DART

The lights go down, a fire appears on stage and a mysterious flute solo encourages whoops of excitement from the audience. The journey has begun.

At just over an hour, the University of Auckland's Malaga: The Journey is a "living and learning" experience. Just over 200 Pacific school-leavers have studied intensively the origins of the Pacific culture for eight weeks, and this choreographed choral production is their public showcase.

The main creative forces are Igelese Ete and Jakki Leota-Ete, along with Black Grace's Neil Ieremia, who was responsible for movement and dance, with its eclectic mix of everything from stage-rolling in traditional Samoan sasa style to the sway-and-clap of American gospel choirs.

For sheer spectacle, Malaga often has one gasping, especially when the tempo picks up and the performers respond with gusto. And so they did in the early Vaka song, working to a climax on its thrilling final chord.

Too often, though, Ete's music is lumbered with sickly synths and a curious insistence on triple time, although this does pave the way for a neat reminiscence of the Flower Duet from Lakme. As conductor, working from the stage front, Ete is not to be faulted as he draws the same full-blooded choral sonorities he managed for The Fellowship of the Ring.

Malaga's journey is rich, with more high points (Charene Clarke's pure soprano, John Verryt's stunning Vaka mast and one spirited dance sequence in which haka seems to meet Michael Jackson formation work) than low (a spunky but unintelligible quartet of rappers).

And that scattergun montage of newsreel footage taking us from Pacific colonial coronations to our grubby dawn raids of the 70s and the dawn of a new millennium shows that the journey is still being undertaken.