He Toi Hou is the branch of Kia Mau Festival that offers a platform for premiere performances of innovative art works. It seems important to front-foot a review of Love Letterz with this definition because the show promotes itself as cabaret, and that label doesn’t always feel like it fits. Imagine instead the salon that eventually gave rise to cabaret and the variety show. Then update it with contemporary technology and language. What emerges is something collegial, mindful, steeped in art and art-music references.

Do not expect any audience banter with a friendly MC. The performances take place in Te Whaea’s basement theatre, a snug black box tucked away from the world. The only drinking that takes place is mimed by mezzo-soprano Cadence Chung in a moment of performed vulnerability while she calmly deconstructs a song cycle, wielding her own composition and Jackson McCarthy’s wry libretto against the traditional Lieder format. Instead of a ritzy sparkle and a welcoming fanfare, the audience gets a ‘cold open’ with a cold clarinet reed and the no-holds-barred instrumental dialogue of Estella Wallace’s latest chamber composition.

Poetry, and love poetry specifically, is the unifying theme for the string of performances. A secondary theme emerges, one of mixing and struggling contrasts. Modern-day scenes and sentiments tussle with the stock imagery and references of bourgeois culture and colonising norms. Class and social tension comes up repeatedly in different guises, some overt and external, some insidious and inward-facing. The creators inevitably confront themselves through the doorways of identities: their lives as artists, their movements and conversations as participants in cultures that either erode away under their feet or are kept cordoned off from a full connection.

The ‘love’ part of the programme becomes less important and less interesting than the sense of longing, displacement and yearning that lurks somewhere in all the pieces. The interplay of Wallace’s duet refuses to settle into twee harmony. The hands of the piano part revert to a default of limerent separation, the upper part icily chromatic while the left hand grumbles out tantrums. The complex clarinet part flutters anxiously like a bird at a window, making the most of the instrument’s textural versatility. The Chung/McCarthy collaboration bears all the hallmarks of youth and creativity trying to break in and crack the code of institutional forms, toying with high art from an outsider’s perspective. It’s uncomfortably relatable, in a forgivingly funny sort of way.

Poet and performer Joshua Toumu’a grapples with inner and outer worlds that seem intent on uprooting him. He puts his emotional authenticity front and centre, a brave display of the self that pays off by demanding sincerity from his audience in return. His work is full of clever weaving. Toumu’a has a clear love of poetic form, as well as an awareness of his place in Aotearoa’s literary landscape. He underscores his message with the emotional beats of a discreet live string ensemble, while he projects images and letters across his body. It seems fitting that Toumu’a stands firm in the centre of his poems while fighting not to be overwhelmed by mixed-media convolutions. His segment is the most mature, and the clearest about what it is trying to convey.

Dancer Weichu Huang draws upon grounding gestural leitmotifs whose repetition feels like it may draw on non-Western Classical dance traditions – though it is also reminiscent of stimming at times. Huang’s movement follows a cycle of athletic yearning that returns to comforting stillness. They are a joy to watch throughout. The almost epic poetic narrative arranged by sound artist Kassandra Wang propels Huang through the course of an uptown/ downtown romantic adventure. The lighting and sound work here is wonderfully immersive and brings out the best in both Huang’s confident dance style and Wang’s editing skills.

It would be reductive to say that this is a show by artists and art students for other art students. Put together, these pieces have power and authenticity. They deserve a broader audience. Love Letterz feels like a welcome break from the haste and overwhelm of the capital’s usual performance scene. Any of these artists is worth watching individually. By working together as a collective – by yearning together – they could gain enough momentum to break through and create something new in Aotearoa’s creative culture. That would be very interesting to watch.

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