The audience is invited into a supernatural world. White plastic sheeting obscures the black walls of the Basement Theatre, and the dancers are adorned in white cotton. The crinkling sound of the material punctuates intervals of brown and white noise, silence, and rhythmic electronic that make up the music score. This is a world of dynamic entanglements as expressed by the entwined draping of semi-transparent sheets. 

Our Jurisdiction holds time hostage; a distortion reiterated in movement. The choreography cycles through gestures that become fresher with each pass and hypnotically soothe my usual impatience—by no means a small feat. The show starts with a film; a dancer walks towards camera from a distance along an overcast Piha beach. There is a satisfaction as our anticipation quietly builds over the long duration of the shot. That same gentle use of time is echoed across distinctive sections: body isolations in total unison, a dynamic solo highlighting Emma Broad’s unique presence, a duet that expresses tender exploratory touch, a cheeky moment to pop music in another language… all (and more) strategically paced and compellingly recurrent. 

Dancers enter the stage and fall into a seamless unison of body isolations. Movement that starts percussively, moving rhythmically through gestures, begins to metamorphosize into a vibrant flow. The plastic sheets become a second skin to be adorned and shed at key moments of the dancers’ journey, resembling different selves fading into each other. In one section, ethereal plastic dresses are carefully plucked from the ceiling and transform the dancers into three drifting swirling figures.

It takes a skillful choreographer to create a rehearsal environment that supports relationship and community as Deborah Fletcher has. I can sense love and trust rooted in the choreographic process. The dancers move with an assurance and synchronicity that only comes with familiarity and contentment. Three bodies move in sync as if they are one body and one body performing a solo becomes many. (I later learned that the trio, Emma Broad, Evie Logan, and Lulu Qiu, relationship was forged in the fires of university.) 

This robust collaboration of the contributing artists has created a provoking journey through an evocative transient world. I could inhabit this world much longer than the current run time – to enjoy sitting deeper into the silences, stillness, and choreographed cycles that made this work precious. That kind of peace is so often lost and overlooked. 

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