The spacious Whitireia auditorium adds a subtle seriousness to the suite of 15 short, snappy routines which comprise the Fringe debut of the Ariel Midlemiss Dance Collective. All five dancers  (Alecia Viles, Kristi Dahm, Zac Warmouth, Jacon Reynolds, and Middlemiss herself) have well-polished technical skills, with clean lines, crisp articulation, precise timing and positioning of their bodies in relation to one another and to the performance area as a whole, They also have a sure sense of timing in relation of the pulse and beat of the music which accompanyies their dancing – a selection of recent popular songs (for which there are no programme credits), ranging from a gutsy female anthem and a folksy female solo to masculine rap and thrash and toe-tapping tracks.

The movement vocabulary is drawn from a mélange of ballet, jazz, acrobatics and commercial styles with crisp attack and emphatic gestures. The choreography is not credited in the programme but care has been taken to make the most of the individual strengths of the dancers. A very tall man has excellent loft and beautiful alignment, and his leaps and spin turns are nonchalantly tossed off, belying the difficulty level. His much shorter counterpart also is competent at leaps and spins, and on several occasions brings in a slick, assured, flirtatious persona. The women appear to be equally capable at everything – acrobatic manoeuvres, high kicks, rapid rolls, tight spins, flirtation, annoyance and sadness.   

The programme lists fifteen different titles which thematically link to the passage from birth through childhood and adulthood to death. The accompanying descriptions have been given a good deal of thought. However, use of very similar generic movement vocabulary, phrasing and structures throughout all the works has the effect of making them look and feel very much the same in the first half of the show in particular, despite the changes of mood brought with the music and costumes.  A good deal of planning has gone into costume changes for the women, who seem to wear a different top over their short lycra shorts in each dance. However, with their long, swinging bare arms  and jumping-turning-flashing  bare legs constantly taking your eye in every dance, and the same movement motifs repeated in a number of dances throughout the programme, there is a doubling of the blurring effect.

Despite the songs all having lyrics, and each dance having a description, it is often hard to discern the connections of these two elements to the choreographic material, and these clearly talented and capable commercial dancers fall back on facial expressions and very literal interactions to get their message across.

This collection of short dances in commercial style contrasts strongly with contemporary dance works  in which communication of thematic material is the main intention. In contemporary dance, the thematic material is communicated through all aspects of the choreography – starting with the creation of movement vocabulary just for this one dance, shaped by choices of phrasing, patterning and structuring of movement in space to embody thematic material. That does not ensure, of course, that all contemporary dance works will succeed in communicating their themes, just that it is a more appropriate style than commercial dance when serious matters are the subject of the dance. 

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