Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, 2020 NZ Arts Laureate, leads new platform TOHU Dance Theatre in this multi-disciplinary performance installation, Oro – inspired by discussions with kaumatua about the Maori calendar.

We are welcomed with a cooked kumara and invited to take our kai into the auditorium where sixteen moons hang in a circle, gazing at each other. Our seats are an outer circle of bean bags, huddled below the moons in three clusters divided by three aisles. A sound desk, a lighting booth and the station of a taonga puoro performer (Horomona Horo) are just visible to the far side of the room, beyond the audience. 

On the flat discs, projected light plays. Blood red foaming swirls, scarlet streaks and cream slashes mutate and melt across their surfaces. A bed of undulating sound drones and waves. It is as if we are plunged into a zone maybe much further than the moon: it could be deep inside this earth too. A tousled haired man (Pita Turei) stumbles into the circle of orbs. He sings bursts of American anthems – some from Black gospel, some from vintage pop. He tumbles on the floor, rolls, writhes, rises again. He speaks in te reo and climbs in rhythm and momentum, as if haka were forming, only to loll and slide to the floor, again to rise.

He leaves the crucible. In two women creep (Nancy Wijohn and Kelly Nash). They are elegantly garbed in tailored dress coats of somber shades. In their top knots are pairs of meter long sticks, as if their hair ornaments have grown to a colossal size. Yet despite such encumbrances the women’s grace and poise are constant. They bend their necks carefully to accommodate their massive headdresses as they embrace. They extract a stick each from the other’s hair and spar in a formal rite, placing their free hand on specific parts of their body in an orderly pattern; a knee, a shoulder, their foreheads. 

All the while, as the actions of the performers unfold, the moon discs are awash with complex cycles of shapes and forms: figures appear briefly; a whare emerges for a moment; geometric patterns fold and bend, like mandala or kaleidoscopes. So too, the soundscape ebbs and flows. The conch’s call, the pūkāeas’ trumpeting and the crisp clean chipping of pounamu percussion cut lines of melody and trills of beats into the amplified synthesized bed of tones. We audience recline, semi-supine, and drift…

 A trio of women enter next (Madi Tumataroa, Kereana Mason, Bailey Dewar) with their faces painted a silvery blue. They process in stately order about the circle, as if making a methodical and thorough connection to the place and the time. Then the women break ranks. One is lowered to the floor, from her high horizontal perch laying across another’s shoulders: she leaves the space. The remaining couple stamp and storm, breaking the tranquil calm with broken thrusting strides. Again, haka’s fire pushes into the space, shaking the audience’s somnambulistic repose.

  As the moons continue their course of endless changes, and the musical bed thickens further, a slow careful task is completed by the next figure (Charles Koroneho). He turns the short rod in his hands to entwine it in a single thread that is stretched taut across the circle. We can’t see who holds the outermost end. We can see the figure’s steady shifts of stance and grip, and the thread’s crisscross layers on the stick. Turn by turn, he advances. Each increment carries him through the moons.

 Finally, the moons are moons completely: each face shows a phase of the cycle we know so well, from a sliver of light to a full glow. But these stages of the lunar month rotate rapidly, ticking over like a second hand on a clock. The last figure enters (Moana Nepia), gesturing in detailed hand shapes to each of the discs. He is priestly and sedate, remote and focused. Gradually he brings us to the work’s conclusion. The room regains the blue wash of light to which we entered. The doors are opened and the foyer is glimpsed. A voice and gentle touch tell us to stir and wake from this world.

 The ensemble of artists collaborating here, led by Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, each inject decisive and distinct actions into a flow of work that pushes into new territories. This is a dance work that enfolds aspects of butoh and contemporary practice into mātauranga Māori. It is also a work of art – a sculpture made with light, movement and objects. It is, at the same time, a musical poem of tides of sound and flights of melody. Above all, it is a moon meditation. It invites us over an edge into the imaginings that a lunar world evokes. The presence and deeds of the figures we see, cradled by the awe-inspiring discs, make a chink in thinking. Through that gap, undercurrents have space to surface.

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