“Daniel Belton, although somewhat geographically isolated in the NZ dance scene, is an artist internationally recognised and at the height of his career, working with incredible integrity”
(Julia Harvie review of OneOne, 2014).

Reviewing this work again is a trip through space and time. Above, is a quote from my original review of OneOne in 2014, and it still stands as a statement I would make today. Back in 2014, when I first reviewed OneOne as part of The Body Festival, I held my newborn baby daughter in my arms and sat alone in the work as it was then, a multi-media installation, with no live performance aspect, other than my own interaction with the objects in the space. This evening, I see the work as a multi-disciplinary live performance activation for Te Matatiki Toi Ora’s (The Christchurch Art Centre) Great Hall during Matariki, amidst an excited and keen Ōtautahi audience. Tonight I am joined by my nine-year old son and my daughter is now seven. Time. Time and again. One Time and time on(e)going. 

Belton has been working in this space, with these modes and movement languages for many years.This makes the work in such a dialogue with itself over time and indeed with time itself. The work has not dated, but it has evolved and Belton and his collarborators have carved out a space for this distinct work that dances with time, culture, tradition, science and technology. It is an honour and a privilege to be invited to write again about his work. I first encountered Belton as a third-year dance student at UNITEC in 2003 and here we are, still in conversation, nearly twenty years later. I am able to reflect on my own life, and relationship to time and my own body as Belton embeds me and the rest of the audience in his work. We feel enveloped in the work and trust we are in good hands. We know we are in Good Company. 

Lately, I have been reading the work of André Lepecki and Ramsay Burt who both describe a movement of dance artists engaged in a practice of critique of the role choreography itself as a symbol of, and tool, to further enforce the late-capitalist subject. To my mind, this work positions Belton in this space as an artist resisting, in a world where everything is fast-paced and constantly changing, OneOne slows us down, asks us to look back, forwards, inside and around time and question our relationship with time itself. 

In te reo Māori the title, Oneone, denotes soil, sand or earth and the inspiration for the work is Te Wai Pounamu’s landscape. In particular this references the Maerewhenua River. Near to this site is a place called Anatini (many caves), and the Valley of the Whales, places which are now very much inland from the sea, but were once under the ocean and named because there are fossils of Cetaceans in the limestone of whale and dolphin. 

We enter the Great Hall, and the cave-like sense the presence this work creates immediately takes hold of us. We take our seats at the back of the room where chairs are laid out in a series of arcs. We hear the sound of a babbling brook – water moving through space. From the centre of the arched seating, the space thrusts outwards, a channel for taonga placed on the ground, small kete sit like stones in a riverbed, vessels holding unknown treasure. At the centre of this channel a pūtātara conch shell, rests on a small black reflective plinth. Our eyes are drawn to a large, woven, circular harakeke mat created by Kahu Collective, positioned at an angle, as though it is falling down to earth from the stars. As we cast our eyes skyward we see constellations moving through the sky and then back to the architecture of this room, the ceiling, like an upturned waka. To our right, a table with a veritable feast of sound objects, instruments and taonga pūoro wait for breath and bone to give them life. Pūpūharakeke kōauau (flax snail shell flute) is played by Alistair Fraser, and highlights the aural link to weaving and dialogues with taonga pūoro recordings from Dr Richard Nunns with the last professional studio recordings of his practice made by Ngāi Tahu sound designer Nigel Jenkins with Daniel Belton specifically for OneOne. These references give the space a sense of the sacred and mystical. It feels as though we may be floating into outer space. 

Nancy Wijohn enters, a ghost in the machine, and she takes a moment to be amongst us and soaks up her space as she begins. Her body is cloaked, with a full length pleated skirt and cape of linen, reminiscent of both victorian and ngā taonga tutu iho, traditional Māori clothing. Her head appears to be floating, bodiless until a hand is revealed and she becomes anchored, immanent. She is an embodiment of the stellar but also utterly rooted to the ground. There is a tension of push and pull between Ranginui and  Papatūānuku in her body. 

