'Star' shines for Matariki festival

Jack Gray, of Auckland's Atamira Dance Company. Photo / Hannah Gross.

Matariki, a time in Maori cosmology for reflection on things past and things to come, of reaping and sowing, is a big focus for Maori dance practitioners this year. As a result of a national hui last year, Kowhiti, a four-day festival of Maori contemporary dance, will be a feature of Te Papa's celebration of the Maori New Year.

Kowhiti, curated by Merenia and Tanemahuta Gray, brings together a host of Maori dancers, choreographers, dance film-makers, teachers and scholars from the upper echelons of our dance community, in a variety of performances in the capital.

Auckland's Atamira Dance Company will take part, with a showcase programme of some of its most significant past works rehoned for the present, called Whetu or "Star". Whetu has played in Hamilton and Rotorua earlier this month, and finishes in Auckland with a final show at Papakura's Hawkins Theatre on June 29.

Works by pioneering Maori choreographers Charles Koroneho and Stephen Bradshaw are scheduled alongside more recent favourites from the collective's current crew - Jack Gray, Maaka Pepene, Moss Paterson, Dolina Wehipeihana, Cathy Livermore and rising star Nancy Wijohn.

Eight works are being presented in different combinations over the series of performances. Perfecting such a variety has stretched the company to its limits over the rehearsal period, barely a month long, says the collective's senior choreographer Jack Gray.

"It has been a hefty load ... add to that, two of the three women dancers have babies under one year old and Tai Royal, one of the four men, has been preparing for the Nelson season of his own company's work Tama Ma."

Restaging excerpts from iconic works by Koroneho and Bradshaw has been a highlight of the process. Two sections from Koroneho's full-length Waimirirangi, made in 1990, are being presented: a rope dance, He Taura Whakapapa, and a solo, Ka Puta He Kakano, which translates to "a seed appears".

Koroneho's career emerged from the PEP schemes of the 1980s and early Maori dance company Te Kanikani O Te Rangatahi, then Limbs, the New Zealand School of Dance and the Royal New Zealand Ballet. He now teaches dance theory in Unitec's Department of Performing and Screen Arts.

"Of all the dances I have made over the years," says Koroneho, "this is the one that people most connect with. The rope is the rope of genealogy and I made the work out of the perceptions in the late 80s of what it meant to be Maori, what it meant to be tangata whenua. It was a political statement and an exploration of the material culture of weaving - not basket weaving, but braiding and plaiting.

"It is very design-oriented, based on the patterns of a 'four plait' - and symbolic of co-operation, a tangible representation of what happens when people pool their energies. From all those fine threads a strong rope gets made."

The two excerpts are closely linked. The solo, performed in Wellington by Koroneho, under the auspices of his own performance identity Te Toki Haruru, and at other venues by Atamira's Tai Royal, develops the concept of seed as rock and finally binds the two dances together as anchor and its chain.

Bradshaw's Mauri was created for Atamira in 2003. Mauri means "life force" and the 12-minute piece reworked from the 25-minute original has taken on a new life of its own.

"It concentrates the essence of the original work," says Bradshaw. "Mauri is a very spiritual term about the wellbeing of the land, perhaps represented in a stone from a river or in a carved object that holds the lifeforce of a waterway, or a mountain."

Bradshaw founded Te Kanikani O Te Rangatahi and its successor Taio, and now works on a variety of public arts projects and initiatives.

"This new Mauri is so positive," he says, "so full of well-being and energy. It opens the show.

"And for me it has been such a positive experience to have a collective of dancers who can take on the concepts of a work intellectually and physically. I do see Atamira, with its young performers coming through, as being a very exciting place from which to grow."

Other works represented in Whetu include Memoirs of Active Service, Te Whenua, Starlight Ballroom, Solace, Don't Eat the Man Fish and Tuhoe Whakapapa.

PERFORMANCE

What: Whetu, with Atamira Dance Company

Where and when: Hawkins Theatre, Papakura, June 29

www.atamiradance.co.nz