For one night only, Saturday 29 March 2025 at the Glenroy Auditorium during the Dunedin Arts Festival, a who’s who of Ōtepoti Dunedin’s creative practitioners and patrons were treated to a tour de force presentation of contemporary Māori storytelling through kanikani (dance) on digitally-enhanced film, accompanied by live and pre-mixed taoka puoro (traditional wind and percussion instruments).  Presented in two parts, Pōtaka Nautilus & Pepe was choreographed and designed by Good Company Arts, who are artistic director Daniel Belton with partner and creative producer Donnine Harrison, supported by an ever-evolving multi-national cohort of artistic collaborators.  This new offering was a stand-out of the Festival programme, cementing the shift in recent years away from the strictly classical schedules of yore towards one more culturally representative of the local population. 

The scene is set by a stark projection of the titles of the two acts upon the back wall of the Auditorium’s stage, with two tables displaying an array of taoka puoro on the diagonal, downstage left and downstage right. Amplified sound comes from two large speakers either side of the stage, drawing the excited audience’s attention to the front.

Following an invitation from Belton for the audience to fully immerse themselves into the imminent “meditative” experience, the performance begins with a gentle adagio karakia sung in sweet family harmony by the featured taoka puoro ensemble.

Pōtaka Nautilus begins with a projection of six dancers clad in indigo navigating back and forth across a digital stage backgrounded by an ethereal nautilus soundshell, their appearances multiplying and shrinking in numbers like a fluid Fibonacci sequence, shrouded by strings that read as star-trails.  A pulsing and grinding prerecorded soundtrack is overlaid in real time by Te Waipounamu’s leading exponents of taoka puoro, especially (in this narrative) shell whistles and trumpets of varying sizes.  Somewhere in the mix is cello, the Western canon’s human voice, bringing the undeniable Pākehā component of our whakapapa into the kōrero.  The performance’s audio and visual components intertwine and twist in celebration of the spiral form that underpins our understanding of our world, and our minor role in the universe.  Choreography, film design and score work in unison, swinging out and back in an immensely satisfying way that like any epic EDM (electronic dance music) experience could go on all night and still make complete sense. 

The second act, Pepe, celebrates Hineraukatauri, the atua of music, manifest as the endemic common bag moth, pū a Raukatauri.  Sounds of raw breath and lilting kōauau, nguru and pūtōrino (traditional flutes) loop and synch with live and sampled beats, somewhat compressed in imitation of the close but breathable space of the bag moth’s silk cocoon.  On screen, a single dancer paces out this potential, dressed in bespoke raranga (woven) harakeke accoutrements that are instantly recognisable as moth-like.  Belton’s signature floating, climbing, swirling particulate forms surge around the film in time with the knocking and respiratory rhythm set by the music, calling to mind dust and singularity; the pulse of atoms, the endless spiral of the cosmos.  Fringe particles morph into backdrops of silken cases and topographies akin to electron micrographs.  Universal balance is further represented by the changing male-female voices of the pūtōrino, skilfully and seamlessly played live in concert with other wind instruments and with poi and other percussive taoka puoro.  Inferences of the closeness and interwovenness of te taiao (nature) abound, surfacing organically and with subtlety, leaving the audience to decide how to respond to the narrative, which on this occasion is rising as one in rapturous applause.  

Overall, an immersive, richly stimulating and uplifting evening that has exploded any preconceptions this reviewer held about Festival theatre.  Long may exciting contemporary Māori compositions such as these, especially those immediately relevant to the locale and the local people, find their way to the Dunedin Arts Festival stage.

Pōtaka Nautilus credits

Live Musicians
Mahina-Ina Kingi-Kaui
Ariana Tikao
Dr Ruby Solly
Alistair Fraser

Live Film Projection
Daniel Belton

Live Audio Engineer
Justin Cederholm

Taoka Puoro Recordings (Ariana Tikao + Alistair Fraser)
Pūtātara
Kōauau pūpū harakeke
Kōauau būbū toitoi
Tumutumu akaaka
Rarā kotakota
Tumutumu pakoha
Tumutumu kōhatu
Kōauau toroa iti
Porotiti tohorā
Tumutumu upokohue
Karaka weka
Rarā hue iti
Ipu kōrero
Pūrerehua

