The streets, sounds, and atmospheres of our teenage years leave indelible memories; friendships made, unrequited attractions and the sense of there ‘but for the grace of God go I’ for those who don’t survive the recklessness.  Ōtepoti-born Jeremy Beck’s Commentary on Dreaming is an epic homage to how the places we grow up in and the people we connect with, get under our skin and shape who we become. Opening Dunedin Arts Festival 2025, this world premier hosted in the iconic Regent Theatre, is an affirming and reflective work that deserves a longer run.  

Kinesthetic memories attach themselves to the places we danced, hung out, made out, and learned to drum our feet upon, in dialogue with this unsettled ground. Transforming this know-how through an expanded choreography, Company Beck take conceptual care in drawing our attention to the significance of gestures of assembly in building, co-imagining and co-creating liveable worlds in dark times. Structured through a series of solos, duets and group dances by a quintet of professional dancers and amplified by a collective of fifteen local people (all friends of Beck’s from his school days and social sports), the work defies the distinction between community and professional dance as it effortlessly revels in the nexus of place and people.

Toni De Goldi’s set design features a tall mast emanating a radiant pool of light, creating a locus of intensity across a raised platform.  Reminiscent of a rugby field at night when the lights are still on and the players have long left, we are invited into an intimate spectacle that moves between seasonal shifts in the weather and the time of the light.  

Vulnerability and solitude are counterpointed by the warm vibes and physical proximity of the collective. Mates share places and good times together, but they are also part of a wider cosmovision that connects them across generations and life forms. Are they gazing at the moon, waiting for the return of Saturn or missing someone or something they loved? The performers direct our attention to what lies beyond, in cosmological time, but also in our genealogical past-futures. This temporal multi-dimensionality is echoed in cross-generation duets. A masterful Kilda Northcott becomes entangled in an armslength duet with Olivia McGregor. Beck mirrors the movements of his young nephew, Harrison. 

Martyn Roberts’s chiaroscuro lighting demarcates zones of community, contact and separation.  At one moment, the group settles on the ground to watch a slipstream of a solo by Aloalii Tapu, whose legs wrap and interlace with effortless grace. In another moment a chorus crosses the stage moving beneath the light mast, tilting and pushing the air as if their bodies are resisting strong southerly winds.  The stage becomes a street as crossings become encounters incorporating greetings—back slaps, fist bumps, high fives—and the passing of a cyclist.

There is a no-frills simplicity in the costume design, with performers in casual hooded jackets, t-shirts, jeans, and trainers.  Underpinning their waves of choric action are featured solos:   Chris Ofanoa moving with low gravity nonchalance; Jemima Matsuda a blur of revolving arms; Olivia McGregor, in a quiet portrait of sustained yearning; Kilda Northcott’s backward swoon; and the elegant morphing of Aloalii Tapu.  Jeremy Beck’s interspliced solos are notable however for the way they contextualise his (dance) story: from bare-backed sculpting of air with extruding limbs, to revolutions of energy in turns, spins, and circumvolutions. The community of local performers provide the ballast for these moments but also take the lead at times, initiating changes of footwork and bodying forth a renewal of energy creating a sense of equitable collaboration.

Beck’s choreography looks both ways: towards an unknown future within an expanding cosmos, and into a past that haunts the present with its insistent rhythms and trace memories of danced lineages. In one of the more upbeat collective moments, the entire ensemble breaks into a disco routine that includes everyone in its embrace. Street dance, social dance and contemporary dance comingle in a context of cypher culture and ensemble dancing. There are many opportunities in the chains of braided movement for momentum to take hold and the dancing to become continuous, yet Beck, with his dramaturg Min Kyoung Lee, hold back from over-selling the motional impulses in favour of choreographic storytelling that is intrinsically relational.

Further performances of this newly minted full-length work can see it continue to ripen its dynamic range in the scaling of movement between intimacy and reach.  Dissonance can offset the harmonious gatherings, just as hints of forboding loss, counterweight the ‘good feels’.  The choreography can be even bolder in breaking with predicable patterns of flow and unison that differentiate the quintet as expert practitioners within an expanded kinesthetic milieu.

The beauty of this work is however in how it worlds the ordinary and the quintessentially local through embodied poetics with a sense of humour. Jemima Matsuda collapses on a couch only to have it moved for a party. A tradie – Daniel More – arrives with an aluminum ladder to fix some gnarly issue with the light mast. A group sits on a hill with a portable CD player listening for the night.  

Sonic artist Hominid (Benny Jennings) has created a textured sound world for the performers to inhabit. Integrating electronics, strings, archival vocal recordings, and tannoy systems, the affective tones of his materials are at times strange and disorienting. The light pole becomes a transmission mast, reminding us of the omnipresence of Mt. Cargill’s telecommunications tower and the interpenetration of our lives by sound waves. Their materialization as voices carrying distant pasts. The towering mast also signals a sense of menace that hangs in the air, perhaps most potently manifest in the inertness of the group as they lie face down, leaving one of their kin behind.Commentary on Dreaming brings attention to the power of community and place in relation.  The inclusion of Harrison Beck, Timothy Wight, Kane Colvin, Ciarain Gordon, Daniel More, Wetini Rapana, Cam Kahu Vercoe Groenen, Morgan Tomlinson, Trinity Maiden, Hahna Nichols, Diego Santagati, James Fletcher and William Moore in Company Beck is a clever move.  The creative team and collaborating performers celebrate this ‘big little city’ whilst offering a model to New Zealand audiences of how we can do dance differently, as socially responsive, place relational choreographic storytelling with a big heart. 

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