Between Two is a tandem of two 15 minute choreographies. The first, ‘Tipu’, is by Kelly Nash. The second, ‘M₋Nod’, is by Douglas Wright. Although not designed as such, the two works act as prologue and epilogue to each other. It is a perfect program.

Less than perfect is the venue, a tiny cramped vault in the Q Theatre complex, with the audience sitting in three rows of chairs on the same level as the performance space, and with an overhead stud the lowest since the New Zealand Ballet performed in A&P sheds around the country in 1953. “Don’t jump too high dears or you’ll crack your skulls open on the beam that’s two inches above your heads.”

There’s a noisy fan left on throughout the performance blowing cold air into our faces. Why? It’s not a hot night. “Oh because the fan’s droning helps block out the voices and footfalls of people in the foyer upstairs. This is a sustained and demanding 15 min solo so the dancer needs to concentrate.” Well, I can understand the dancer’s need to concentrate, but Wright has for decades been New Zealand’s premier dance-maker, a force of theatre, the most important artist in my and many people’s life, and this dance will be his last. Was there no better space available in all of enormous Auckland for his swansong?

“May I have a program or cast sheet please?’ (it’s hard to review without one). ‘Oh there isn’t a printed program,’ the box-office informs. Well I don’t believe that and sure enough, after it’s all over we are indeed handed a program. Hence this review.

Kelly Nash, working with Atamira Dance Company, has choreographed a number of memorable works of clear style and coherent proportions. The most recent I saw made a depth-sounding on Māori mythology and had extremely interesting collaboration with taonga puoro and karakia of Māori music. She’s an interesting choreographer who does not repeat herself. What will Tipu (meaning ‘seed’) offer? In a word, magic.

To Eden Mulholland’s inventive soundscape, two women, Nancy Wijohn and Atayla Loveridge, are encased in strong, transparent light-reflecting tights that seem like an otherworldy membrane of gladwrap. They move in sinewy duet, of sustained thread and thrust, suggesting female fecundity.

It makes sense then that the two other members of the cast are Milly Kimberly Grant, a beautiful woman who sits, stands and moves about in the shadows upstage, singing snatches of lullaby, sometimes quiet sometimes strong, to Te-Whakanoa-sage, her five-month-old baby in her arms. He listens to her, looks about at the dancers, snuggles in, suckles a little, traces the other breast while doing so, just to check that there will be more milk for later. He strokes his mother’s cheeks and sucks on her chin, looks at the dancers, looks at us. We can’t see Te Whakanoa altogether clearly because our eyes are brimming at his total absence of guile, at his sweet soft gentle exploration of air, movement for its own sake. Who wouldn’t want to slow down time and embrace a five-month-old baby? The first dance.

All four performers take a simple graceful bow and walk quietly away. ‘M_Nod’, which is a nod to Morpheus, the god of dreams, opens with the recorded voice of Douglas Wright instructing us, “Please close your eyes” and so we do. After a minute or two, “Please open your eyes” and so we do. The scene is now set with a prone figure in a shroud, his head beneath a regular kitchen chair. Three knocks of the baroque conductor’s baton on the floor to warn us that the theatre-piece is about to start, that we should steady ourselves, and so we do.

There is text spoken through the muffle of the shroud: “I must get up.” But that only results in the dancer bashing his forehead against the seat of the chair. The shroud is pulled down to expose his face which turns towards us, the head shaking slowly as if to say “No” but at ever increasing speed is soon a frantic blur of features. The body wriggles out, removes and tosses away the shroud.

There stands Sean MacDonald, tall, dark and handsome, but no stranger to the dance stage here. Last week he was in Black Grace’s Crying Men. Here is rather more comfortably centre-stage, poised and open, ready to perform a solo masterpiece made for him by Douglas, for his protégé, friend and colleague.

Sean wears a black armband and we all know what that means. What follows is a flawless performance that encompasses the shade and light of all there is. The curiosity, the experimentation, the reaction to folly, the fury at incompetence, the search for explanations, the grace and the gladness expressed in strong clean diagonals, both within the body’s held line and gesture, as well as in the sequences of movement that will find the upstage-right to downstage-left diagonal line as a river of sweet strength to bathe in. James Joyce’s voice is heard reading from his Finnegan’s Wake. There will be an excerpt from Stockhausen’s Stimmung. Tuvan throat singing is heard.

Douglas Wright likes to choreograph for the throat, which always reminds me of Lord Krishna whose throat turned blue after he drank all the poisoned ocean so his people would be safe. There are motifs and echoes throughout the dance that refer to several of Wright’s own earlier works—Elegy for example, in atmosphere and costume (a woman’s negligee top and a man’s brown trousers); A Mystery Play in the head bashing (though here, mercifully, it is against the air rather than the wall); Forever and Black Milk and rapt in the arresting opening images; halo in the search for spiritual expression amid daily distractions; Gloria in the eye’s questing for transcendence.

