There were earplugs on the armrests of the seats last night at Downstage Theatre for Strike Percussion’s performance, but very few people used them. Most members of the audience didn’t want to miss a beat. If you don’t want to miss a beat in the pulse of New Zealand culture, book tickets for Strike Elemental now.

Bring friends – you will want someone to turn to in the darkness of the auditorium to whisper approval frantically. Bring colleagues – you will not find a better example of team work, determination and awe-inspiring togetherness. Bring family – you’ll have something to talk about for weeks to come and your granny will become an instant drumming enthusiast. 

Strike is a New Zealand percussion group that specialises in “movement-based, choreographed percussion.” First and foremost, they are world-class musicians. Once you’ve digested that, you can appreciate the group as innovative composers, riveting performers, physical theatre professionals, aesthetically-gifted choreographers and stamina-abundant athletes to boot.

Strike has been performing for over ten years in New Zealand; not just on stage, but in schools, festivals, street events, private and corporate events. Looking at historical YouTube videos, it seems that the group has really come into its own in recent years; perfecting its performances and musicianship.

Creative Director of Downstage – Hilary Beaton – who introduced the show in a pre-performance talk, confirmed that the group had gone from strength to strength since their first performance of Elemental at Downstage in 2008, which commenced a three-year residency they held at the theatre. The current run at Downstage culminates this residency which, according to the Artistic and Performance Director of the Strike, Murray Hickman, has given them the opportunity and platform to build the company into what it is today; ensuring their longevity and professional standing in New Zealand. 

This is a group that must be seen live. Only live can you appreciate the subtle brilliance of a blow-torch rhythm switching from 3/4 to 6/8. Only live can you feel the visceral energy being poured into every cadence; every sweat-dripping oscillation. 

There is a huge diversity of sound, despite the lack of stringed instruments and obvious melodic motifs. Instruments including traditional drum sets (hung vertically), cooking pots, gas canisters, washbasins, home-made gongs plunged into glorified fish bowls for tonal play, and xylophones produce spooky, seductive, meditative, mathematical, ruttish, shocking, distorted, breathless, exalting, spine-chilling, nightmarish and always achieved aesthesis.

Those are a lot of words. But Strike don’t use words. They communicate their imagined worlds through rhythms and movement. There is no over-arching narrative, but each act does tell some kind of story – if you care to look out for it. The group’s communication is at its best when they are focusing on sound and choreographed rhythm-making rather than on showmanship and theatricality. 

Pacific influences in the music are obvious. There is ethnic diversity in the performers. Strike is somehow very much from, inspired by and representative of New Zealand. Hickmaninformed me that the group are booked for numerous upcoming events, including Rugby World Cup performances. What an exciting and majestic presentation of New Zealand culture to display to visitors from around the world. Make sure you’ve seen them first.   
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

The new show by Strike, Elemental develops familiar themes (using fire, water, air within the context of staged, dramatic percussion) but places the quartet and the elemental riffing in a new context with some newly commissioned pieces too (including work from longtime Strike affiliate, Gareth Farr). The four members of Strike move freely between the scaffold drums, using dance, mime and comedy to segue between planned drum-pieces.

Murray Hickman is very much the lead of the group, his infectious enthusiasm is the lifeblood that flows through Strike as an entity. And it really is appropriate to refer to this quartet as an entity, an organism that live and breathes drums together because at some points in the show the sound of four drummers becomes, with a quick eye-close, the sound of forty.

Japanese Taiko drum rhythms cross paths with Cook Island log drums, marching band rhythms, 20th Century classical snare drum, jazz, metal, funk and free percussion; Strike is all encompassing in its approach.

Highlights including the band (literally) playing with fire (Igniter), and Leni Sulusi’s Drumflip which incorporates hip-hop dancing and showmanship and is seamlessly performed with Tom Pierard. Tim Whitta, along with Hickman, forms Strike’s backbone, or main limbs (as it were) – moving between suspended bass drums and submerged gongs to deliver the message of unity, co-operation, soul and innovation.

