Tempo Dance Festival is a dialogue, a conversation among dance groups. Moving from theatre to theatre and seeing the space alive with motifs and movement, I feel somehow as though I am being choreographed into the whole event. The second choreograhic showcase is like hearing one of those conversations as tidbits. They are not small however but fully meaningful.

There are three distinctively separate acts. Paper Tiger, by Ann Dewey, Pandora, by Alyx Duncan and Not what I do, by Camile Sweney. They are not the same discussion.

There are hundreds of watchable dance moments in Paper Tiger. The  two dancers – in order of appearance: Zoe Watkins and Will Barling – are contained in their exquisite dancerness, but released by Ann’s precise and detailed evocation of a lifetime of relationship; the dreaming up, the meeting, the absorbing, the undoing, the abandoning and the traces, left in their bodies. John Gibson’s music serves them a platform for intricate musicality and expression. The scene moves us and them around possibilities and time. As with other dance vocabularies in tempo there are moments that seem animalistic, drawn from natural or instinctive movements.

Pandora is equally watchable. Kilda Northcott and Tallulah Holly Massey present two versions of a study about agedness. That is, clever editing allows us room for imagination to weave our own story. It is difficult to tell whether this film would be realised without “dancers” playing out the subtle portrayal of an old woman catching her past.

And Camille! Another recent graduate from Unitec. She, unlike many of the other graduate, has chosen a less introspective path (perhaps?). Her sound score is a mix of Fred Dagg’s iconic revelations of the New Zealand farmers’ mind as script.  Maria Munkowits (could someone scoop her into a company!) is gorgeous, provocative and leggy with Megan Hughes, who did have a brief stint with Black Grace, and Rangi Rangitukunoa expending exorbitant amounts of energy in combined dance movement and ridiculously funny cow / sheep / dog posturings. Very funny, must be seen. They are playing again in the schools shows at TAPAC next week.

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