We can’t see Sean altogether clearly because our eyes are brimming at his total absence of guile, at the sweet soft gentle exploration of air, movement for its own sake. The last dance.

Fortunately there are four performances of this perfect program across two days and you can see them all because, incomprehensibly, the season is not sold out.* There will be four more performances this weekend. By then the queues should be round the block, but who knows? This is Douglas’s last dance. He is in the hospice now—where the last rehearsals for ‘M_Nod’ took place, all the above managed by rehearsal director Megan Adams who is working quiet miracles to do so.

The work was commissioned by Michael Lett, a young Auckland art gallery director, and had its premiere in the Grey Lynn Public Library hall back in July. Top marks to him, and to Carrie-Rae Cunningham, director of Tempo, for recognizing its importance and including it in the festival. I am assured there will be future performances, and that a good film has been made of the work.

Five of Douglas’ art works are currently hanging in New Zealand Art, an exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery, where they sit alongside Colin McCahon, Jim Allen, Gretchen Albrecht (whose work was used as set design for Douglas’ first full length work, Now is the Hour, with Limbs in late 1980s—and we can rejoice that there is excellent film of that in Nga Taonga Film Archive).

… not to mention Douglas’ three published books, Ghost Dance, Terra Incognito (not a typo) and Black Milk, as well as his three volumes of poetry. Michael Lett is agent for the most recent art works. When I visited Douglas in the hospice, he murmured a worry that his work is not ‘out there’. I could assure him that it is. 

*[The Q Theatre site now declares (12/10) the season is SOLD OUT – ed.]

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Going underground usually prompts claustrophobia in me.  But descending to the Vault at Q, perhaps assisted by the whirr of the air-conditioner, I immediately felt both intimacy and openness.  Along with an audience of perhaps 20 people, I witnessed strong performances in their own respective ways combining dance and human interactions that embraced a significant back-story.

Choreographers Kelly Nash and Douglas Wright hark from different generations of dance.  Yet somehow, their short and subtly colliding choreographic works make absolute sense together.  Each piece dives deep into areas we all strive to understand.  The liminal (in-between) passages between earthly-spiritual, conscious-unconscious, awake-dream states.  The ways in which we search for meaning in life even as we travel towards death.  

Kelly Nash’s ‘Tipu” (meaning seed, growth and development) is a reimagining drawn from her larger work Atamira (2017).  The 15 minute rendition opens with three barely lit female bodies in various positions.  Two bodies begin to shift their forms through a series of paused images, then to fluid and dynamic motion.  They are propelled by beautifully dense music that fuses string instruments and electronic sounds created by the reputed Eden Mulholland.  The bodies dance a duet of constant negotiation, imbued with sensitivity and consideration.  Between them, there is pressure without pain, touch without fear.  They offer support with no fragility.  Gracefully they counterpoint each other, breaking away then sliding towards one another with an intimate knowledge of why they move.

Nancy Wijohn and Atalya Loveridge dance with a fluid strength that at times pushes into physical theatre and expressive gesture.

A plinth supports the third performer (Milly Kimberly Grant): a woman with a flowing mane holding a bundle of material. As the light grows, our eyes adjust and we see a baby’s head within the bundle.

At first I assume a doll.  But as the bundle begins to move, a little arm reaches towards the face holding her and we are introduced to the fourth performer, Te Whakanoa-sage.  He’s peacefully unaware of his stage debut.  The work evolves and we are continually drawn back to the image of a mother and baby.  The mother breast-feeds her child.  She sings operatically in a voice that could make you weep.  She watches the other performers evolve their dance as if they were also her children.  Are they children unborn?  Or gifts from the spiritual beings, the Atua, that swirl in the liminal world?  Or perhaps they are Tipuna (ancestors) of the baby.  As Atalya Loveridge gently takes baby Te Whakanoa-sage into her arms, I’m reminded of the phrase ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.  The strength of traditional Māori parenting through an extended Whānau.

The dancers are clad in fleshy, plastic red undergarments; a costume I recall from Nash’s larger work.  It conjures a parallel with the amniotic sac or placenta (whenua).  I like these costumes. Nash’s collaboration with Poppy Serano continues an intriguing theme of using plastic materials within her performance design.

I cannot take my eyes off Milly Kimberly Grant and her baby.  There is a brief moment where each duet of mother/child and dancer/dancer is in profile, facing at each other.  Here baby Te Whakanoa-Sage steals the moment as he coos and joyfully engages eye contact with his Mother.  It’s a simple, satisfying image, paralleling a divine feminine love that connects all women together from birth to death and beyond.  

