Threading Frames is a must-see movement and film company. Walk with me: The series, plays at the newly revamped Monterey Lounge Cinema, a cosy take on boutique cinemas. Following a short welcoming speech, the largely in-house audience settle in for a triptych of black and white dance films, In three short works, directed by Tyler Carney and Joshua Faleatua, the videographer and the choreography bring together the formidable, somewhat alienated dialects of dance and nature. This wildly creative partnership supports the fey and significant practices of gifted dancers. Sounds of bodies moving and the music only enhance the vernacular. Theirs are descriptions without words. 

In the first site-specific film, a suitcase wends its way through forestry and clifftops. The suitcase bearer collects a hat from under an old tree. Subsequent exchanges, speed, contact and deft movement are enhanced by the simple act of taking on and off raincoats. Elliot Vaughan, a lone fiddle player on the precarious edge of a cliff accompanies the dancers, Tyler Carney and Georgia Beechey. Precariousness is enhanced, as their feet are shod in high-heeled shoes. The ancient volcanic bluff, watercourse, and sloping terrains with tussocky landscapes of Te Ika a Maui are lovingly crafted into the scenes. A marguerite daisy is symbolically passed from pocket to pocket. This dance film walks its way with aroha – friendship, care and love.

The second film playfully extends its title. The verse captures a music-bound sense of connection. The dancer-carrier brings the suitcase into a flax-bound glade with empty chairs. On her arrival, a swift edit fills the chairs with a group of Magritte-style dancers with hats on, under a cloud blotched sky, awaiting their cue to move. Levi Siaosi sets up a replicable and accumulative rhythm to Jesse Austin-Stewart’s tune. Siaosi’s wonderfully articulate body and tapping feet shift the audience gaze from the immediate witness of an event to a classical demonstration of filmic dance purpose – a depth of viewing about what we are viscerally experiencing. Siaosi’s synchronous action, melt into the company of dancers’ commitment as they begin to share his moves. Airu Matsuda, Annabel Webster, Jemima Smith, Lulu Qiu, Pati Junior Leiataua and Weichu Huang dance with him in organic and visible choreographic construction.

In their concern for natural vistas that camouflage nothing, the videographer and the director provoke an enigma. Other than a breeze rustling leaves, clothes and hair, the first two films largely avoid the seasons. While nature is acknowledged in her terrestrial glory, the bodies so far are strangely disembodied witness of the subtler elements of terrains. Symbolised by the suitcase, the gestures, or even more the clear sense of travelling, the dancers are visitors. Until, in the last panel of the films’ triptych, the suitcase is passed to another dancer, and the marguerite flower is now a bunch. Languid Alex Leonharstburger dances on air currents surrounding him. His subtle movement play evokes a riveting solo about emissions of land’s ether so far undisclosed, but nevertheless tangible throughout the previous two films. Occasionally, discordant projections of music composed by Akira Rabelais and Jesse Austin-Stewart on Leonharstburger’s body movement seek to maintain the disconnection. Leonharstburger floats peacefully on water in the closing scene with the daisies floating alongside him. I know I did not want these films to end and look forward to floating on in more collaborations of this marvellous team.

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