Quiet Rituals, while modest in scale, is rich in feeling, intricately exploring the thresholds of human grief, transformation, and sleep. The “triptych” of solo performances by Stella Grace Seawright, Jake Starrs, and Grace Ella Lewis made a valuable contribution to the 2025 Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance. The intimacy of the Te Auaha theatre and the authenticity of their performances, combined with impressive technical skill, create an atmosphere that is both cathartic and celebratory, yet deeply reflective all at once.

The evening begins with a lament to loss that is brutal in its honesty and complete in its surrender. Giving Over by Stella Grace Seawright is set against a simple backdrop: a clothesline stretches across the stage, holding a single white sheet that hovers above a blanket of clay dust. Seawright enters, shouldering a pile of pale sticks with stained red hands and matching pants. This provides a striking visual contrast to the muted colour tones of the setting. Gathering the sticks above her head, the sharp, brittle sound of them snapping reverberates through the silence. The sticks are cradled and washed down against her face. 

An impressive section of floor work follows, capturing the tumultuous nature of grief through writhing, twisting, and distortion. This movement feels as uncomfortable as the stick skirt that eventually forms around her.

In one particularly hypnotic moment, captured in the centre of a spotlight, Seawright’s gaze fixes on the audience as her expression shifts from an intense smile with teeth bared and eyes wide, to one of alarm, mouth open in almost a silent scream. 

What starts as a hum transforms into a lament – half song, half cry. It evolves into a piercing yet mesmerising wail that is startling in its vulnerability. 

Remnants of dust linger on the stage, traces of the visceral journey just witnessed. 

Stunned by the glare of the house lights following Seawright’s solo, the audience watches on as Jake Starrs casually enters the space, marking the start of his work, At 3 am I am here with the Red Dream. This clever and dynamic piece navigates fluctuating emotions born from love, heartbreak, and memory, balancing moments of playful energy with quieter, introspective ones. These tonal shifts are linked by fascinating transitions that build with satisfying momentum. 

The recurring act of undressing, dressing, and undressing again into a leotard and tights serves as a physical motif, reinforcing themes of vulnerability and transformation. A clear movement language that supports this emerges from repetitive chest and rib undulations, twisting gestures with splayed hands, and cumulative grooves. This is further supported by an effortless athleticism, which is particularly evident in the way he moves in and out of the floor. 

An especially engaging moment unfolds on the floor as Starrs creates a scene with finger puppets along his thigh. But it is the celebratory burst of confetti cannons, accompanied by theatrical music, that punctuates the piece with humour and delightful surprise.

It concludes with a subtle smirk from Starrs before his street clothes join the sheet on the clothesline. The audience is left quietly amused with a sense of satisfaction.

Dissolving the Apricot Corridor by Grace Ella Lewis is the final work of the evening. Rooted in themes of consciousness and liminality, the work exists in the in-between of waking and dreaming. It doesn’t just invite the audience in; it gently suspends them in a space that feels internal and vast. 

The piece opens hypnotically with a tall figure, Lewis, illuminated by warm stage light. She is draped in cascading layers of white fabric, her head wrapped in a beautiful mask. The rhythmic patter of rain and a soft hum accompany the scene. The drape is hung along the clothesline as Lewis melts slowly to the floor, her languid quality drawing the audience into a trance. 

In this state, she moves between meditative stillness and sudden twitching, resulting in something visually magnetic. However, her mesmerising fluidity is occasionally punctured by technical movements that work against the otherwise seamless aesthetic. 

Despite the anonymity and distance imposed by the mask, which transforms Lewis into something otherworldly, there are intimate moments of cradling, rocking and draping the fabric over her body that defy this barrier. The performance culminates in a repetitive flurry of movement. It closes with a dreamlike projection of warm light through a canopy of trees, casting a nostalgic and peaceful glow on the stage. 
Overall, each soloist possesses a strong sense of individuality, demonstrating great dedication to their craft and a courageous willingness to be honest and vulnerable. Quiet Rituals is deeply thoughtful and offers subtle glimpses of something larger. It provides a lingering invitation to explore further rather than a definitive conclusion.

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As the title suggest this performance is about conjuring a space for transformation. In these offerings there is precision with little excess.

Bodies are inhabited and cajoled to reveal the turbulence of seeking, there is anxiety, unease and eventual release, even repose, or perhaps the submission that comes from simple exhaustion.

Through a dreamlike scape we travel with three engaging and committed performers.
In their own words: ‘Quiet Rituals is a triptych of solo performances by Jake Starrs, Stella Grace Seawright, and Grace Ella Lewis’. The works unearth tender memories and splintering realisations along the path of growing into oneself.’

It is a programme knitted together with love. Visuals are augmented with style by Grace Bella. 

Lights up, lights down. Time passes. A crumpled sheet on life’s clothes line.

In Giving Over Stella Grace Seawrights treads the path of grief and anguish. They reach out from their twig house with gestures of yearning. They emerge from under a blanket of branches, vulnerable, exposed.
Straight arm blades, gathering and conjuring. Shrill sounds, broken bits caught in earthbound sorrow. Vital movement cuts through the space, choreographically specific, a smile turns to an internally crumpling grimace.

The clarity in this body, impressive. The imagery resonant. They move on, leaving a trace of lament, this ritual will go on and on eternal. Fulsome, richly produced music is mismatched with the intimacy of the space and the raw action onstage.

Sharp jolt with bright house lights up. Jake Starrs disrupts, unsettles, they want it so.
Sluff off one skin, reveal another alluring enticing one – red leotard and lacy Wedgewood woven blue tights – only to cover again.

At 3am I am here with the Red Dream is a peekaboo, a ritual of disclosure. An over shoulder glance – yes we are watching you. An intangible prayer to religious sounds, ungainly undulations at odd angles.
We know underneath there is a hidden skin, a foot rubs the floor to big sounds whilst their chest pulsates under a red star. They are observer and inhabitant of this handsome body all at once, darting uncomfortably between states.

Limbs become grasping flagellating aliens, then finger figures dance down the ridgeline of femur and fibula.

Again the skin is peeled off to push against the inside of themselves.

This body awkwardly mapped, a perplexed stare under a furrowed brow, through their very own pathways of exploration until all is unleashed, an explosion of vitality in one final reveal. Show time isn’t easy, its skating on a slippery surface and succumbing to a drunken fall but in the end a sly smile finishes it all off.

It seems washing can be hung up in the rain.

In a poetic exploration of a dreamscape, face swaddled throughout in lace and beads, Grace Ella Lewis in Dissolving the Apricot Corridor, sets herself a massive challenge to be thus defaced. Ringing sounds and tuneful murmurings set the tone for this dance of ‘uncanny self-wandering’ through ‘the architecture of the mind that disintegrates as consciousness fades.’
A more opaque ritual this, that rides on the muscles and corpuscles, as a sense of battle ensues. The gaze disrupted. A sheet becomes a tender object that slips away. Movements unleash an eternal throb, the lush of blood and nerve.

Identifiable movements  and ‘tricks’ jar the eye away from the rich world created here. Slither from beneath a shroud, animalize, transfigure. Limbs slice, ripple, pause undulate, flail in an impressive physical maelstrom. But music is too much in the drivers’ seat for the choreography.

Brilliant format, three thought jarring solos from brave physical dancers. This valid internally focussed exploration must continue.

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