‘Embody’ is a mixed bill of three dance pieces that just closed at Te Whaea this weekend. This compact selection of works for the Dance Wellington Festival features a strong line-up of choreographers dancing in their own works: Lyne Pringle, Juliet Shelley, Anita Hunziker, and Lucy Marinkovich. In this sense the title may become clear, where each ’embody’ their own ideas and choreography without other dancers to interpret their intentions or add other layers. It is a raw, immediate experience – with no division between the authorship of each individual work and its on stage presentation.

The programme starts with Lyne Pringle’s Lung Tree, a work that was developed in her residency at Pah Homestead in 2012. Through wonderfully precise and fluid movements Pringle pays homage to the tree, sculpting loving shapes in the air that evoke branches, breath, limbs, and growth. Hands breathe and flicker in short phrases that are almost Tai Chi. Yet in other moments they move like tree limbs do in the wind – without gesture, or without signal. There is a lot in this work to experience: hand-drawn animations are projected onto a folded screen; there is a costume change from white to black; video footage plays of a group of people dancing amongst trees; and two saplings are gifted to members of the audience. Yet for some of these rather disparate elements, this work is rendered with great care and wonderful grace. Pringle’s movements are strong and wonderfully crafted. Although she has been 50 years on stage, Pringle still moves with great strength and a moving presence. The final image of her balancing a large log on her head and slowly exiting the space brings a powerful closure to the work that emphasises the fragility of our relationships with nature and our responsibilities.

In Acoda Juliet Shelley collaborates with violinist Chris Prosser. Together they construct a duet between sound and dance that is distinctly abstract by comparison with Pringle’s preceding work. Shelley’s form is athletic and expansive, taking energies from the limbs to the body and back again, or finding points of suspension at the end of a movement that must then retract (or reverse) back on itself. In this way a backwards roll pauses at its tipping point, then returns where it came from. It is a work of textures, qualities, and shapes – and less about didactic meaning or symbolism.  Through several spoken and pre-recorded sequences, the poems of Antonio Machada and Pablo Neruda are intoned. One line from Neruda’s (1959) Sonata stands out within this work “alone with a syllable of mangled silver”, suggesting how the dance may be read in this work. Shelley’s taught, controlled phrases are like syllables in a carefully composed poem of movement. In this way choreography becomes musical, and the music becomes kinetic. Each note of the violin dances in terse dialogue with the dancer.

Life! Death! Prizes! is a work by a pair of dancers who have built a lasting friendship through working, travelling, and performing together for Footnote Dance Company. Anita Hunziker and Lucy Marinkovich are wonderfully confident dancers, with all of the discipline, confidence, and grace that years working professionally have brought them. But in Life! Death! Prizes! they are also able to be playful, humorous, and take the risk to investigate awkwardness in some very compelling scenes. From the moment they enter with their hair braided tight together they move as one, scurrying about the stage, making preparations. Two audience members are invited to assist the action by holding up iPads that play a soundtrack of the mundane requests and questions that any friend may make of one another. Portrait shots of Marinkovich and Hunziker are featured on each screen as this continues: shaking their heads slowly. Meanwhile, on stage the dancers tumble together: tangling and tussling in a dense sequence that examines a closeness which is at times sychronised and friendly, then turns to conflict. As this scene develops there are stumbling, lunging extensions that collapse with wonderful physical pathos, and as their hair separates it becomes frizzed, untidy, and chaotic. Dressed in T-shirts and girlish underwear, there is a sense of their casual, relaxed relationship with one another: as if they hanging out at a sleep-over. As we munch on the Cookie Bear biscuits that were distributed at the beginning, it feels distinctly like we are a part of this private life as well. Now separate, they do a dance that seems to capture their journey together, on and off the stages of NZ and the world. It is dance of all the dances that they have done together, making use of an array of cliched contemporary dance phrases with great wit and dexterity. Finally the audience / stage hands (wonderfully complicit at this point) are directed to assist in another scene where Hunziker dances in a Mexican wrestling costume as they shower feathers over her from above. It is my highlight of the evening – a dark, operatic, and melancholic scene that Hunziker renders beautifully while Marinkovich hovers on the edge, taking pictures with her iphone before apologising to us and taking her off stage, staying “She’ll be okay, she get’s like this sometimes, she just needs to talk with her mother and she’ll be alright”. Then Hunziker returns even more melodramatic than before, in a giant red cape, before the finale: where the two twist and distort one anothers’ visages in front of a burlesque stage curtain to David Bowie’s Heroes.

It is a fantastic evening of committed and well conceived dance works. The informality of the presentation is somewhat distracting, with dancers scurrying back and forth to prepare each new presentation. But it is a programme with great spirit. The short introduction that the artists make before the programme begins communicates some of the intentions behind their works, and is also a nice way of framing this casual relationship: inviting us into the artists’ works, their concepts, and their negotiation of the work live on stage. On top of this ’embodied’ nature, the trio of works all share a kind of generosity – between performers on stage, and with the audience. Pringle, Hunziker, and Marinkovich all present gifts to the audience, but also between Shelley and Prosser there is a careful attention to one another’s contribution to the holistic work: a generosity on each part to give space in the performance, to allow one action to ‘frame’ the other rather than taking centre-stage. This produces a powerful duet, which is just as present in how Hunziker and Marinkovich work with one another, or for that matter – their audience stage-hands, who are proudly presented with prizes and gifts at the end of the work. It is a rough programme, for sure, that demonstrates the need in Wellington for more infrastructure and venue for supporting dance like this. And it is important to note that this presentation of Lung Tree was an excerpt, and that Acoda was in early stages of workshopping, so I hope that all three of these artists have the opportunity to go further with each. Look out for these works again.

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