Reflections & post-show fragments by Tru Paraha

This premiere event hosts the first in a series of performance works by Auckland Blackout Performance Assembly, produced by Cat Ruka. Framed by Ruka as “an opportunity for local performance artists and choreographers to share and test their current research enquiries”, the assembly offers an eclectic vision for the expanded field of art practice inAuckland. As a theatre based event the works thrive on the verve of Sean Curham’s lighting design. His inventive aptitude continues to propose light as a potent and conceptual force within performance. Sound design also permeates this programme including compositions by James Risbey and Marc Chesterman.

In the opening piece we are guided through mappings of Joshua Rutter’s enigmatic world and exceptional style. As witness to this event, we immerse in a plethora of ideas, corpora, and sensorial experience. Acts of theft and re-invention thrive within a contagion of theatre, spatial design, internet technology and choreo-graphics. Adrian Smith performs this compelling solo through heightened states of humour, exposure and corrupt physicalities.

This is my game          Joshua Rutter with Adrian Smith

Audience operated laser beams locate a mound-blob of active apparel. There’s some-thing/body underneath and a sci-fi aesthetic with mood enhancers. Josh perches in the aisle working a control stick like a wizard or just a guy who knows what he wants. A model spaceship ascends and traverses Blackspace. It hovers over the mound-blob, orbits and travels into audience territory. We sit back and exhale; it’s magical and positively military.  

An alien struggles and purges from inside the mound-blob, plopping out a soft-form afterbirth. He has a 6-pack man-body, hyper tensile and ever ready. He dances a kind of virtual krump and shows us what he’s made of. He self-simulates and codifies on cue. He self stimulates and modifies on cue. Repeat. He knows you are watching. He knows you are. He knows. He has a gun that could pop a cap in your ass. He dances cyber-hypnotic to a fat beat. He gets brought down to his knees. A laser pinpoints his forehead. Game over.

Anna Bate reveals her sophisticated approach to choreography with a distinctive conceptual design led by critical questions and experimental deviation. Her physical absence, juxtaposed against a palpable audio presence engages notions of the real, virtual, actual and imagined. A peculiar and elevating brand of performance is activated through processes of transmission, translation, embodiment and de-stratification. Potentially a work that could be enacted by a diversity of contenders it provokes questions around how choreography might transform the tripartite maker-performer-audience relationship across time and space. Exceptional performances are offered on alternate nights by Zahra Killeen-Chance and Mike Holland.

Something about feeling          Anna Bate with Zahra Killeen-Chance & MikeHolland

He looks like a dancer. He wears ear plugs attached to an iPod. Choreographic instructions feed through the audio. She is over seas or a kind of simulacrum. He is charismatic, nuanced. She is saying things and because of what she says he does things. We anticipate the unknown with Bated breath. Anna Anna Anna activating gesture, sensation, feeling, movement. Multiple spaces unfold, revealing the work to audience and performer in a shared real-time of love flows. We’re laughing, perturbed, affected? There’s a lot of joy in the room. His buttocks dance a banquet of expression. Flesh is spread, groped, and shared. Like all good dancers he extends the perceptual thresholds of what a bum can do. Propelled to climb over rows of audience members, they eagerly touch him and bear his manic weight. He’s a crowd surfer – a rock star. He loses his audio feed as the ear plugs drop out. The mayhem simply ends. It’s emotional.

A rousing new generation of choreographers emerges intoAuckland’s dance community, many of whom stem from the local Unitec Dance programme. Recent graduate Oliver Connew develops his choreographic practice through dance vocabularies, visceral design and integrated tests. Frantic velocities experienced in contemporary living surfaces through his solo performance. Oliver’s dancing body, idiosyncratic voice and creative vigor distinguishes him as one to be watched.

Test my verge  Oliver Connew

Articulating edges, impulse and gesture. Energies surface, erupt, and converge. His course is insistent, lateral shifts through linear progressions. A moment of captivation as a plastic bag is emptied of its contents – a precision of multi-coloured flowers forming lines to a pyramid. He perches like a kangaroo or a stag or a man inside his triangular grid, lithe and inquisitive. A sequence of antagonistic movement ensues, crossing borders, rupturing. He’s pacing lines of flight in an uncertain place. A garden of chaos or a new human race?

The closing performance for the evening is a psychologically and physically charged work by Kerryn McMurdo. A clear thematic takes us through the fall of Eve, the first woman in Christian mythology. She generates embodied states, intensities and movement. Transforming into a new performative mode the relationship with audience becomes taut, direct and enlivened. We are wryly seduced into an act of violence, or offered a moment of resistance as conscious agents.

From his rib – Kerryn McMurdo

First the fruit swells inside a mouth. Haunches raised, she rocks and mounts. She’s dressed in black she’s a virgin-whore or somebody’s wife. She traces a genealogy up powerful thighs. Dances through emotional terrain, ravenous body and barren scapes. She’s alone. She’ll survive – the core-bitten legacy of every fallen one.

Extended along the wall her body creates an illusory end then begins again. Un/dressing into bridal whites and dress-up veil there’s a tonal shift. Stagehands offer shiny apples to the crowd. Some take a bite, others decline. Eve speaks into a microphone. She thanks us for being here and appreciates how busy we are. She explains that she’s about to put on a safety vest and when she says GO we are to throw our apples at her. The crowd is slightly fazed and in/visibly excited. This could be a fanatical stoning or a rotten tomato night at the theatre. The apples are hurled. Some of the audience could work on their aim. No-one really wants to hurt her (?)

Champagne & Limousines is an event that deterritorialises familiar conventions while cultivating a multiplicity of artistic voice and terrain. Shout-outs and firm handshakes to Auckland Blackout Performance Assembly for a visionary project, fuelled by an indomitable spirit. Ko nga mihi nui ki a koutou i runga i te ahuaranga o tenei kaupapa me nga whakaaro nui e whai ake nei.

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