The buzz in the pre-performance foyer is palpable. Inside Rangitira’s space, though, set suitably “in the round”, the chatter quickly settles to a hush. A shadowy figure stoops to more closely examine a patch of white, a silky light.

Then, the soft hum of floor fans and the gauzy silk comes to life in a ghostly dance: a pale spectre, a wraith, a memory.

The band arrives but not in brassy magnificence. Their first sounds come not from gleaming instruments but just from their choreographed breath, the trumpeter’s power, the dancer’s fuel, the essential measurement of all life and death,

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The iconic circular wooden rotundas which are found in New Zealand parks are places where brass bands rehearsed and presented concerts, particularly during the war years in the first part of the twentieth century. These concerts offered solace to the local community, an occasion to exchange hopes and fears and share news from the battle front, pass on tips about ways to get more food or clothing or whatever was needed beyond the ration provided.  The music for such concerts was by turns stirring, martial, patriotic, melancholic, with adaptations of traditional and popular tunes mixed in for good measure, providing comfort in troubling times. 

The New Zealand Dance Company’s Rotunda brings an array of that iconic brass band music into the theatre, played live by the blue-suited 25 member  North Shore Brass, making Q’s Rangatira auditorium a virtual rotunda for the duration. In the process we discover that Q’s acoustics are perfect for live brass band, that brass music is eminently danceable, and that even people who say they hate brass music are able to enjoy this particular concert.

Compositions by John Ritchie, Alex Lithgow and Edward Elgar are played alongside E Pari Ra, Coventry Carol, the hymn Jerusalem, and some new tunes by musical director Don McGlashan who has selected and arranged the scores for the 70 minute programme. Percussionist Chris O’Connor in a red jacket also joins the band, with his own incidental drumming at times the bridge in transitions or the cue for dramatic action.

The work draws on recollections of the daily Kiwi experience during the early twentieth century war years, the Boer War and World War 1, translating them into extended sequences of dance. Much of the movement is referential, drawing on real life sources such as mace manipulation,  military drilling, marching, pacing, the thrust of a bayonet, semaphore, statue poses, Edwardian social dancing, mateship, etiquette. Movement sequences,  collaboratively developed under the direction of choreographer Shona McCullagh, intermix the referential movement with modern dance staples – leaps and slides, curving turns, rolls, falls and lifts, running in circles – plus infusions of comedy, grief, melodrama, frustration, anger, bathos.

Initially we meet four young men living everyday lives, larking about dressed in mustard merino long sleeved grandpa underwear and brown figure-hugging military- styled trousers with knee pads built in – costumes cleverly designed and crafted by Jane Holland. There are military jackets, coats and headgear at times also.

We follow these young men as their lives are reshaped by preparations to go to war. We see them psyching themselves up to deal with the all too hideous reality of a situation in which one must kill or be killed, subsequently dealing with the immediate aftershock of having killed and survived, and then the long, ongoing aftermath which affects everyday interactions for years to come.

Tupua Tigafua and Justin Haiu are the greatest of mates, the best of friends, leaders of the pack. As performers, they both have the ability to create and switch from humour to pathos in an eyeblink, and we get flashes of Tigafua’s characteristic audacity and Haiu’s astounding mimetic ability  throughout the work.

These two dancers have an innate sympathy with one another, with hair-trigger timing of physical interactions and reciprocal weight-sharing that allows them to flow through some extraordinary sequences of dance without seeming to even breathe a little deeper.  Their duet late in the work, with Tigafua trying to compel the recently deceased Haiu back to life, is definitely the choreographic highlight. This draws skillfully on Michael Parmenter’s Piloting method  to facilitate the energetic flow between Tigafua’s  wishful touching and lifting and moulding of Haiu’s apparently lifeless body. Eventually though, hope is exhausted, and the circling Angel of Death takes Haiu away, leaving the grieving Tigafua alone.

Gareth Okan tosses off tricky jumps  and distorted leaps with apparent ease, his body flying through space or hanging on thin air to displace his concerns, and at time it appears that he simply offloads  his worries off  to one side while he gets on with what has to be done.  His challenge here is to develop a richer range of expressive movement by which to embody his role. Anger he does well, but vulnerability and confusion need finer nuancing. Carl Tolentino is also a smooth mover across the floor, well able to toss off the pyrotechnic moves, and late in the work shows a wonderful sense of comedic timing while playing the role of a non-human creature.

We meet four young women too – Hannah Tasker-Poland, Lucy Lynch, Chrissy Kokiri  and Emmi Coupe, all wearing improbably luxurious strappy bras and silky French knickers which surely would not have been acceptable as outerwear in 1918. Two of them cover up somewhat in assymetrically-hemmed  parachute silk overskirts with apron tops for much of the work, though their backs are more or less bare. These are “the women at home” and much of what they do is repetitious, indicating the nature of their daily lives.  Despite their jaunty dancing at the news the troops will be coming home, a beautifully moving delivery of E Pari Ra sung solo by Kokiri to mark a family death, lyrical duets between Tasker-Poland and Okan which move through various stages of a developing but unresolved romantic attachment between them, and interactions with possible future potential between Lynch and Tolentino, ultimately we learn little else of the women’s lives. 

Later, a fifth young woman (Emma Dellabarca) makes her presence felt – she’s an Angel of Death in black bra and knickers, a haunting presence circling the space in wait for spirits ready to cross over.

The work seems well designed for touring in the sense that it is easily portable. Suitable lighting (designed by Paul O’Brien)  and a local brass band can be sourced anywhere in the world, and all the music is scored. The set (by Joe Bleakly) comprises twenty or so fans which are grouped in a semi circle to echo the seating layout, with their air directed at a gauze cloth which floats and flies and flips on the updrafts when set in motion by a dancer’s toss. A set of hanging drapes temporarily provides a surface for huge silhouettes of the dancers, a display which is co-incident with flashes of light, a sepia lantern and airblown haze, which recalls possible battlefield conditions, though the lighting was so bright that the silhouettes were often lost.  At the culmination of activity, the drapes are clipped to a huge crown which is raised to provide an OTT  grand pavilion of looping cloth, such as one  might see at a palatial wedding or ball. 

The experience gained in this initial season where the work seems very much to be still in progress  will no doubt inform the work’s further development before it is presented at Holland Dance in early 2014 prior to a New Zealand tour. 

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