Two more contrasting showcase programmes than Fresh Cuts and Y Chromozone are hard to imagine. Back-to-back placement on the Tempo 2012 dance festival programme, however, lets them become complementary opposites.

Fresh Cuts offers a distinctly feminine series of perspectives on everyday life, through contemporary dance works that tackle issues arising from interpersonal behavior in a social context, cross-cultural influences on ideas of what makes one beautiful, events that disrupt one’s world, everyday insecurities and vulnerabilities, getting out of bed in the morning with enough energy to tackle the day’s demands, and a critique of iconic representations of Pacific women. The programme mostly comprises complete short works, though some excerpts are included.

Y Chromozone is a celebration of the kind of polished masculinity which features in a wide array of dance forms….

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Tempo Dance Festival plays a number of roles for the Auckland dance industry, and providing a platform and support for emerging choreographers via the annual Fresh Cuts showcase is one of them.

Fresh Cuts 2012 is a mix of solid, well-developed works, and those with promise for fuller development. There are many moments to be enjoyed, and there are also times when you wonder why certain decisions were made, or were not challenged, and whether an outside eye was part of the work’s development

Opening the show, a trail of Pacific women solo dancers perched on podiums in the manner of hula dolls takes us through the foyers to the theatre, and sets a lively tone for the show. Passers-by can set the dancers off by pushing play, in reference to the conspicuous consumption and commodification of these cultures that Charlene Tedrow is concerned with in Pacific Me Barbie. The final Polynesian doll is encountered in the theatre wearing a blonde Marilyn Monroe wig; the image captures the essence of what follows. First, divested of wig and such, Marilyn becomes a traditional Hawaiian dancer, dancing what I think is a blessing for tonight’s show. Once all of the ‘dolls’ have arrived on stage, we move to a tourist-tinsel-town steeped in the tones of Elvis’ Rock-a-hula. A free flow of images follows. Women as puppets, as strong assertive inquisitors with the ‘cultural’ costumes gone, striptease, shop dummies and so forth. Transitions between the sections are subtle and flowing. Live drumming by Maile Griffin and Danny Kaitamaki adds strength to this work. All female Ura Tabu Pacific Dance have something to say and an engaging way of helping us to hear.

Similarly well-developed is Jessie McCall’s captivating, well-paced, amusing and punchy mix of dialogue and dance. Echoing thematically Pacific Me Barbie, McCall’s Gimme some sugar, i am your neighbour enters the material girl world of Madonna. Never having enough of what you want and craving what others have leaves these performers in La La Land. As the possible existence of a gift that keeps on giving gradually becomes a reality, the performers learn how to live with self and other.  The performers in both these pieces give the gift of quality and seem comfortable in the imaginative and evocative vocabularies chosen for/by them.

How to make friends and still appear normal 
carries a light and a dark landscape. Choreographer Natalie Clark opens the dance with an endearing personal narrative about the innocence of dance and life from her childhood, made all the more poignant and funny by the film of her tap dancing aged five. The sudden onset of a darker more adult world in which others judge you more harshly leads to movements suggestive of scrutiny, judgement and isolation as a way of escape. Friendships appear as both functional in supportive contact work, and difficult when one might become too clingy; a thoughtful choreography.

The use of traditional dance vocabulary in Ura Tabu’s signature style is a way to address contemporary themes. In Raw Silk, choreographed by Katerina Fatupaito, clashes between a roaring Asian tigress and a softer Samoan disposition are depicted in subtle ways, maintaining, however, a continuity of a feminist gaze.

Migrate tomorrow morning by Juanita Jelleyman affords a contrast to other more vigorous pieces in the programme with its prolonged images of sleeping and gradual waking. As dancers gradually find their feet they are seen as vulnerable in their isolation. The voice collage and sound track for this piece was well chosen.

Suddenly, If you’re going to be late, why don’t you just leave earlier? by Anitra Hayday, bursts into being with a contrasting perspective on the sleep/wake condition. Operating at a frenetic pace, it takes quantum leaps through images of time – being late, early, how getting dressed can be a temporal challenge when one is adopting a more haste- less speed strategy, this piece has some eyecatching moments. Further development of dance vocabulary, pacing and sectioning could draw out the potential impact latent within these pieces.

 The backgrounds of the emerging choreographers featured in Fresh Cuts 2012 show just how crucial the tertiary dance courses are in New Zealand as seed beds for our dance theatre industry. They have all studied dance at tertiary level and in so doing could have received inspiration and preparation to take their first steps towards a career in this amazing art form.

 Other issues that this selection of works reveal for me at least, include: how best to find movement that fits the technical range of dancers as well as the theme; the way dancing in one’s own work hampers the ability to see it fully and develop it as far as it might go; music choice that is not too obvious (or if it is, the choreography is sufficiently strong to hold its own) or does not overpower the movement, and I wonder here if there could be more funding to help young composers and choreographers to work together.

So go and see Fresh Cuts tonight so that you can say you saw so-and-so when she (and they were all female), first set out.

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