The Footnote Forte season of 2008 brought us three distinctive contemporary works from New Zealand women choreographers, geographically based across the globe: Malia Johnson in New Zealand, Raewyn Hill in Hong Kong and Claire O’Neill in Brussels. It was great to see the Footnote dancers relish the challenge these choreographies gave them as evidenced in their assured performance of all three.

It was pleasing to see The False Waltz performed in this season. Malia Johnson takes an embrace and cleverly manipulates it in various ways such as a rolling embrace along the floor, a couple hugging and travelling with one pair dangling. The piece has an economic use of movement material however it is skillfully crafted, restating the embrace in many ways each time with the intensity. I found when watching this piece there was something curious and comforting at the same time.

Nest, a new work by Raewyn Hill, took its inspiration from a park in Hong Kong where men take their caged birds and place them strategically in rows in the hope these songbirds will sing. This trio dance clothed, the two male dancers in a dark suit jacket and trousers in sharp contrast to the female dancer, whom I took to symbolise the bird, in a beautiful deep sea green aquamarine flowing dress. The trio begin to move, rising and sinking, weaving over, under and around one another seamlessly as they drifted across the stage.

This harmony is shattered as the female dancer repeatedly falls backwards only to be caught before hitting the floor -perhaps it is too much beyond the cage enclosure. The piece concludes with the female dancing a solo, a broken soul on the floor, repeating the flexed foot single leg motif poignantly. What price is freedom!

A lone trumpeter enters the auditorium and plays Taps, a military tune to herald the day, as we gaze on an empty stage defrocked on both sides. Mtyland by Claire O’Neill begins; one by one the dancers introduce themselves through very quirky movement phrases, with a lurching of balance motif included in each. With these characters relationships form, change and dissolve as the collages are manipulated and transformed, reshuffling our reference points throughout the piece.

Text is interspersed with movement and both inform each other, painting the empty space, filling it and then undercutting, to begin again with different voices. Phrases strike a cord- I’m the real one; She always does this – as these characters directly engage the audience. One particular challenge from Jeremy requested that we leave the auditorium and this request got more and more insistent. 

Like Lost Property (2005) this piece seems to be a series of ideas, random events sometimes linked or at other times they collide against one another in complete discord. Snatched references to war punctured my skin several times during this piece. Clare’s trade mark dance dynamic, enthused with her years abroad, appear sparingly. But I enjoyed the couple of moments in the piece of what might be called Euro trash -hard driving music and hard hitting movement particularly the unison double arm circling.

In the later stages there seemed to me to be several false endings and I found it hard to sustain my interest for the entirety. The piece finally ends in a living room – old people’s home; student flat perhaps? – with the same character from the beginning on the floor in PJs and a torn dressing gown: vulnerable. 

To bear witness to this very European sensibility was invigorating, challenging yet exciting. I certainly heard you and the way you filled this empty space Clare O’Neill, leaving me with many fragments, fresh voices, unanswered questions and a longing to see more of your work.

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The Footnote Forte season for 2008 consisted of three dance pieces: The False Waltz, Nest and Mtyland.

The False Waltz premiered in April of 2008 and has been included in a previous performance. As such I already knew that I like the choreography and the music for the piece and was prepared to sit back and enjoy. The False Waltz lived up to my expectations entirely. The dancing was sharp, the movement within the piece fluid and emotive. All six dancers performed their parts exceptionally well and worked well together to create an intimate and intense atmosphere. Eden Mulholland’s music had depth and created contrast within the repetition. [More]

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Deirdre Tarrant continues to make bold and risky choices for Footnote Dance Company as she strives for her vision of innovation and excellence. This season the company arrives at an exhilarating new level.

Deirdre has been planning this homecoming season for choreographer Claire O’Neil for over three years – good things are worth waiting for! Claire has been based in Brussels for several years honing her craft and cooking up the gem Mtyland. We last saw her work Lost Property in 2005; there is an enormous development since then with more clarity and focus in her intentions.

The Opera House Stage is rendered wingless, an expansive white space as the strains of ‘The Last Post’ (actually the American version, ‘Taps’) played live from one of the boxes floats over the still murmuring audience. An inspired beginning that immediately transports me into a sunset on Belgium’s killing fields.

Baroque music light heartedly introduces the company and there is an immediate connection with the audience – we are invited into the work in a refreshing way, this is not about sitting back and observing.

