Well! That was some enchanted evening! The second night of Art in the Dark at Western Park seemed to have lost some of its advertised live performance elements but actually, it was quite difficult to separate out the dancers from the spectators and the choreographers from the moment by moment unfolding social spectacle.

Much of the evening’s ambience and the extraordinary feeling of utter safety despite being in an urban park after dark resulted from light effects. Children swung and slid on the playground equipment lit with coloured balloons, creating their own delicious soundtrack. Even the cables for the mass lights and tree roots played a part. Certainly the old man seated quietly on a large stump took on a performance quality. This is one event that exposes Auckland citizens’ yearning for art as part of the script of everyday life, and the expression of a rather whimsical society.

Apart from the grandness of the trees lit with neon, the mighty nature of the forest was enhanced by the soft occasional whoosh of wings from out of a visible construction of wires and pulleys. Debonaire, Alex Leonhartsberger is Icarus, a white-winged angel in a black suit strapped into the beautiful machinery originally built for Elizabeth Knox’s movie, The Vintners Luck. Gliding beautifully, he exposes a dancer’s subtle evocative movements on takeoff and landing, ready to greet his waiting bride (Ella Mizrahi on night one but unnamed on night two), all dressed in white. She is very still as she sits amongst her audience entourage, waiting for his arrival. She greets the angel and they move to a park bench, where he kisses her, then departs. The bride is sad, and so are we, at this a forlorn romance presented by Celery Productions, perfectly pitched at the gentle, somehow colonial pace of Western Park.

I search in vain for Tread Lightly, solos by Annabel Harrison dressed in costumes with embedded LED lights, but along the way I follow the Stilt Tui Bird, a Morag Brownlie creation with help of lightsuit master, Vospertron, processing up the hill with support from a torch-holding helper who lights the hollows and tree roots so they can be avoided, and keeps the audience from tangling with the stilts in the dark.  

When I Grow Up is a dance of disarray presented by Jules Turner, Rya Allen, Mandy Alves, Lucy McGall and Nataljer Emeschajmer dressed in suits decorated with LED lights, cleverly choreographed to shift our gaze beyond the human dancing body into the spaces between the dancers and the surrounding environment. The Fighting Kitten Friends, an energetic creation of virtual, accumulative fighter roles in computer games by Jennie Robertson and Dan Veint becomes a human kinetic performance with a strangely non-human perspective.

Other notable and exquisitely presented works include Kate Ramsey and Hyunjin Yun’s, Knitted Luminaries, glowing white knitted yarns hanging like vine detritus and cocoons from a tree. In a marvelous juxtaposition of urban deconstructed art; Lara Fischel-Chisholm & Cut Collective’s highlighting of the instant in art, the belonging and the replaceable with their work, Whose Wall Is This. The toilet wall shows the antic action of street graffiti artists continuously painting and erasing, painting and erasing.

There is no real ending to the evening. It is a seamless event with a warm, receptive and comfortable crowd. Hundreds of people take in the peaceful surveys of imaginative minds and bodies of the selected artists. This year, Art in the Dark focusses on the way art and light and expansive snatches of recorded music can allay our habitual fears of walking in parks after dark, and I think the mix of nature, design machination and art is perfect. This show deserves a month’s exposure. If only it were so easy. While I was walking, I was also pondering how the event management and sponsors could afford performers night after night while maintaining free entry. Self imposed funding anxiety aside, I for one can see how this event could become as perennial as the Franklin Road lights, the Otara markets, the Antique fairs — and  I  look forward to next year’s event already.

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