I first saw Touch Compass a few years after they had formed, at the 1999 Celebration of the Performing Arts in Auckland. It changed my perception of dance from that of an art-form beyond the reach of common expression. Until then dance had seemed to me more athletic than polemic, more technique than content. However, watching the amazing Touch Compass dancers moving together on stage through their unique ways allowed me to see the broader potential for dance as a live and powerfully expressive artform.

16 years later and Touch Compass are a class act. This year’s Acquisitions Tour features some fantastic dancers and collaborations to create a moving night of movement. The set design remains consistent throughout each work: in the two choreographed works Undertide and Watching Windows, as much as in the three featured film sections. This elegant construction of one large cubic space on elevated wheels and other various boxes of various sizes helps bring the whole evening together. Windows, hatches, and doorways provide spaces within these spaces, portals between, spaces of passage, and frames for the bodies that pass. It is a shame that this design (and the lighting) is not credited in the programme because it is an incredibly strong and sophisticated contribution to the work, allowing the whole set to perform in collaboration with the choreographers and their seven dancers.

Undertide is choreographed by Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad from The Body Cartography Project. It is wonderful to see their trademark sensitivity to tiny shifts and touches, initiating small changes in energy within a group that share a strong empathic connection through each movement. After a video introduction, the dance starts outside the largest of the wooden boxes, in a knot of bodies that slowly emerges from the low light. The box becomes a stage within the larger stage of Te Whaea’s auditorium. Alisha McLennan’s departure from the group to enter this space is a lovely and poignant act that highlights the decision to be seen, to perform, and to do something that is seen. As other dancers follow her, they unite in a liquid, tidal investigation of this small interior together, rolling past and over one another, like bodies at sea. Sometimes they join in a trembling that shakes the walls and floor of this enclosure. They finally break the bounds of this little space and spin like dervishes, one hand to the heavens and one hand connecting to the earth below. It is testament to Bieringa and Ramstad’s sensitivity and tenderness as choreographers that the final exit is so moving – as the dancers turn and simply walk out, with each body comfortable in its own gait, its own rhythms. It is beautiful.

Two videos come next: Alyx Duncan’s Dancebox is a stunning play between small and large scale, with stunning symbolism and theatrical image-making filmed entirely within the boxes. Another video features Duncan Armstrong in a jubilant play on the percussive character of the same boxes. They make a powerful interlude in the evening of live performance.

The last work brings to life the whole array of the cubes that have been arranged around the larger ‘home’ box. It is a playful work of acrobatic engagement with the architectural arrangement on stage. The dancers spring through small openings, pace around the larger ones, they slide through hatches, emerge from the ceiling, twist under the elevated flooring, and glide over another’s own bodies. Gravity, a sense of up and down, beneath and above, is often inverted, rotated, and unsettled by this tumbling weave of movement through the compartments and contained spaces. It reminds me of Malia Johnstone’s own use of boxes in Miniatures (2007), and Ross McCormack’s recent Age for the 2014 NZ Festival. These works all express a certain New Zealand relationship with home and landscape: a miniature, temporary, or fragile enclosure in the large open terrain of the theatre/landscape. At the strongest moments Touch Compass bodies pace these spaces, look out, and examine tender, awkward, or solitary relationships inside each enclosure.

Sometimes it is not clear what the boxes are meant to be, other than a jungle-gym for this very strong and adept group of performers. A mime sequence with smaller boxes seems to evaporate a lot of the powerful symbolism these boxes have accumulated throughout the evening. This is not so strong, but other scenes bring things back to life, when a box vibrates as it is pushed on stage. It is then turned to reveal Georgie Goater crammed into the tiny interior. Her drumming on the box infects the rest of the cast, and in the final victorious moments of the performance everyone hammers on the walls of various pieces of the set. Others clatter the smaller components together, shaking the walls, swinging the doors, and animating this little settlement of cubic shapes with their collective energy. It is a fantastic finale. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Touch Compass is New Zealand’s only professional, inclusive dance company working with able-bodied and non-able bodied dancers redefining dance and preconceptions as to what dance is.

Acquisitions comprises of two works with several short films as an interlude.  The films are whimsical yet reflective, the highlight been dancer Duncan Armstrong playing a frustrated punk rocker who finds a way to carry on the music whilst his very instrument is taken away from him. 

The first work ‘Undertide’ by US based choreographers Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad is a mixed media effort incorporating dance very successfully with film.  Backed by a minimalist yet haunting musical score by composer Claire Cowan, ‘Undertide’ is a modern urban work exploring how we adapt to our environment, specifically crowding, whether it be physical or spiritual.  The dancers writhe and contort as bodies morph from position to position in a fight for space – to breathe.  It is an intriguing work, as a shaking pulsing green light emanates from a dancers third chakra, one is left to ponder the significance.  Located around the navel in the area of the solar plexus, the third chakra is a source of personal power and governs self-esteem, warrior energy, and the power of transformation.  I may be off track completely but this work does allow one to interpret as one sees.

I particularly like the use of the box throughout Acquisitions, as a metaphor for space, or limit of, and the way the dancers break free from the confines of the box using it as a springboard for movement and release.  To me, the box is symbolic of shackles and conforming.  The dancers entice us to look outside the square.  The lighting is worthy of mention, subtle yet present..

‘Watching Windows’ is a lighter more accessible work choreographed by Catherine Chappell, Liz Kirk and Adrian Smith with collaboration from the dancers themselves specifically the graciously statuesque Georgie Goater.  Remaining with the theme of box versus expansion, the dancers vault,  and stretch in and around boxy and straight shapes. I really enjoy this work, there is a feeling of freedom and joy whereby ‘Undertide’ feels ever so claustrophobic.  One delightful moment is the playing of little music boxes that harmonise with a piano tune.  Playful and wonderfully abundant.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer