Rule & Exception, an enigmatic 50 minute collaboration by three young performers, has as starting point the everyday gestures and verbal exchanges that might take place in, say, a foyer waiting for an elevator. These are used as minimalist threads repeated to form a pattern and create the veneer that prevents a genuine communication.

To a relentless metronome that is the aural equivalent of strobe lighting, the performers resist bringing any easy or pre-existing dance style or vocabulary to their work, thus leaving us wondering where it might lead.

The two women Alysha Firbank and Zahra Killeen-Chance are physically contrasting – tall and lyrical, compact and percussive – and seem to inhabit some distant space.  Adam Tatana, is an actor who communicates more directly with the audience through a spoken text.   

Soon Firbank slips away into stylized moves of a more generous scale, and her technical strength allows us astonishing if fleeting glimpses into her yearning hopes for a somewhat deeper communication that would deal in emotion rather than repartee.  It is as Spring rain and we are deeply grateful for it.  

Killeen-Chance is also in oblique performance mode, and we see contrasting tempi and spirit in her danced monologue. There are symbolic uses of costume items as props – glove, skirt, tie – but these seem a  ess compelling feature than the work’s continuing contrast of everyday gestures with evocative and stylized lyrical sweeps. 

Tatana uses intriguing sequences from his signing linked to spoken language. Things warm up and the series of solos may echo the loneliness theme but at the same time reveals their dreamtime. The piece ends with a poignant return to the elevator foyer.

This is a brave if curious, honest if modest, serious if exploratory contribution to the theatre of the rhetorical question.  At the curtain call the performers’ relaxed and beautiful faces revealed a sense of humour that might have been welcome earlier in the hour. The contrasts within the piece are full of interest, and future work will be worth watching for (though I do hope someone helps them with programme notes before then.) 
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Alysha Firbank and Zahra Killeen-Chance, two recent graduates from the New Zealand School of Dance, have created a work of some substance entitled Rule and Exception, in conjunction with actor-dancer Adam Tatana, a recent graduate of Toi Whakaari. 
What threatens at the outset to be a nihilistic discourse on the meaning of life is soon redeemed by some lush dancing, inspired by Taoist wisdom concerning the real strength that lies behind the apparent softness of acceptance and acquiescence.

Using the simple device of an item of clothing, each dancer develops their persona and choreographic material to fit the perceived properties vested in the clothing.  Thus Killeen-Chance "handles" and manipulates the other dancers while wearing a pair of gloves, Firbank displays a highly feminine persona while wearing a skirt and Tatana is restricted and enmeshed while wearing a tie.

The choreographic vocabulary for the most part employs fluid, earth-bound movement interspersed with repetitive idiosyncratic gestures to perhaps suggest rigidity and entrapment.  The design is mainly duets, in which the dancers only occasionally connect, and solos. 

Firbank’s solo uses a breathing release to reflect her passion.  She uses her height to good effect in backward arches, and the circular floor design suggests spiralling emotions.  Her strength is all encompassing, but she allows the softness of her movements to dominate.

Killeen-Chance creates an outstanding solo, led by her hands and arms with the body following through.  She is the foil to Firbank’s passion – deflecting it by making attempts to control – but nevertheless conveying tenderness at times.

Tatana knots his arms and various parts of the body while holding the tie, with cat’s cradle inversions reflected through the torso.  Following a simple duet with Firbank he is left holding a precious memory in his hands, in an exquisite moment that could be seen to represent the birth of hope.

The final scene sees all three dancers performing together before returning to their original opening positions.  I’m not sure if this means that they have accepted their fate or that they have internalised life’s lessons and made no attempt to alter the course of destiny, albeit from a position of enhanced wisdom.

This work is a very encouraging start by this group of three young performers.  I look forward to seeing their next performance.
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