Cello Recordings
Paul Mitchell

Music Advisor
Dame Gillian Whitehead

Dance + Choreography Rōpū
Amit Noy
Christina Guieb
Samara Reweti
Airu Matsuda

Kaitiaki Movement Artist
Taane Mete

Raranga Harakeke Craft (Kahu Collective)
Corabelle Summerton
Lisa Harding
Cathy Payne

Dance Couture
Kowtow

3D Printing + Objects
Stuart Foster
Daniel Belton
Jac Grenfell

Electronic Music Score
Kano

Ambisonics
Zensonic
DigiKiln

Motion Graphics + VFX
Jac Grenfell
Patxi Araujo

Live + Film Lighting
Stuart Foster

Film Editor
Daniel Belton

Cinematography
Daniel Belton
Bradon McCaughey
Josef Belton

Film Sound Mastering
Daniel Belton
Dame Gillian Whitehead

Liveset AV Technical
Strawberry Sound
Bradon McCaughey

Live Cameras + Post
Bradon McCaughey

Concept + Director + Designer
Daniel Belton

Creative Producer
Donnine HarrisonProduction Studios
Good Company Arts

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Pōtaka Nautilus & Pepe from Good Company Arts at the Dunedin Arts Festival is a multi-genre collaborative showing of taonga pūoro performance and dance film with digital effects. We are invited into the space first by an apparently obligatory sponsorship plug from the festival director and then welcomed into the performance more appropriately by a karakia sung by Mahina Kingi-Kaui and Ariana Tikao, accompanied by flutes in the hands of Ruby Solly and Alistair Fraser. The sounds from the taonga pūoro are immediately entrancing and they urge me to both lean in and sit back all at once.

The first film to show is “Pōtaka Nautilus”, which features groups of dancers dressed in blue, dancing set phrases inside white digitally-animated shells. My first impression of the dance is that it is reminiscent of tai-chi, grounded and elemental. Phrases repeat, cycles ensue, birds are invoked and swirls and swishes are set to slow motion. My favourite scene has a hand-held camera intimately following a dance from super cool Taane Mete; it’s an analogue reprieve from otherwise digitalised environments. The dancers frequently dance with leaf-like shapes held in their hands, giving a sense of bird wings, gulls on a beach. The same shape I later recognise in the ghostly pūrerehua instrument played frequently throughout the hour. A waka or a cocoon are other associations, vessels that carry and protect forms of life.

Seed-shaped frames are stacked upon one another, each containing a universe. Some feature dancers, while others a sort of binary visual code or other mathematically-designed patterns, immediately recognisable as belonging to the South Pacific. This patterning motif is found also in the forms of the shells the dancers are placed within, in the masterful weaving by Kahu Collective that features on stage and on screen, as well as of course the beautifully and variously crafted taonga pūoro in the talented hands and mouths of the performers. It is a neat thread that weaves together the digital, the elemental and the living across multiple dimensions of performance and time and existence.

The second film is “Pepe”, featuring Nancy Wijohn as an androgynous character who I’m told in the show notes is a journeying embodiment of Hineraukatauri, the atua of musical instruments. Dark blues and blacks encase an electric dance with woven fan-like appendages that suggests the fluttering of a moth or the ruffled ritual of a bird. Our taonga pūoro artists performing live in front of us also feature in the digital realms of the film, accompanying the traveller on their journey. The incredible scales the long tones of taonga pūoro are able to call into awareness are powerful and unique. These artists with their instruments, their skill and their wairua evoke rhythms that are beyond those of an individualised human. They shatter that perception of yourself if it ever was there and coax you to dip a toe in the depth of cosmic expanse. In fact it makes the staid sterility of the proscenium arrangement the audience is locked into seem inappropriate. I want to lie down and feel warmth and breath around me. Nevertheless, the privilege of this literally awesome experience – recently returned to Aotearoa as I am after 12 years far away and imagining the work these tohunga have undertaken in that time – is not lost on me. Good Company Arts have achieved a special collaboration that feels especially generous and in reverence to life and living. The evening closes with a waiata from the musicians that members of the audience behind me join in on at the invitation of Kingi-Kaui. It’s a beautiful gesture that sends shivers up my spine.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer