PRIME (2014)
Q Theatre Loft, 305 Queen St, Auckland
10/10/2014 - 12/10/2014
Production Details
- Friday 10 October 2014, 06:30pm – 07:45pm
- Saturday 11 October 2014, 06:30pm – 07:45pm
- Sunday 12 October 2014, 06:30pm – 07:45pm
FILM SERIES #1 PRESENTATION
Authors Carol Brown, Anne Niemetz, & Margie Medlin
Performers Zahra Killeen-Chance & Julie van Renen
Sound Design Russell Scoones
Interactive Sound Anne Niemetz
Controlling a hybrid sense-machine two women splice between past and future film scenes, fragments of lost film culture emerge from archives, ancient myths, cultural and historical facts are squeezed into a digital fiction. In the era of the ceaseless upgrade, their nostalgic longings lead them to discover a new sense of purpose in the abandoned practice of the projectionist as they replay, unwind and sound its ‘magic’.
Carol Brown has over twenty years experience performing, choreographing and teaching internationally.
Anne Niemetz is a media artist and designer working with video, audio, installation and wearable technology.
Margie Medlin is an artist and cultural curator working in the field of dance and the moving image.
HINE-AHU-ONE
Choreographer Merenia Gray
Company Merenia Gray Dance Theatre
Performers Olivia McGregor
Director of Photography and Editor Jeremy Brick
Costume Design Merenia Gray
Composer, Sound Design and Audio Mixer Emile de la Rey
Music Pukaea – Oceania Hinewehi Mahi and Jaz Coleman. Angel – composed and performed by Rubie Starkie, Arranged by Jeremy Brick
The goddesses Hine – Ahu – One and Aphrodite, inspire this work.
Both deities are born of the elements. Hine –Ahu – One is the first Maori woman created by Tane on the beach at Kurawaka. Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranus’ genitals and threw them into the sea, and she arose from the sea foam (aphros).
Thank you to the creative team who gave so much to bring this film into light.
This work is dedicated to my mother Tiahuia Gray.
Merenia Gray (A.R.A.D) (A.I.S.T.D), is one of New Zealand’s top choreographers . She has had 25 years professional experience as a director, choreographer, dancer and teacher since graduating from the New Zealand School of Dance in 1990.
THE FALLEN MYSTERY
Choreographer Zahra Killeen-Chance
Performers Lisa Greenfield, Zahra Killeen-Chance & Paul Young
Music L.A. Noire Soundtrack: Menu Theme – Andy Hale
The Fallen Mystery takes the audience into a mysterious world of illusion and false identities. Drawing on 1940s-50s Film Noir conventions, the work explores the ambiguous flux between the light and dark aspects of human nature, and what it means to live with this doubleness within ourselves.
Zahra Killeen-Chance graduated with a Diploma of Dance Performance in Contemporary Dance from the New Zealand School of Dance 2008, and with a Postgraduate Diploma in Dance (Distinction) from The University of Auckland 2011. Zahra is an award winning choreographer and dancer, and her awards include: Supreme Winner, Short and Sweet Dance Festival 2012; Auckland Outstanding Choreography, Critic’s Survey 2012, DANZ Quarterly; and Best Emerging Choreographer, Best of Auckland 2012, Metro Magazine.
REVEAL
Choreographer Julia Mage’au Gray
Company Sunameke Productions
Performer Julia Mage’au Gray
Sound J.Mangohig & J.M.Gray
From the top of their heads to the tips of their toes, our Grandmothers were tattooed. They were women of power and standing. Where did they go? This Solo Work created by Julia Gray of Sunameke Productions, confronts the foreign ideas of beauty placed upon Melanesian women of Central Province, Papua New Guinea. Over time, the loss of our tattoo practice, reflecting the stripping of our women’s’ strength. ‘Reveal’ lets you in on our “Secret business”.
Julia Mage’au Gray. “From old to new old, that’s the way we go forward…” As Artistic Director of Sunameke productions, creative expression has come in the form of different media and for Julia as a Pasifika artist; it is in the diverse realms of dance, film, photography, music and tattoo.
LUNG TREE
Choreographer Lyne Pringle & Sacha Copland
Company Bipeds
Performers Lyne Pringle
Performers on Video Sacha Copland with volunteers and staff at the Pah Homestead.
