Hearty applause and rousing cheers greeted Limbs@40, an homage to ground-breaking New Zealand contemporary dance company Limbs, featuring six reconstructed works from its historic 160-work repertoire.

Given beautifully polished performance by 27 mostly student dancers from UNITEC and the NZ School of Dance, who would never have seen the company perform live, these works provide a blast from the past for Limbs fans.

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Limbs@40 consists of six carefully chosen pieces from the pioneering contemporary Limbs Dance Company repertoire, re-imagined on current and post-graduate dance students of Unitec and the New Zealand School of Dance. All six pieces offer something a little different to the viewer, however by the end, I felt we had only just started to scratch the surface of the Company’s range and only one piece failed to hit the mark.

It starts with a short video, little excerpts of original Limbs footage. This sets the tone of the show and immediately helps me engage with the upcoming works as well as celebrate and remember the original performers. There is no denying that Limbs vocabulary seems a bit outdated to the “usual” contemporary dance we see in New Zealand today, but, when we think back to the vast differences in training and the development of the contemporary dance industry, it is easy to see how this change in movement has occurred.

The first piece is ‘Poi’ by MaryJane O’Reilly and originally performed in 1983, then extended and performed in 1987. Seven dancers from Unitec perform in leafy green unitards. 3 girls kneeling doing intricate replications of poi movement begins the piece. After a while, a man leaps across stage which comes across as humorous, a reaction that may not be intended. Tightly structured duets occur once two other dancers enter the space, before slipping back into slightly individual movements. The movement shifts into angular patterns. I am not drawn to any one dancer but simply watch the piece for what it is offering. The nature soundscore by Jack Body intensifies as do the dancers leaping and cutting across stage, and I feel as though the music and dance were choreographed together instead of making one fit the other,  although this section felt a little longer than it needed to be. As ‘Poi’ begins to slow down and reach its conclusion I can’t help but think what a marvellous opener it makes.

The second work ‘Melting Moments’, performed by 3rd-year students of the New Zealand School of Dance, is choreographed by Mark Baldwin and was originally performed in 1980. Performed in red unitards it offers three identical duets to Dvorak’s ‘American’ string quartet. This piece is intimate, tactical, controlled, and has a very classical, yet modern dance feel, with a few nods to Graham technique. I love this piece and seeing the female role in a duet supporting the males’ movement makes for a more interesting dynamic which puts equal weight on both partners.

The third piece changes tempo with MaryJane O’Reilly’s ‘Talking Heads’ with music by the named band. First performed in 1980, four female dancers of In Flagranté move across the stage with poise and clarity again in unitards. All four dancers move well together with most of the choreography navigating its way through static poses and I think it was a strong decision to put this piece on a more mature cast who have performed together many times before.Thisis a short and sweet piece complete with wiggly heads, shoulders and bums and highly enjoyable.

The fourth piece in the line-up shifts away from the previous three, although the movement is still along similar lines – ‘Knee Dance’ by Douglas Wright. First performed in 1982, this trio work is innovative with the vocabulary becoming more complex, however the foundation and build-up of previous works is echoed just the right amount. A shift in costuming helps recognise this change also to lose fitting black clothing. All three of the Unitec dancers do a beautiful job at bringing this piece to life and I am left thinking how lucky they (and all involved) are, to have the opportunity to perform this ‘grass roots’ contemporary dance, if you will, at this early stage in their contemporary dance careers.

Unfortunately, the fifth piece – ‘Perhaps Can’, a solo choreographed by MaryJane O’Reilly fails to deliver for me. Set to Miles Davis’ ‘PanPiper’, and performed by an In Flagranté dancer, this 1979 work opens with a female figure draped with a black shawl around her shoulders, sitting on a chair. With dim side lighting, and a focus on arm movements, there is a sensual feeling.  It is a puzzling presence within the rest of the works chosen. I understand the need to showcase the range of Limbs Dance Company repertoire, however, as the only solo performance of the evening I don’t feel it was the right casting decision and it was also not polished enough.

The final performance is by New Zealand School of Dance dancers performing ‘Quartet’ by Douglas Wright. Dressed in purple singlets and shorts this piece was originally performed in New York before being performed in New Zealand in 1987. You can see how far Limbs Dance Company have come with this piece being quite a change to previous works. The opening sequence is performed in silence and I am impressed with how well the dancers keep in time with each other. This piece is also the first where we see impressively performed solo choreography within a group work. The movement of this piece is much freer and less restricted and as before we see the echoes of the foundations for the movement which I really enjoy. This piece is filled with humour and playfulness and the pelvic thrusting leaves you with a smile on your face.

Limbs Dance Company wanted their pieces to be about the dance and to put the focus on the individual dancers, and I feel their choreography matches this. The movement does look better, in my opinion, on the dancers who have had further technical training, however this does not deter from the performance of all the dancers this evening who did a wonderful job at bringing Limbs Dance Company back to the forefront of New Zealand Contemporary Dance. 

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