Amelia Butcher, under their company Jenire, brings a lightning-charged Contemporary dance work to Wellington’s 2024 New Zealand Fringe Festival.  The work’s title, Ominous, merely hints at the bounding energy that unleashes throughout this cyclical, resolving, and atmospheric journey.  Accompanied by splices of blockbuster-worthy music and tempestuous soundscapes, Ominous makes for an electric evening of dramatic, punchy and powerful dancing.  

Firstly, Jenire is an emerging dance company to keep an eye on as they produce with careful consideration for uniformed costuming, formations and choreographic cohesion; a strength that is evident in Ominous.  The cast are dressed in sleek full white or black outfits, seamlessly quick changing throughout the piece in order to complement the aesthetic formations and climactic tones.  Furthermore, the choreography appears intricately cohesive through mesmerising transitions on and off stage, utilising Te Auaha’s Tapere Nui stage wings as if they are billowing in the wind, as well as interweaving formations and intense relationship dynamics on stage between the dancers.  

Choreographically, a comforting cyclical nature is suggested through the revisiting of motifs such as the reversal of their whirlwind entrance onto the stage.  However, this is also passionately executed by the performers’ shifting movement intentions.  Whilst the opening section has this ominous mood, it is replaced by a settled tranquillity by the end of their journey.  Despite a variety of dynamics between the dancers, the choreography appears to intertwine the dancers as a whole united cast.  Throughout the work, the performers’ energetic movement qualities encompass their dramatic expression and stage presence.  At times, the theatre space felt unreflective of this intensity and united strength of the dancers.  With further development, I can imagine this dance work reflecting its cinematic choreography with additional incorporation of lighting or set design to aid the world created around the dancers, or perhaps even be enhanced as a screen adaptation.  

To conclude, Ominous is an epic display of Butcher’s talent in collating intricate choreographic formations amongst a united cast of passionate and promising performers.  I am eager to see how Butcher’s works develop with their clear potential to further create fierce and captivating blockbuster-esque dance performances. 

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