Electronic waves crash against the shore and the constellations are reflected onto the woven mat, we see bodies dancing through space and time, atua weaving the constellations together. An alchemy of science and ancient knowledge, embedded in the stars and our bodily immanence. This work is both highly technical and futuristic yet captures a sense of timelessness and the ancient. We are the stars. 

The work finishes with Al Fraser in profile in near darkness. We see the action of his body as it generates the force and momentum required to make the sound of the Pūrerehua and we can hear the sound, only we can’t see the instrument itself which creates a powerful effect, again, a feeling we are catching glimmers of light and sound and time immemorial. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

The single live performance of Good Arts Company’s OneOne in the Great Hall at the Christchurch Arts Centre is described as an ‘activation’ of the digital version of the work that will be available free to visitors to the Arts Centre over the course of Matariki.  OneOne is a multi-media work masterminded by Daniel Belton and brings together sound and film, for which Belton is responsible, along with Alistair Fraser’s performance on taonga pūoro, dance by Nancy Wijohn, spatial design by Stuart Foster and harakeke weaving from Kahu Collective.  An earlier iteration of the work was performed in the Christchurch Body Festival in 2014 but this new version is a collaborative project with film dance artists Xiao Ke and Jill Goh along with Australian dancer Janessa Dufty, all of whom appear in the projected images.  OneOne is a complex and mysterious work that draws on a wide range of cultural sources from the Asia-Pacific region. Its ultimate source, however, is the natural world and within this the ocean figures prominently as a point of departure.

On entering the darkened Great Hall audience members are greeted by the constellation of Matariki or the Pleiades projected onto the south wall, its motion accelerated by time-lapse photography.  Along the central axis of the hall a path, defined by flax kete, leads to a large circular mat woven from harakeke.  The performance begins in near darkness with the sounds of running water being joined by those of taonga pūoro.  Dancer Nancy Wijohn, dressed in a pleated, floor-length skirt and a matching pleated cape, begins her slow and graceful progression down the central pathway that leads towards the circular mat.  Poised and serene, it is as if she is moving in slow motion, drawn forward by some larger force.  Along the way she gathers a shell that lies in her path and places it in a kete.  Having reached the woven mat she then retraces her steps, returning the kete to the point where she found it.

While Wijohn makes her slow passage down the centre of the hall, projected images of the three other dancers appear on the screen positioned above the circular mat, onto which images also fall.  Geometric constructions, biomorphic shapes and the image of the dancers themselves form a constantly evolving visual tapestry that both accompanies and complements the live action on the floor.  The accompanying soundscape adds to the evocative sense of timelessness and the inexorable motion of the natural world.  What does the woven harakeke represent?  Its ragged edge suggests, perhaps, that this might be the sun to which earth, in the form of Wijohn, is drawn by an irresistible gravitational force before being repelled back along the same trajectory. 

Inevitably our attention is drawn to the live performers, but the advantage of this production is that we can return to experience the filmed and VR dimensions at our leisure.  What will be missing is the live sound that comprises  such a key dimension of this multi-sensory experience.  Although lasting only 30 minutes in performance there is a feeling that in OneOne we are experiencing an event evolving on a cosmic timescale. This, of course, is exactly what Matariki celebrates.  

Daniel Belton has explored similar cosmic forces in Satellites, a work choreographed for the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2014 but never performed in Christchurch because of the lack of venues following the earthquakes.  Conceived on a grander scale than OneOne, a revival of Satellites would seem like an ideal work with which the RNZB could celebrate Matariki in 2022.

The Christchurch Arts Centre’s initiative in bringing OneOne to local audiences is to be applauded, but is seems a pity that only a select few had the opportunity to experience the live presentation of the work.  Expectations have now been raised that the celebration of Matariki in 2022 will bring not just an additional public holiday but also an opportunity to explore the cultural dimensions of what it means to live under the southern sky.  Although there is always the temptation to do something new, the Arts Centre should consider a further season of OneOne to give more people the opportunity to experience the live version of this richly evocative work.  

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer