This evening’s works in progress (WIP ’10 Showcase #1) is the first season of a new initiative backed by DANZ and MIC Toi Rerehiko for the emerging dance artists of Auckland’s tertiary scene. Choreography, dance and live music are brought together in an impressive and tightly knit evening of developing works.

Tonight’s work features youthful art by Amy Mauvan, Benny Ord, Hannah Tasker-Poland and a splendid duet by dancers Zhara Killeen-Chance and Emily Campbell. They are definitely talented.

Thematically driven and conceptually laden, the first dance, Boxed (choreographed by Amy Mauvan)is like a study of virtuoso energetics. Dancers Anna Flaherty, Samantha Wood, Georgia Giesen and Febe Holmes, whilst staying within a range of their own dynamic movements, draw shape and tension from the classical sounds of Beethoven’s ‘Concerto No.5 in E Flat major’.

The arpeggios of their successive dancing bodies provide viscerally satisfying sequences of movement, and they dance what seems like the notes of the piano at times, embodying the very passion that stirred that composer’s soul.

Galatos is a challenging space for an audience, with especially difficult sightlines for dance, but somehow for this dance that was never an issue. Instead, the space caught between the dancing bodies, interrupted by chairs, light and other shapes provides segmented areas for watching the singular ways that each dancer moves without trying make sense of the ensemble.

A controlled and articulate display of formalist choreography by Benny Ord takes a simple working title, Duo in 3 Parts. It is danced to a live and decidedly loud thrash guitar sound score by Andrew Wilson and Tina Pihema then collapses into a recorded version of Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ performed by Victor Borge, before returning to quieter guitar to close the work.

Ord is beautiful to watch, even though his leggy behaviour and inordinate sense of the spatial grid is partly at odds with his use of breath. A direct relationship with gravity, both in facial spontaneity and the pull of the earth sees his articulate body as always waiting to inhale. Some of the most interesting moments are caught in the time it takes him to complete one movement and begin the next.

On this occasion he is ably accompanied by Sarah Baron. Her presence in this work is somewhat undermined by a slight monotone dynamic and the digressive focus of the two bodies dancing both across and beside each other. As well as this, Ord’s choice to have a female at work with him may have distorted a rather significant abstract composition.

Movement vocabularies are significant and different in all of the WIP ’10 Showcase #1works. Again I pause to think about the way dance is shaped by the space around it and wonder if some of the more interesting movement interplay of the evening is evoked by a difficult space as much as by choreographic calculation of spatial whim.

Hannah Tasker Poland’s Purge evokes the “world of pain” referred to in ‘Orders from the Dead’, the music by Diamanda Galas to which it is set. Four women in black appear immersed in pain and anguish, their movements compulsive, emphatic; programmed on their bodies as compulsive movement retrieved for the purpose of choreographic form. ‘Purge’ gives way to spatial restrictions with much of the movement too low to the ground for the audience to maintain a visual grip on her world of female pain.

The challenges of mystical concepts and the harsh genius of Galas’ vocalisation overpower Tasker Poland’s emotional truth, making the dance melodramatic and somewhat enslaved by her imagination. This work deserves more time to realise the choreographer’s intuitive links with theme and cult.. In the meantime it is gratifying to see the high level of dance skill, technical competency and expressive range in this group of emerging dancers.

The fourth and final dance, Ruby, not only brings about a decidedly different shape to the evening but showcases some very fine, almost cabaret-like performances from choreographer/ dancers Zahra Killeen-Chance and Emily Campbell. Clever use of sliding red shoes and slippery cardigans as props and sound sources as much as costumes situates ‘Ruby’ as a highlight.

The two dancers present slow, sustained and magical solos with only occasional interactions and unison moments. What becomes fascinating to watch is the separate development of the two female personae and the way this insinuation of progress results as a very fascinating work.

Further shows in the WIP ’10 series are in the last week of June, July and August. All are designed to give choreographers working on ideas a chance to put them out to the community. These are important occasions for the emerging artists, and for the art form too.

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