Tipu is both poetic and political as it explores the deeply connected structures of support between women, as well as often painful cyclic nature of birth, renewal and change.  Wijohn’s expressive solo is particularly memorable where an escalating series of yawns morph into silent screams and back into yawns.  She dissolves then rolls into a sequence of dance that is gentle and fierce at the same time.

Tipu plants a seed to the sequel of ‘Atamira’ and I am curious to see more.  Perhaps (and possibly perversely) this work could be repeated every year and we can watch the baby grow on stage just as Peeping Tom (European dance theatre company) did in ‘Le Salon’ where a performing couple danced for years with their own growing daughter.  This performer/family inclusivity is something I applaud.  It is also a new conversation growing stronger amongst the mother artists in our contemporary dance community and (supported by images of our Prime Minster’s baby in arms at a UN event) an exciting birth of an era where we remain engaged in our art form whilst maintaining family balance and cultural heritage.

M.Nod had a grip on me from for the moment I was asked to close my eyes by a familiar voice.  Douglas Wright then instructs me to open my eyes again and I see a body concealed by a sheet, with a chair positioned above the head.  Everyday objects assembled in disconcerting form.  The body beneath the sheet plays with the idea of fatality, bringing to mind a recent bereavement that greatly impacted on New Zealand’s dance industry.  It is apt that Wright dedicates this work to the inspirational dance leader Sue Paterson. It is apt that Wright is making this solo in a poignant, intimately bare setting.  A refreshing shift of his choreographic oeuvre that still manages in true Wright style, to pack a punch via its imagery.

I am poised for what will happen next.  Then somewhat relieved to hear the warm tones of Sean MacDonald come from under the sheet.  “I have to get up now… but that’s too flat… I have to leave this bed. No that’s too awkward”.  MacDonald torn between rising or not draws me into his conundrum.  Text from Korean writer Han Kang becomes the crutch on which we lean into this pared back, articulate and beautifully danced piece by this highly accomplished performer.  Once more, we are drawn into liminal space.  The sliver between sleep and wakefulness.  There is recognition of a certain let down – that reality can jerk one out of the arms of Morpheus (God of dreams).  It leads me to think of those who face depression and despair each time they open their eyes.  Those souls who prefer the suspension of consciousness and the dark, alluring shadows of a dream state to the glare and reality of human existence.

As the sheet reveals him, MacDonald turns his head sideways and gazes into the audience.  He sees us and we see him.  His handsome features and gentle brown eyes.  Then his head blurs through a fast shaking movement reminding me of some hallucinogenic images from the film Jacob’s Ladder.  Next he caresses his throat whilst the sound of Mongolian throat singing resonate around the stage.   This is an ancient animistic singing practice that mimics sounds in nature as a means to connect to her spirituality.  It is a satisfying sound that both supports and enhances his choreographic character as he dances with a gentle madness that will never leave his side.  He repeatedly sits on the floor and pushes his body back in space somehow trying to move forward, and perhaps outward from his state.  He touches his arse and playfully moves through subtle details.  He splashes his face with invisible water and I find myself wishing he could feel real water.  To wash away the fears and somehow enter the day.

Throughout, MacDonald is a compelling performer.  As he moves through a series of coded gestural movements on the chair, I cannot help return to another solo of great influence in our dancing history.  Elegy for Jim, Leigh and Bayley by Douglas Wright himself (1993) embodied a visceral physical expression that only the grief-stricken can appreciate.  It remains the most eloquent piece of dancing I have ever seen.  And now to experience a deft performance from MacDonald with petticoat tucked into suit pants, heavily drooping eyes and face falling into a brilliant display of soporific condition, I feel utterly inspired by the transmission of artistic craft and collaboration between choreographer and dancer (assisted by rehearsal director Megan Adams).

Accompanying the final passage of this work is the voice of James Joyce reading an excerpt from Finnegan’s Wake.  “We’ll meet again, we’ll part once more. The spot I’ll seek if the hour you’ll find.” Conveyed in Joyce’s thick Irish accent, it seals this piece with a farewell “Forgive-me-quick, I’m going! Bubye! And you, pluck your watch, forget-me-not” as MacDonald sits with a black book, wearing a black armband.  He returns to a blurring, fast-shaking head followed by a moment of serenity.  Perhaps he’s dreaming as he embraces the waking worlds we move through.  Either way the translation feels complete.

I appreciated these two short works that place provocative yet complementary content side by side.  As a concept, Between Two could continue pairing dance makers that explore the cultural, sociological and spiritual aspects of the human psyche, through immersive dance, powerful imagery and meaningful physicality.

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