Christchurch’s Hagley Dance Company, located at Hagley College on the fringe of the central city, provides a training ground for young dancers who have completed secondary study but who have yet to transition to a full time tertiary dance programme.  With an annual intake of around six to eight students, the company, directed by Naressa Gamble, provides students with a variety of performance and choreographic opportunities during the course of their studies, culminating in an end-of-year show.  The first of these is the annual In Situ Project, which, as its name suggests, explores spaces around the college campus rather than taking place in a conventional studio or theatre.   This year the programme is scheduled slightly earlier than usual and so took place during full daylight rather than across the transitional twilight zone.  This eliminated the need for lighting but it inevitably diminished the possibilities for atmospheric effects that the early evening performances offered.  This year’s performance also broke new ground by introducing year 13 students from the college’s dance programme as participants.  As the year’s opening programme it was appropriate that inspiration was drawn from Hagley College’s aim of nurturing the young in accordance with its ethos, “Ka pua wai te koru, te purawi te tangata”, “as the koru opens, so too does the person”.

The company’s six dancers for 2018 were reduced to five as the result of injury to one of their number so the presence of the year 13 students was additionally helpful in filling out the programme.  The opening solo was choreographed and performed by company member, Tracey Sanders, and set the scene by using the veil, traditionally associated with belly dancing, to explore the unfolding of the Koru motif.  The hazards of outdoor performance came into play as the blustery wind made manipulating the veil a treacherous exercise but Sanders maintained her composure throughout in spite of the frustrations of unplanned effects.  This was followed by the full company performance of Lean, an extract from Fleur de Thier’s larger work, Tipping the Balance, performed by Rebound Dance Company in 2017.  Assembled against a blank concrete exterior wall the dancers explored the body’s ability to resist and be supported by this immovable object.  This piece is a demanding exercise for inexperienced dancers who have not yet fully developed their individual capacities for movement and expressive gesture and the resulting performance is somewhat underpowered.

More effective was Naressa Gamble’s Inside, a piece that is the polar opposite in concept from Lean.  The work commenced in an apparently empty dance studio, empty, that is, except for a triple height set of cupboards.  In the darkened space fingers slithered from barely opened cupboard doors, stimulating questions of just how many bodies were crammed inside.  As the work developed doors were fully opened and dancers moved from one level to another, pushing against and rotating themselves within the confining walls and ceilings.  Confronted by these restrictive boundaries and a stage that was, in effect, only just big enough to physically contain them, the four dancers were able to discover greater expressive capacities than when free to move in a much larger space.

Restrictive space was also the theme for the following piece by year 13 students Jackie Jemmett and Jessie Rickard.  Utilising a narrow alley between two buildings closed off at one end by a security fence topped with barbed wire, it was entitled The Boy in Stripped Pyjamas.  Influenced by the film of the same name, the piece juxtaposed two dancers on either side of the fence, their interactions culminating in the overcoming of the barrier between them in a further reference to the College’s koru theme of an older plant protecting a younger.

Year 13 students also choreographed and performed River, situated in a parking lot that the audience observed from the first floor of an adjacent building.  In this undefined space the presence of the four dancers barely registered at first but they gradually came together as a cohesive group, representing their shared experiences as students of dance at the college before they each go their separate ways in the life on finishing school. Given the location, the surprise twist at the end of one dancer hoping into a little yellow car and driving off, should not have been so unexpected.

The practice of contrasting large with small spaces continued with Drawing The Line, a duet for company members, Kereana Mosen and Madi Tumataroa.  Seated on either side of a table at the end of a narrow corridor, the two performers responded to one another’s movements across a line that bisected the space.  Yet, to fully explore this environment connection and co-operation across this line is necessary, allowing, both literally and metaphorically, for greater heights to be reached than one person is capable of on their own. 

Returning to ground level and outdoors, Dana Dawson’s Risk invited us to contemplate how everyday experience can be heightened by treating commonplace actions, such as descending a ramp and entering a doorway, in new ways, while Imogen Macintosh utilised a corner shelter as a framework for a vigorous response to a defined space in Frame.  Gisele Proud and Phoebe Hazard, both year 13 dancers, made use of the stage provided by the veranda of a wooden villa to interact with both the features of the house as well as with each other in a delicate piece called Incrementum.  The final year 13 offering is Follow Me, Follow Me, Follow Me… Home, jointly choreographed and performed by Olivia Messenger, Ash Stephens and Ayesha Turner-Prattley,in which individual differences and group dynamics are explored. 

Returning to where the circuit of the campus began the four remaining company members performed Dana Dawson’s Link on the steps of college’s theatre.  It was a fitting location for a work intended to express the newfound unity between this group of young performers.  By year’s end they will, no doubt, have advanced well beyond these steps to occupy, with assurance, the stage itself.

In Situ provides a valuable opportunity for Hagley’s students to show friends, family and supporters what they have achieved in less than a term of study. It also encourages them to think of dance as something that takes place, not just in the rarefied environment of dedicated performance spaces, but in the everyday world.  Forcing them to react to a variety of spaces, it also requires them to consider, as both choreographers and performers, the ways in which differing environments influence they way we move.  For the dancers it is a valuable pedagogical exercise while for their audience it is a chance to offer encouragement as well as to share in their sense of discovery.

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