At Unitec, the phrase “find your thing” is the institution’s call to new students’ purpose. In this year’s end-of-year SHOWCASE, the Unitec dance programme seems to have indeed found its thing. Across three new works, the evening reveals a company of highly competent, well-trained dancers, performing with commitment and conviction. The choreography sometimes proves uneven between dancer competency and choreographer decision.

However, Te Ata Kura is a superbly made and deeply satisfying opening. Louise Potiki Bryant is the first work on the programme. This is a contemporary dance of extraordinary clarity and craft. Here, the dancers from all three-year levels are substantial and cohesive, moving with the sensibilities of the ocean’s edge and driftwood lifted and rolled in weather’s capricious outrage. Each section builds from breath and sound, ritual and resonance, evoking a cumulative energy that feels both ancient and coming alive.

The soundscape, by Paddy Free in partnership with Ariana Tikao, combines Hine-ahu-one and the luminous Matarangi by Ngā Tae (Free, Horomona Horo, Waimihi Hotere, and Richard Nunns), creating a sonic tide that underpins the choreographer’s ebb and flow. With Jo Kilgour’s lighting design fluidly illuminating each corner of the space, the dancers inhabit the work with a maturity beyond their years. 

The second work shifts tone and focus. Less a showcase for the dancers, it reads more as an experiment in choreographic impulse. In YO/友 by Xin Ji, moments of choreographic urgency and twitching clash with the sound score, creating disjunction (perhaps deliberate?) rather than dialogue. Amidst this mismatch of connection and simplified movement, there are glimmers of insight particularly in a striking solo by Mitchell Rumble, whose intensity cuts cleanly through the tumult to Arvo Pärt’s haunting My Heart’s in the Highlands. A clearer choreographic through-line could help the abstraction find form without sacrificing the incipience of vitality.

The final work, [revel], choreographed by Aloaali’i and Tori Manley-Tapu, opens in playful chaos: a cacophony of children’s voices (from Samara Alofa’s sound composition) gives way to dancers lying with feet pointed upstage. It is a curious piece that dips between humour and the elegy of graduation. While its motifs are vague and its crescendos often overwhelm the movement, the dancers’ expressivity brings welcome coherence. A duet involving mutual harness-holding provides both tenderness and comedy, reminding us of humanity, placed at this work’s heart.

Throughout the evening, the Unitec dancers themselves are the constant and watchable strength. They move with freedom, physical generosity, and the kind of spacious intensity that cannot be taught, only cultivated through generations of thoughtful commitment. This is about releasing dance into our wilderness, witnessing abandonment matched by stark and precise intensity. Among them, Tyler Wilson dances as though this were their last night on stage – utterly compelling in every single and fluid moment. Petronila Maletian Su’a-Woo Ching is exquisite too, and she, like Tyler and Lily-Mae Baird whose grace is a thing to behold, looks set to become a ‘thing’ indeed.

Thanks are also due to Katie Burton and Tamsin Russell, whose ongoing guidance and vision continue to keep the thing of Unitec dance going. They continue to shape this enduring programme where emerging dance artists can confidently, and joyfully find their own, ‘thing’.

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