They may be students, but the overall impression is of professionalism – they brought a set with them from Wellington, each dancer wore a designed costume, and their dancing smelt of future employability.

The set is like a really bad decaying student renter – brown paper walls, with a door, empty fireplace, window and a set of stairs, all of which are exuberantly used for entries and exits.  The dancers wear a mix of stripes, frills and short crinolines in pale blue and shades of grey (only one touch of red) that have the look of period costumes, with a suit or two for the guys.

The introductory piece, Fade, gets more than twenty second and third year students onstage where they march, romp, have the odd fight, in small or large groups, simultaneously or sequentially, and otherwise have fun.  It looks almost chaotic so that no one knows what could happen next – no one except the dancers!

Gender issues surface in Pink!ish with music, A Fine Romance  and Guilty, rudely interrupted by short operatic excerpts from Verdi’s Sempre Libero.  This draws twelve dancers to lip synch with gusto, and to find the absurd in a “love” situation.  Mixed pairs, boys, girls, – any of them might have been happy or unhappy.  Two guys are dressed in crinoline skirts, which leads to some games with partners’ heads popping out, then folding the boys under the skirts to make them exit as if on four legs.

The programme describes Born Under a Bad Star as having aspects of traditional Cook Islands dance, but I didn’t pick this.  I see one unhappy girl who can’t quite fit in with the group of seven others.  Her movements are at times punctuated with unexpected sharpness or quivers, and she seems to be looking for something, while the group sweeps about the stage.

The Game has a leader to order the group about, and he gets the audience to choose words such as “back”, “girls”, “patterns” to pass on to the fifteen dancers, who either do or do not obey.  One guesses that parts of the dance are planned, parts improvised, and Arvo Pärt’s moody music allows some fraught reactions, so that order does not prevail over chaos.  The leader is finally knocked over.

In the Mood from Glen Miller sets the mood with happy jiving or Gene Kelly moves.  A Charlie Chaplin figure in bowler and bad suit earns spontaneous applause for his playing of Singing in the Rain onan imaginary keyboard.  A trio of athletic guys moves and throws each other about with great agility and speed, doing an amazing catch of one of them.  But this is not all – three girls come out and we see hands free, backward flips – with one a double!

Supreme Arcitecture [sic] has a line of flowers sniffed by a passing bee (in a suit) who picks out one of them for his attentions.  Here ensues a duet of aggression from the bee, with the flower barely able to respond, then wilting and dying, to draw frantic clawing from the bee, who finally gives up on the flower, to sniff the line again to find another.  Not the happiest picture of a search for love.

From the response of the generally young audience, !#@?!*   is probably the coolest piece, to music composed and designed by Te Aihe Butler with FMS – New Boyz.  With dramatic moves to changes in light and sound, eight dancers get into the groove, finally rolling off stage.

The final piece, Line, has the stage criss-crossed from one side to the other by tapes or strong ribbons – say four at floor level and three about chest height – before the dancers come on to make their way through the web.  Some interact with others, one entangling another so that both fall.  Some looked confused or unhappy while others manage perfectly, even though the tapes go up and down, and the dancers are confident enough to move with agility and speed.

All pieces are choreographed by third year students who are to be congratulated as each item has at least eight dancers to place and give movements to.  This means that the stage is almost always busy, so that perhaps the programme lacks light and shade.  Contemporary dance can also be lyrical.

The overall impression is of an outgoing, athletic, happy, exuberant, young group who make dances with elements of humour, a lot of energy and also, wonderful ability.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

This programme of ten choreographies created by third year contemporary dance students at the New Zealand School of Dance is outstanding. Original, articulate, amusing and professionally performed, it could tour immediately, such is the quality of the entire production.

The work is surely directed by Victoria Columbus and danced by second and third year students, with design input from students from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School. The latter’s contribution in terms of set, costumes and lighting are of a very high standard indeed, and coupled with the excellence of choreography and performance, contribute equally to the production’s cohesion and success. The hour and a half programme consists of ten pieces with no interval.

The world of The Residents is deconstructed and strange. Grunge rules.  The palette is grey, dirty white, black and pale blue. Staircases lead to nowhere, doors float and a fireplace is an entrance for peculiar beings you may or may not wish to meet. People scuttle like beetles or spiders across the floor, dressed in a ragbag of costumes (Jane Boocock, Donna Jefferis,) that appear to have come from different time periods. Short skirts may carry a bustle. There are sleeveless deconstructed tail coats and mini crinolines. Within this dystopia, the individual dances are informed by the student choreographers’ own backgrounds.

Interestingly, the set was designed by last year’s students from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School for a film project and re-cycled for this year’s choreographic season.

One of the production’s pleasures is the seemingly random way the residents of this odd world have acquired aspects of previous cultures.  Standards by Cole Porter vie with Du Bist Die Ruh by Schubert, Sempre Libera from La Traviata and pounding disco beats. The dancers  move like Charlie Chaplin one minute and Gene Kelly the next. They often seem like beautiful automatons, within predestined roles over which they have little or no control. Colour and individuality is leeched from newcomers to their world.

If this is the students’ comment on New Zealand 2014 it is indeed a bleak one. And yet, in spite of,  (or perhaps because of,) within this sombre outlook, they have created this powerful, darkly beautiful work, which is surely a warning cry to beware the future, and act now.  

The standard of choreography and performance overall is excellent and all deserve mention. But Michael Ramsay’s Supreme Arcitecture (Sic) (correct title) stood out for the originality of its conception and the intense performances from James Wasmer and Mason Kelly.

Fade, (choreography, Jeremy Beck,) secured The Residents’ surreal world and was a good opener.  It was followed by Mark Semple’s What is Touch which underlined the insecurity of the inhabitants in a world not of their choosing. 

Eliza Sanders Pink!ish featured a powerful duet by Chris Mills and Mason Kelly, as well as weird and somewhat disturbing crinolines on two men, from which women’s heads suddenly and freakishly protruded. Wonderful!

Sophie Gargan was memorable in Roymata Holmes’ Born Under a bad Star. Her fluid lovely movement contrasting with jerky, anxious ones.

Paige Shand’s In the Mood is a fast, effervescent homage to old movies. Jacob Edmonds’ whimsical clown-like character, first Chaplin, then Kelly, is very amusing and the work’s ending delightful.

In Tess Hall’s The Game, Eliza Sanders performed a strikingly dramatic solo and Alexandra Clarke’s ‘Ally’ was arresting.

!#@?!* (choreographyLauren Byrne,) let the dancers rip in a full-on, fierce disco-like number. While Amanda Mitrevski’s Line utilised long strips of cloth to form spider web-like strands or chains, across the stage that caught the dancers’, sometimes choking them and sometimes preventing them from speaking. They symbolised “…laws like spiders’ webs, that entangle and hold the poor and the weak, while the … powerful will easily break through them.” This work ended on a positive note with the webs breaking apart and falling to the ground.

James Wasmer’s frantic Fasnet (a German carnival,)concluded the evening. William Keohavong was a passionate, disturbing fool/jester, inciting the crowd to greater extremes of wildness. Again, the costumes were striking, especially the masked men dressed in aproned skirts with scarves tied under their chins, resembling weird harridans or witches from twisted folk tales.

The standard of this production is indicative of the high quality of teaching that makes the New Zealand School of Dance one of the foremost dance institutions in Australasia. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer