Review: Footnote Dance at SkyCity

Jeremy Poi delves into hip-hop and graffiti in Ross McCormack's <i>Stealth</i>. Photo / Supplied

In the first moments of Purlieu, Malia Johnston's new work opening this programme and soon bound for exhibition at the World Expo in Shanghai, small and precious performance spaces are first defined by light, as one neat little square, then two, three, four.

Four male dancers variously inhabiting these illuminated pens push against their boundaries with athletically expansive movements, while three female figures, hunched and draped and shadowy, quietly set the stage with small black boxes.

Expo's theme is "better cities - better living" and the boxes momentarily suggest a city skyline before the three women step up and elegantly release their wrappings to appear as elongated goddesses, backs to the audience, in evening dress.

Eden Mulholland's gorgeous electronic score carries the moment with its synthesis of keyboard and strings as the women slowly strip layers of fabric away from their bodies to reveal brief little black dresses, and exquisitely mobile backs.

Balance and precariousness, containment and soaring - in one beautiful partnering sequence the women take great floating and slow-motion strides from one elevation to another - and conflict and togetherness are all explored through the body's relation to space.

Purlieu develops ideas Johnston first explored in Miniatures, and is a briefer exposition on the theme - but the repeated meditation has matured her meaning magnificently.

The second new work on the bill is Sarah Foster's I Changed, a rather rude and ripsnorting expose of tribal life in contemporary society with Footnote's full company of six playing out scenarios of exclusion, exhibitionism, a bumbling sort of teenaged sexual exploration, exploitation - and any number of other torments.

It is not without a certain levity though, as the dancers perform it all with delighted exuberance and a great deal of goofiness, especially in the repeated pulling of super-stretchy garments into weird and exposing variations.

While the effect is more symbolic of playground naughtiness than serious social commentary, and its choreographic structure is at times loose and immature, Foster still manages a background note of foreboding, if not alarm.

Ross McCormack's Stealth, performed by Jeremy Poi, explores the field of hip-hop and graffiti to the music of Jody Lloyd and a second showing of Claire O'Neil's MTYLAND, significant, confrontational and cathartic - for the dancers at least - concludes another sterling Footnote season.

What: Made In New Zealand - Footnote Dance.

Where and when: SkyCity Theatre.