Animation & Sound Design Lyne Pringle
In 2012 Lynne spent 3 months with the trees at the Pah Homestead in Auckland. Lung Tree is a dance for all the tree huggers in the world and for people who have not yet been privy to their language. Lung Tree is a poem for the elegant creators of our atmosphere. The work was developed with support from The Wallace Arts Trust, Otago University and Tarrant Dance Studios.
Lyne Pringle has over 30 years of experience working as a dance/theatre artist and is deeply committed to the development of New Zealand performing arts. She is the Artistic Director of Bipeds, a company which collaborates with particular communities to create dance/theatre works that contemplate impacts on our environment.
Dance , Film ,
75 mins
Mature, magnificent, matriarchal
Review by Dr Linda Ashley 11th Oct 2014
Prime has class written right the way through it. Choices of accompaniment, performance quality, choreographic editing, balance and pace, and production values almost pitch perfect. Mixing the different languages of film, live dance, sound, spoken word and body art (tattooing) were also through-lines. There were touches of edginess and some sublime solo work.
Lung Tree (Lyne Pringle & Sacha Copland) develops a theatre piece from site-specific work in residency at Pah Homestead, and nicely acknowledges the latter with a glimpse of the public dancing round the trees. Onscreen animation and sound design tastefully enhance and support the performance. Telling the trees’ stories vividly, endlessly rich gestural language fascinates and movement through the space makes full use of a wider and thoughtfully inventive vocabulary. Lyne Pringle is the total package, the supernova of dancing environmental political statement and of solo performance. Living treasures, trees and Lung Tree that is, are gifts that keep on giving. Our green-fingered choreographer gifted two native saplings to lucky audience members with instructions on planting after the show.
Reveal (Julia Mage’au Gray), danced in different tongues, is also a politically edgy solo. Gray engages us in time travel, dancing an intriguing composition of vocabularies within her personal space under an overhead light. A commanding performance, intensely personal whilst loyal to her Pacific roots. Documentary photos and interviews are co-ordinated smoothly to enrich her dancing. Her lament for the loss of traditional tattooing and the community’s ancestral connections that it represents, as colonial aesthetics rubbed it out for women in Central Province, Papua New Guinea, is made all the more poignant by the deceptive ease with which she slips in and out of a variety of costumes. Costuming includes modern Western dress, traditional and her skin.
Goddesses from Māori and European cultures inspire Hine-Ahu-One (Merenia Gray), a beautiful dance film (editor Jeremy Brick). Solo dancer, Olivia McGregor has limbs that seem to go on forever. The rippling, sinewy choreography brings out the very best of her and of the ocean backdrop. Born from the ocean, mythic moments of Māori warrior princess juxtapose with Isadora Duncan at a bi-cultural intersection. Sound design (Emile de la Rey) is suitably divine.
Film Series #1 Presentation (Carol Brown, Margie Medlin, Anne Niemetz, Russell Scoones) Opening with an intense view in a rear view mirror we are sent back to a lost utopian Godzone in a Tardis-like time machine. Sepia educational archive film is somewhat ironically foregrounded with some good old-fashioned, retro chair dancing and enigmatic contemporary dance in which a Darwinian tale of reptilian evolution into a digital future is re-enacted, danced with a suitably intriguing attitude by Zahra Killeen-Chance and Julie van Renen.
Pink Panther meets The Maltese Falcon in The Fallen Mystery (Zahra Killeen-Chance) with the choreogapher joining dancers Lisa Greenfield and Paul Young (the only Y chromosome of the evening). Parody relies on precise comic timing and for me this dance shows glimpses of it but has potential for a more even spread. An outside eye, improved lighting and costume could provide just what’s needed. Trench coats and bare legs seemed just wrong on so many levels.
I came away feeling that all is not well with Mother Earth. In the reflections on nature, women, loss, life and environment, these six dances present the cutting edge of what’s going wrong in diverse ways. Prime ‘14 a formidable programme – mature, magnificent, matriarchal X-Factor.
Postcript
Prime has become a female programme in the last few Tempo seasons. Meanwhile, are all the Y Chromosome choreographers and performers in Never-Never-Land? A tricky issue for Festival programmers, balancing genders, ages and box office. I’m just raising this because as a reviewer that is what I’m not paid to do. If you fancy discussing this or other issues about reviewing come along and have your say Off the Record, 4pm Q Theatre Vault.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments
Linda Ashley October 12th, 2014
Dear Geni
Thank you for reading my review thoughtfully! It is always a relief when us reviewers actually feel that someone is listening. You deserve a response because you have taken the time to post your thoughts. So here is my response.