Throughout there are sprinklings of text – some sections more successful than others – that give us some insight into the rationale of the work and provide an access route to the personalities of the performers. It is pleasing to experience these dancers as ‘real’ people rather than through the slightly sugary veneer that often coats dance. O’Neil succeeds in finding ‘genuine gestures and states’ consequently the choreography holds interest for me; there are new movements born in the space.

There are lots of clever devices providing surprises and quick changes of mood and pace. At one point Anita Hunziker staggers drunk with despair then is cleverly manipulated into strident defiance with a chorus matching her changes of mood.

O’Neil teases apart the liminal space between emotional states, toys with dualities such as ‘attack and defence, emptiness and fullness’ to reveal a new perspective on the quest to find an ’emptiness (openness, acceptance) in a full world’.

The theme of war is treated gently, flickering in the texture of the work. At various times all the performers exercise their right to hold the space and once again the mood can twist from light-hearted humour to painful dysfunction. The bones of this work are strong. Fed by O’Neil’s dance lineage in NZ and the innovators she has worked with and seen in action in Europe, her strengths as a ‘director’ really shine through.

Great use of solo performer juxtaposed against a chorus, dynamic sense of foreground and background, clever segues, wonderful sense of rhythm, stillness and play, an understanding of how to portray the human psyche through scenes and movement and an ability to put forward provocations to the dancers that will yield poignant sequences are all strong tools in her kit. There are lots of flung untethered moments that she manages to weave back into the whole.

Unlike Lost Property (2003)this work seemed more accessible to this particular audience, the ‘story’ clearer. It helps to be working with Footnote who are such a tight, incredible unit these days; each dancer shines very uniquely as they relish a chance to let their hair down and dive into the challenges of the choreography. The whole team has achieved an impressive amount in a small creative period. My appreciation and respect for this company of exceedingly talented dancers just continues to grow.

Some of the group movement sequences to pounding Battles tracks seethe with a twitching pent up fury and menace.

Wiles of War – 36 Military Strategies of Ancient China provides an inspiration with 10 movements portrayed. A soundscape from long time collaborator Herman Martin and experimental band Battles is compelling and appropriate. Lighting by Maia Whittet beautifully propels shifts of mood between scenes. It goes from blood red to serene sky blue shining on humans dropping like flies.

The piece loses a bit of shape towards the end and just as I am wondering how she will wrap it up, I am drawn cleverly into a domestic scene where it is as if a family of sorts experiences the world only through what they see in the media. Quite sad. I am unsure how this reflects the ‘openness and acceptance’ strived for in the central thesis of the work but I also realise this is a truth for many people. Sobering.

In Claire’s own words, “How can we remove as much ‘noise’ from our environment to find a more pure sense of opinion, belief and attitude? What is hidden and revealed in the communal gathering? Our personal censorship system. Are we comfortable with not much…do we need ‘noise’ and business to feel functional, a part of a bigger picture … Hermit verses socialite.”

The evening begins with two other works.

Malia Johnston’s The False Waltz is performed well by the company and as I have said previously it is a strong idea with lighting that really accentuates the use of the dancers legs. I would like to see the work developed and perhaps re-ordered so that it can find a greater sense of build and internal logic.

Nest, a new work by Raewyn Hill, who is currently Artist in Residence at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, arose from a visit by Footnote to the Academy in June.  Inspired by the song of a caged bird, it begins in stillness, then into an over, under and around movement sequence as the lights build. Interesting music is by David Long.

The head leads movements and we are in the familiar territory of ‘forced arch’ choreography as this luscious trio, Erynne Gleeson, Jeremy Poi and Jesse Wikiriwhi weave through gestures of tender support. They are gorgeously fluid as they melt in and out of the floor. Fall and recovery then into some conventional male female lifts as the music builds.

They leave and fold and return to each as the men create structures for the woman to climb upon before she is thrown in a pleasing whirlwind of back ripples. This is fantastic dancing even if some of the lifts are a bit clunky.

From my perspective this is well tilled territory choreographically, very beautiful, but lacking in original movement sequences and content as the female dancer is left to flail/writhe, flightless on the floor after the departure of the men. As Hill forges a well-deserved international career, no doubt these ideas will be developed further in future works.

Once again Congratulations! to the Footnote team for a highly satisfying evening of dance.

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