Social media publicity for The Gløaming alluded to “unhuman terrortories of Te Pō where bodies collude in a blackening choreosphere”. Here, the poetics of curator/producer Tru Paraha’s writing and choreographic research draw upon twilight, a fascination with horror, and Māori cosmogenic narratives where Te Pō evolves out of Te Kore (nothingness and potentiality) as multi-layered realm of night and darkness where Rangi and Papa are locked in eternal embrace. Described in terms of duration, intensity, darkness, feeling, restlessness, seeking and turning towards the emergence of light and human existence, Te Pō also features within pōuri, the darkness or grief we might retreat to or move through as part of the total spectrum of emotional experience, and in the names and practices associated with the pō (nights) that comprise Māori and Polynesian maramataka (lunar calendars). As the lights went down in the Auckland Old Folks Hall I wondered how such possibilities might be evoked in what was to unfold.

The opening ‘bricolage’ of spoken word, news reportage, and sound bites (including the opening guitar riff from Country Calendar) by Claire Duncan (i.e crazy) offered a riveting live version of her 2019 Country Justice recording dedicated to Phyllis Symons, who at age 17 (and while thought to be seven months pregnant), was murdered by her lover George Coats at the construction site of Wellington’s Mt. Victoria tunnel in 1931.

Into tiny pieces I’ll shatter with my spade
Your body, bloated full of babe
This wretched place will always bear a woman’s name…

Decibels too high for the pocket size Old Folks Association Hall, Country Justice ‘live’ was a deliberate assault on the senses for those of us with fingers in our ears – one that made me think nevertheless about how much of our own history has been similarly silenced, deliberately suppressed by ‘other’ noise, and sometimes by our own in-actions, or failures to listen.

Charles Koroneho’s solo responded to Te Pō-naumnamu-ki-Taiao, the night of seeking a passage to the world, and pōrangi, which he describes as “a place of paradox and the contrary”, a state we might perceive in more simple terms as madness or insanity. “Searching the confined and narrow” through a stroboscopic maze with light beaming from his fingertips, he moved through the audience as an Aituā, or atua of disaster or death, and ataata or a moving shadow reminiscent of the traditional Tahitian Chief Mourner who could pursue and terrify villagers during ritual funeral and mortuary rites. Physical constraint, compression and restriction through the body was also vocalised, formed into fragmented kupu, cries from lungs struggling to pass air over vocal chords – a painful, haunting lament.

A pleated vinyl folding door opened at the start of Kelly Nash’s piece revealing Anja Packham’s eerie, self-absorbed, cell phone stare flashing poses for back-lit selfies. After tucking the phone into her bosom, the smile of satisfaction on her face spread to a deeper glow within her gut. She slowly undressed, peeling her wrinkled skin suit inside out, shedding pendulous breasts, the phone, and balloon rubber growths. Her naked ‘inner self’ disappeared into a puff of black smoke behind the concertina door as it slid across once more.

Virginia Kennard’s squatting bride exposed a very different sense of ‘inner self’. With underskirts around hips, and in full spotlight glare, she relieved herself and swept the stage with tulle drenched in her own secretions. Whether or not this was meant to evoke any site-specific associations with old-age loss of control over bodily functions, this was a graphic reminder of how perfectly natural excretory functions can be portrayed as horrific, and perceived by a public audience who were not forewarned, as a lewd transgression rather than a provocative wero or challenge. On Facebook the artist describes “horrifying sacred spaces with [her] #ciswhitequeerwomanbody and perceptions of “the body as a landscape for all your menstrual dreams cum true”. On stage, the work seemed to privilege a more self-absorbed sensationalism as creative imperative over care for others and their mana.  

Rachel Ruckstuhl-Mann’s ensemble piece with co-collaborators Claire O’Neil, Claire Luiten, Liana Yew, Katrina George and Rewa Fowles was rooted in the some of the physical, emotional and social horrors she encounters in her experience of motherhood. Concerned for social, financial, political and environmental sustainability, Ruckstuhl-Mann designs and makes props and costumes with recycled, found and borrowed materials. Human globes of inflated rubber gloves, a corset of kitchen knives, beetroot blood, plastic toys as Pacific Gyre, billowing duvet covers as gathering clouds, and a backdrop of patchworked fabric morphing into a giant wave added charm, a domestic scale and humour to the final work in the program.