It would have been great to have your input at Off The Record yesterday because I could have discussed this with you face to face and in so doing we would have covered several of the topics that were addressed yesterday. So here are a few of those. First a review is only one person's interpretation and dances/programmes will no doubt be interpreted differently to some extent by each viewer; your interpretation is as valid as mine and the next person's and so forth. Second, not everything a reviewer thinks, feels and sees is in one review because in the interests of public readership although there is no word limit of theatreview most reviewers err on around 500 words as being appropriate. So there were lots of things missing from my review and many thoughts compressed into short sentences.
Now for some specific comments to answer your response.
Yes there were only 5 dances. 5 in the programme on and stage and in my review. Not sure what the issue is there but just saying.
The 'X-Factor' referred to Xchromosome as opposed to Y and my issue here is with tempo programming. I have openly spoken to them about this. I'm not sure how many Prime programmes you've seen before but they have become more and more female in terms of choreographers and performers. Meanwhile Y Chromosome (which I saw last nght) is programmed without the 'Prime' bracket and yet features amongst the many many dances work from Prime male choreographers. So hence Never-Never-Land which is from the book by Barrie "Peter Pan" and is a place where people never grow old. This is NOT a judgement on the performers in YC it is more directed at the programmers (hence why it is a postscript and not within the main reveiw) trying to suggest that the Prime male choreographer should be in 'Prime'. If this happened there would be a greater ying yang balance in Prime.
I did not make a sexist statement in my review about certain qualities of the human condition being the domain of one gender or another. I commented that the particular programme had an overall feel.
I agree and think that my review was clear that Prime was a very successful programme. I saw YChromosome last night and that too was maginficent. The two shows were maginficient in different ways.
WHat I actually said in my review was that the shared qualities were loss, longing, life, nature, women because I interpreted these as features that were scattered through the pieces. Nostalia - a form of loss over time/past (Brown, Gray, Killeen-chance, Pringle), nature (Pringle, Gray [film], women (all of them), life (all of them) etc etc. Just my take and there is not time to articulate all of this response to you - as I have to go soon.
The film noir piece - I saw this done many years ago in the most clever and incise manner. That choreography set the bar very high for me when watching Fallen Mystery. I felt that the audience laughter (always an odd thing and very personal) was laughing not with the choreography but because they knew the dancers and thought that because they knew the dance was supposed to be funny so they obliged. On the second show apparently nobody laughed. So my point about comic timing I stand by and we may have to agree to differ. As for the costume - again see my previous remark. I agree wholeheartedly with you about dancing in undies - and good to know that I am not alone in this too!
Theatreview is always looking for new reviewers so if you feel inclined and can justify doing a few hours work for no dosh then you could contact Raewyn and then you could have your interpretations in the mix.
Apologies if there are spelling mistakes and typos in my response but i do not have a spare hour to proof read and edit and all the rest of the stuff that a reviewer usually does before posting.
I don't know you but if you know who I am please feel free to come and say hi if you see me at tempo over the next week or so. Always happy to chat about dance. Fascinating isn't it? Linda
geni October 11th, 2014
I am not in agreement with lumping the five (I counted only 5) performances in the Prime Program as some statement on mother nature or the "X" factor. In my view, only one dance was focused on women's cultural dignity and heritage but I felt all the dances could speak to the yin of males and females alike. If the reviewer deems hope, nature, protectiveness, writhing, humour and survival, only the domain of females, I have to disagree. In fact, I wish choreographers could also show more yang, energy, aggressiveness and violence that real women actually experience every day. But that is up to the choreographer and the Tempo selection committee. As for this Prime '14 being a mature program, I agree. The majority of the audience appeared to be over 50, myself included. Magnificent? I would say you didn't see Y Chromozome. Matriarchal X factor? It was not female focused, but most of the performers were women. I would say that each piece of choreography focused on what was important to the the choreographer. I was just pleased to be able to see what was on the choreographer's mind. On the whole, Prime was satisfying show.
As for Zahra Killee-Chance's piece, trench coats and a film noir lighting was all that was needed for this humourous interlude. Bare legs under a trench coat? salacious? not likely, I saw black undies! (I have to confess, I do get annoyed that many dances are done in only undies, but that is my problem.)
Postscript
I am not quite sure what is meant by "Y Chromosome choreographers and performer in Never-Never-Land". All I can say is Y Chromosome brings alot energy to the program to say the least. A few of the choreographer in Y are female.)