There is something deeply satisfying and yet challenging in Daniel Belton’s latest digital dance art film Astrolabe – Whakaterenga. The web of imagery and artistry is steeped in humanity’s attempt to understand the universe and what lies amidst or beyond our galaxy, the Milky Way. The work is slow moving, black and white and mysterious.  

A multi-media collaborative work engaging an international cast of contributors including colloborator Patxi Araujo. it is a complex array of digital lines, webs, maps and gyrating objects conjuring up intergalactic time travel, alive with ancient artifacts, portals and knowledge. The space journey is accompanied by voyagers and keepers of wisdom, and music conveying a vast echo chamber.

Inter-planetary star systems gave early man the concept of time, and fueled the imagination for a world outside their own. In the book Out of Our Minds, author Felipe Fernández-Armseto writes: “In the absence of other books, the sky made compelling reading for early humans. In some eyes, stars are pinpricks in the veil of the sky through which we glimpse light from an otherwise unapproachable heaven.”

Astrolabe – whakaterenga too, gives us a glimpse of the early maps and custodians of this old knowledge. The work references the Chunyou Star Chart of 1247 as well as early Asian and Pacific Island cosmology and astronomy. 

Living in the city it is impossible to view the stars the way the ancients saw them but I found these ideas present in my subconscious, easily prompted to life by the imagery. Through this voyage into the past, the work provokes a search for new meaning in these old knowledge systems – although a digitally realised world set amidst the cold blackness was at first forbidding.  The familiar waka used in other works by Good Company Arts is this time a digitally realised shape of an Aboriginal wattlewood boomerang made by craftsman and artist Joe Skeen Snr. It glides assuredly through space, suggesting these ancient vessels offer safe passage. This is a powerful image and suggests a confidence in the star maps that guided their journeys.

The spectral dancers (Xiao Ke and ZiHan, Janessa Dufty, Christina Guieb and Jill Goh) are suspended in time on their celestial voyage, and yet their repetitive movement and tasks carry an earthbound energy. They are slow moving, isolated, devoid of human connection, fully engaged in marking or keeping ancient knowledge. They pass through the blackness, shifting particles, scything, lunging, spiraling, digging and tracing. The core music made by Daniel, Jac Grenfell, and Nigel Jenkins stretches and rips the soundwaves, bells clang as if time is passing through gateways and planetary intersections. Haunting taonga puoro by Richard Nunns is timeless; a bullroarer sweeps up intergalactic winds.

The work premiered at Gallery 10, National Museum of Singapore in December 2019 as a multi-layered exhibition of large-scale proportions. Projections covered three big walls; there was a reflective floor, and headsets were available for viewers who in turn became performers in their act of viewing. 

Daniel Belton and Good Company Arts have released Astrolabe – whakaterenga for viewing on their website to mark Matariki, (Māori New Year/Solstice). It is also available in a VR 360 headset version – both are available until 21st Dec 2020. Reduced to a computer screen, the hugeness of space and the star systems is made more negotiable, more personal, and the link allows immediate and repeated viewings.

Astrolabe whakaterenga signals a new chapter in the impressive body of work by Aotearoa’s leading digital dance and movement innovator. Framed by a cross-cultural partnership, the work is anchored in knowledge systems all too easily marginalized or forgotten in the frenetic energy of our era.  And yet, it is ancient wisdom that holds the key to our survival as a planetary species.

World Wide Web Premiere Immersive Dance Art Film + VR, https://www.goodcompanyarts.com/

21st June 2020 – 21st Dec 2020 (Online) 

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