Most certainly, The Gløaming has established a valuable local precedent for future curatorial direction. Programmes like this featuring good performers, strong thematic focus, collaborative and experimental approaches, will develop an important critical following and deserve good support. Congratulations to Tru Paraha, to Cat Ruka, Tempo Director, the Auckland Old Folks Association Committee, all the artists, and their team of workers back-stage. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

With guts and perhaps (not enough) gore and in its one long room, the Old Folks up on Gundry Street, Auckland became the proud antithesis of the stifling capitalist model that does frame the whirl of contemporary dance. The gl0aming’s intentions were many, “A late-hour experiment that reconstructs bodies through the horrørfied dance of the hidden, alien, & uncanny – a speculative choreography that dreams of anonymity” is one of the many mouth-fondlings offered by Paraha’s tantalising social media spores.

The late start built mood, so when opener Claire Duncan i.e crazy began her set  in the Abby Street corner of the Old Folks Hall; its resonance did sage the space at large. Their black sound and bloody discordant couplets howled murderously LOUD “and deliverance of a well-weaved lattice indeed of ambient sonics, folk storytelling, news reportage and pop culture” (Tru Paraha fb social media) blessed us. Through i.e crazy’s set, Charles Koroneho imposed, intercepted and bought in Te Po with the simplest of presence and a mask of dark intent. Koroneho as inky shepherd masterfully moved conceptual into performance, their light sabers interrogating along the way as their presence dragged night off the stage and down into the centre of the hall, martial art type movement and black hole keening led us into crepuscular realms while moving focus down the length of the room and into another corner. Here deviant enhanced performer Anja Packham with exquisite execution, embodied with esteem her version of a skin-punked cyber replicate.

Turning grotesque strangely into chic elegance, this concise and clean, choreographic collaboration visioned by highly skilled Kelly Nash uprooted and disrupted with surreality. Spatial placement and a clever set design that included a selfie light, a mosquito net and well placed balloons?body/skin modifications equipped this piece successfully, and there is a wish to see more from this talented pair 

Back to the stage and bringing a bucketful of integrity while slashing at matrimonial repose, Virginia Kennard’s combo of wedding dress, vagina exposure, red stilettos, menstrual blood and urinepulls us into the political by the hair. Adept and smart, there is a need regardless of the discomfort pursued to be reminded that the feminine body is still a long fought over political site.

Nightcapping this killer of a night off, “The Unfolding”, a five femme fatale crew under directorship of Rachel Ruckstuhl-Mann, struck well the fatal blow.

Behind a large handmade blue curtain made from various of cuts of bedsheet strung across the stage via bamboo, Claire O’Neil with hands and head poking through and wearing a cosmetic beauty mask, gains our attention by shaking a large woven basket of toys, in time with toddler Matariki’s cries. The eventual spillage brings a cathartic shift, and allows for introduction of the other performers, also wearing beauty masks, to emerge from behind the scenes. Much is active in this work, with strong images invoked, but it’s the timely and clear unison that offers the eye space to resolve the emergent themes as well as props presented.- Highlights are many in the air-filled surgical gloves tied together to create two separate parasitic type bodies,  one blue and one white, disguising Rucksthul-Mann, and performer Claire Luiten as they move. These performing objects need to have a life beyond Friday night, as do the billowing duvet covers that were unfolded and then filled in unison by roaming trio Liana Yew, Katrina George and Rewa Fowles, reforming the covers by  a simple walking pattern into sculptural assemblages.

These final two montages and movement sequences have the strongest visual impact. A high stilettoed casually-circling femme fatale (Claire Luiten), with a row of large kitchen knives strapped to her lumbar, brings with deliberate stealth, forward one knife at time to the front of the body before from waist height dropping them near and in front of the living sculptural forms. This action, as well as the clunk of the knife as it strikes and stays upright in the hall floor, is oddly satisfying. Reemerging out of the duvet covers once all the knives are dispensed of, the trio proceed to pick the knives up from out of the floor before moving to collectively join Luiten in forming a KALI shaped deity (the Hindu goddess of death), the knives all the while carving sensually through the air before Luiten slips away, leaving the 3 femme fatale figures to journey,  snaking their knife wielding hands slowly downstage towards the audience.

This image is further encapsulated by the looming of the broad blue curtain turned tsunami, curling above them with successful and deadly intent to engulf both performers and audience members. Upstage, at the same time a large jar of ‘blood’ (beetroot juice) is left to spill down the length of the old folks floor.

Gloaming how elusive and unrepentant you were and how I thank the dark Gods for your genius.

Tru Paraha, more please.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer