This layered work of a ‘reactivated archival material from former Bodenwieser dancers including Shona Dunlop MacTavish, Hilary Napier and Hilde Holger’ is presented as an itinerant event with audience members following dancers and narrator as they move through the out-back, off-stage spaces of the Q Theatre complex. Spoken introductions are interspersed with fragments of dance by couples and triples in stairwells, corridors and half-way spaces that suggest history is at best caught piecemeal and personally.

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LOST + FOUND [dances of exile] is an ambulatory tour through the non-public and usually restricted spaces of Q Theatre that pays tribute to Gertrud Bodenwieser through the revitalisation of her movement and its history. The experience simulates an experience of displacement, mirroring the WWII exile of Gertrude Bodenweiser, Jewish Austrian dancemaker and pioneer of Bodenweiser technique, to the South Pacific.

Artistic Director Dr Carol Brown has a strong connection to and heritage in Bodenwieser dance as a former student of Shona Dunlop-MacTavish- one of Bodenwieser’s dancers, and care and respect for Bodenwieser and the legacy left behind is strongly embedded within this work. The performance I am attending is of particular significance as Shona Dunlop-MacTavish has travelled from Dunedin to Auckland to be part of this audience.

The audience gathers in the Q Lounge and we are gently yet deliberately given instructions and warnings that prepare us for our journey. Warnings such as “you cannot take everything with you”, and “there are some small spaces where we are going”, evoke a sense of loss when considering the permanence and reality of departure into exile.

We have a guide and anchor in Thomas Kampe, who calmly leads and instructs the group, sometimes in German, sometimes in song.

Our first stop is the dimly lit Q Vault. The brightly dressed dancers are interspersed throughout the group, appearing and disappearing, drawing from distinctive Bodenwieser vocabulary- extended and passionate, spinning and jumping, energy born from the core and flowing throughout the body.

We are lead through the sub-stage, performer-signed and graffitied passageways, past dressing rooms, the laundry, and into a narrow white corridor. Two performers (Kasina Campbell, Maryam N. Bagheri) beckon to us and share stories in another language, encased in the harsh portrait of a doorframe.

Directly under the Rangatira mainstage we find the home for stacked chairs and rostrum pieces illuminated by projections and filled with the voices Bodenwieser’s dancers recounting memories. We start to build a picture of what she was like – lively and mischievous. Dancers are perched in corners, storage stacks, and even down the stage lift – we are free to wander and engage with installation pieces of our choosing with Russell Scoone’s travelling soundscape reverberating echoes off the concrete

Our journey leads us up a stairwell, each one of us has a unique visual perspective carved and framed by the concrete steps above us where a duet share through movement and translation more about the life of Bodenwieser, her cheek and strength, her “strong Bodenwieser thighs”.

Squeezing backstage, we are guided up to the catwalk where the dancers are spaced throughout the lighting grid. Light from below breathes an eerie ghostly glow on their slow and powerful movements, fading into the blackness. Three stories down we can see the Rangatira stage where another historical work is concurrently taking place: Unitec students are rehearsing Limb’s Dance Company’s Poi in preparation for LIMBS@40. There is a sense of significant and complex layers overlapping within Q’s walls as young people embody and reanimate pieces of New Zealand contemporary dance history, from Bodenwieser to Limbs. In this moment Q is a living and transient museum.

The dancers of the New Zealand Dance Company bring to life the full-bodied physicalising of the Bodenwieser movement with clarity and spirit. Kasina Campbell and Maryam Bagheri are also both beautiful and engaging performers, offering show(wo)manship and passion.

Our journey closing with hospitality from the cast and crew right where we began, LOST + FOUND [dances of exile] ends in a complete and uplifting cycle. Sorrow is a natural accompaniment to such an experience, and LOST + FOUND [dances of exile] acknowledges this. Yet the experience is not just a tour through loss, but also the discovery of new spaces, relationships, possibilities and realities that are created through displacement. Exile and escape are as relevant to our world today as they were in the 1940’s. Experiencing these themes through Bodenwieser’s narrative is not only a doorway to the past, but a way to connect to our global present, and a celebration of what is found, and is a way of experiencing Q unlike any other.

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