Hine Downtown
03/09/2022 - 11/09/2022
04/09/2022 - 10/09/2022
Production Details
This performance is a continuation of explorations around Hineahuone (the first Human in Te Ao Māori) as a blueprint for experiencing the ecologies of our body in relation to environment, story and sound. It utilises materials, costumes and soundscapes from previous performances, alongside brand new ones to create a site-specific work based around two sites in Auckland – Central and West.
We will be supported by the beautiful, evolutionary skills and sounds of Salvador Brown via a soundscape produced with Tāoka Puoro, sound recordings and electronic sounds overlaid with spoken text. Think performance art, somatics, site-specific dance, walking tours and storytelling.
DATES/TIMES/LOCATIONS:
Victoria Park, Auckland Central: Saturday 3rd Sept @ 5.30pm, Sunday 11th Sept @ 1pm, walkaround performance
Outside the Northwest Shopping Area, Westgate, Auckland: Sunday 4th @ 1pm, Saturday 10th @ 1pm, walkaround performance
Performances will go ahead if raining. They will be postponed in case of downpours and high winds. All other information will be sent after registration and in the week before the performances. This includes the exact location to meet. You will be given a headset for the performance to listen to the audio through, so no need to bring your own!
Rachel Ruckstuhl-Mann, Performance and Design, Founder Whānui Moves and Salvador Brown via a soundscape produced with Tāoka Puoro, sound recordings and electronic sounds overlaid with spoken text.
Contemporary dance , Dance , Dance-theatre , Maori contemporary dance , Multi-discipline , Performance Art , Te Reo Māori ,
60 mins
Hine Downtown – an embodiment of the urban sylph
Review by Jaqs Clarke 07th Sep 2022
The fresh, raw, shiny surfaces of the neoteric-urban precinct of Westgate had a cultural brush up last Sunday, when dancer choreographer Rachel Ruckstuhl-Mann decided to incarnate there for a spell as Hineahuone – the first Human woman in Te Ao Māori.
In her performance Hine Downtown for Auckland Fringe, Hineahuone embodies the urban sylph, a shapeshifting elemental spirit of the air, the water, and the deep earth.
Initially Hine appears as a homeless camper on a small perfectly manicured lawn, a quiet spooking presence watched on by cafe patrons. Uprooted from her slumber in the ancient deep earth she reappears to contest her own unhoming. Flitting and darting from sidewalk to bench, across roads, stopping traffic, like a jaywalking ghost, moving through the urban co-ordinates as though they don’t exist, like Batman or skateboarders, Hineahuone is too ancient and impressed upon by the spirit world, to know the code for urban slowing. Morphing into a large dilating sea slug, rolling and heaving over whenua still scratched and gouged by recent earth movers (who having erased mellow contours into a flattened gradient, fit for grid, and rolled away) leave Hineahuone to mourn and gently soothe the scraped, broken, gaping epidermis of Papatuanuku.
Like many feminine deities whose complex natures are a mix of wrath, torment, and sweetness, Rachel’s movement discourse is startling, sparky, elusive, spontaneous and fantastically honed, bringing a haunting primeval delicacy to an environment still spooked by the violence of its own becoming. The audioscape by Salvador Brown that mixes Tāonga Puoro with Te Reo Kāi Tahu from Rachel’s southern whakapapa, brings alive the most ethereal and ancient of Atua, making a vivid immersive sound journey that matches the choreography second to second. To conclude this astonishing surprise visit from a sacred Tīpuna, the performance ends on the sweetest notes of ancient soundings…but you will have to get along to hear that….”
Performance at Westgate, outdoor location near Northwest shopping area, 4 September 2022.
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