Urban Youth Movement dance from the heart

By BERNADETTE RAE

TOWN HALL CONCERT CHAMBER, Auckland - The eight young dancers who are Urban Youth Movement, Black Grace Dance Company's promising protege, come from a variety of backgrounds.

Some of the girls have been in classical-ballet classes from 4 years of age. Curricula vitae also list contemporary, tap and jazz. Two dancers have emerged from training in the cultural dance of the Cook Islands and Samoa. All seem to have picked up at least some of the fantastical feats of break and street dancing.

They explode on to the stage in this hour-long frenzy of movement like a super-hyped pack animal with a peculiarly Auckland pedigree, leap, twist, flip, tumble, and treat the stage in the Concert Chamber with a defiance of the law of gravity. The talent is tangible. The enthusiasm is red hot. The high-voltage energy never flags.

From the spectacle, which includes a burst of strobe lighting, live singing, body percussion and lots of DJ mixing, eight highly individual performers begin to imprint their distinct personalities and dancing styles upon the proceedings.

And that is artistic director Neil Ieremia's cleverest card.

The three Black Grace "tutors" who join the performance - Tamihana Paurini, Sam Fuataga and Moss Patterson - provide a solid background structure and some valuable support but leave the limelight to the young ones.

And they pick up the opportunity and run.

So as well as forming a tight-knit troupe they have the courage - and have obviously been fed the encouragement - to each be their own person with their own style and even, in one riff of activity, their own sound.

But this is no display of unbridled ego. Discipline and dedication have seen to that. Instead Urban Youth Movement provide an extraordinary display of just what is possible when every member of a company dances out exactly who they are with every muscle and nerve available to them, sharing their vulnerability and their dreams as well as fears.

It is intensely physical, this Urban Youth Movement, almost an assault on the senses - but it is dance from the heart.