Strike’s theatrical work incorporates passages of humour that allow the group members to have a little bit of fun without every trying too hard or diluting the musical value of the show. But Strike is a group that suits theatre work; this is very much a show rather than a concert.

Filled with movement, shadow, space, light, darkness, mime – and most gloriously: loud, clattering drums, Strike’s Elemental is the best show I have seen from the talented quartet. And it is well priced for a theater show too. A total workout for performers and audience, I think this show has the something for everyone and it would be nice to think that as Wellingtonians we would go out and support our own and see and recommend this amazing show.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Like Strike’s four percussionists, earth, air, fire and water feature separately and together in multiple permutations to create the 13 works that comprise Elemental.

Murray Hickman, Tom Pierard, Leni Sulusi and Tim Whitta are earthed in their consummate and composite musicianship as they extract extraordinary sounds and rhythms from instruments wrought from minerals: metals, glass, ceramics and plastics. And skins, of course. Then there is wood (grown through the convergence of all four elements) which gives us sticks, Cook Island drums and xylophone / marimba keybars.

It is the way the performers move through space and make their instrumental objects interact with air that produces the vibrant percussive reverberations. A metal tube held and struck with a hard knob tocks like a clock, but tossed in the air and hit it dings, and played en masse they sing. The left front fender of a long dead truck produces a delicate sound entirely at odds with its lumpish bulk …

Special mention, while we’re air-borne, to Leni Sulusi who moves well beyond the call of most percussionists to combine riffing on a tiny harnessed drum with back-flips and break-dancing; then he and Tom Pierard stick-twirl, drum, balance and back-flip off each other: spectacular!

Racks of drums, gongs, cymbals and chimes, hung and strung for full frontal attack with the odd side swipe, are Strike’s core equipment, with wheel rims and insulators also strategically mounted. As they reach their cacophonous crescendos we can either wallow in the belted welter of sounds or marvel objectively at the way they maintain and shift their intricate rhythms, micro-managing the component parts to macromanic effect.

Fire opens the show with the single strike of a match and quickly flares into flaming batons that flay the skins until they (the flames) are extinguished. Later the subtlest sigh of a flame and the sounds it can make when thrown through plastic tubes are explored with a lightness of touch then a playful darkness when one is used to evoke a blasting machine gun.

Water is the peacemaker and sometimes the clown, when the bong of a gong warbles into a boiiing as it’s lowered into a bowl of liquid. Solitary drips and the flow of poured water also add to the more tranquil yet quietly effervescent rhythms and textures …

These, then, are the elements employed with boundless creative ingenuity by the ‘in house’ composers: Hickman (Territory, Relentless, Water Sketches, Hydrophonic), Whitta (Territory, Streams, Earthworks), Sulusi (Drum Flip)  and Strike as a group (Igniter); Gareth Farr, whose three pieces – Pukul, Tubes, Ukare Funk – are the most melodic; Takumi Motokawa (Blast, Lava), who earns a ‘digital concepts and technology’ credit, and joins the quartet for the encore piece. 

The Works are detailed on the production page (scroll right down to find it). I’d advise swotting up on the notes beforehand because it’s hard to read them during the show. Besides, it’s probably better to get a sense of what has inspired them then free your own imagination to soar in subjective response to the works, which more often than not merge into each other (so it’s hard to discern where one ends and another begins anyway).

Ollivier Ballester’s invisible but vital sound design and operation are integral to the final mix. Van Locker’s production design, lighting design and operation add illuminating value. A crew led by Stage Manager Helena Coulton work in the shadows to reposition equipment and ensure things are in the right place. And the overall shape and structure of the work is doubtless enhanced by the dramaturgical inputs of Willem Wassenaar and Miranda Harcourt.

But it is the four super-fit and tireless performers who shine in the night as they strike a blow – not least of fire down plastic tubes, and bubbles in air and under water – for non-verbal theatre. Downstage (the Hannah Playhouse) is the ideal venue for this production – oh, and by the way, the new and much more comfortable (so less distracting) seating is a blessing.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer