Now in its second year, the Measina Festival opened at Pātaka last night with two vibrant programmes of Pacific Island dance. The venue itself is a wonderful centre for culture and creativity that cannot be found in Wellington City, with its combination of public library space, a well-curated contemporary art gallery, a great café, well-designed premises and performance venues. Pātaka is truly an enviable site for intersection between diverse communities, interests, and activities. At 6pm on a Thursday evening, the main concourse is rammed full of people there for the opening performance programme Tama’ita’i, and the launch of an exhibition by Hine Pai Kura Collective.

 I have been invited to write about two programmes. The first up is Tama’ita’i – three works by Pacific Island dancers, singers, and musicians. I feel under-qualified to write about this amazing collection – partly because I do not speak the Tokelauan and Samoan languages, but mainly because of the community around the performers and their audience that I have no ties to as a white/pakeha/palangi New Zealander. I am confident that writers like Jack Gray and Dione Joseph could open doors into this work that I cannot. But I don’t want to avoid writing about this fantastic experience either. It is work that needs to be written about by all and celebrated as a treasure in our culture and our shared sense of place in the world.

This triple-bill begins with an all-male ensemble from Tokelau and Wallis Island in Levelua, directed by Selina Alesana Alefosio and Sale Lemuelu Alefosio. With more than half of the world’s Tokelauan community living in the Wellington region, it is possible to recognise how important it is that we take responsibility here and now for maintaining this unique language and culture. The performance starts with a child speaking in a language that only 4,000 people in the world can speak. It is a profound moment to start with – a child working at keeping their inherited language alive, gradually joined by the voices of his elders. The work is described by the director as an ‘interpretation of his life and how his value system was expressed and infused in the lives of [his] kaiga (family)’. Six men explore coming-of-age and responsibility through powerful choreography, physical prowess, and compelling drumming. Throughout this, two young boys weave through the formations of tightly synchronised movements, often following the dance a step behind, elsewhere looking on at their ‘Toeaina’ (elders) dancing with awe. It is a wonderful blend of building future generations with performance and presentation. We can see the young apprentice next to the master, and feel the layers of history being passed down between performers on stage. On another level, in the auditorium children come and go, lolling at the front of the stage to watch the action, or scampering around to various relatives and friends in the space. This lively, multi-generational experience is a wonderful answer to narratives about an endangered Tokelauan language. Instead, there seems to be growth, pride, and flourishing.

The second work Tama’ita’i brings young women on stage to provide a response to themes of male coming of age and duties addressed in Levelua. In a stunning opening sequence, the performers sit across the back of the space with their backs to us: black hair, black dresses, in front of the black curtain. Suddenly from this darkness, nine pairs of hands flash open like explosions in the night sky, or like flowers blooming. Their shapes crawl over their own shoulders and arms in a beautiful choreography of fingerwork and hands. Then a burst of movement, as energetic as the men, as they leap forward in boiling storms of thick black hair. Unlike the earlier piece, this work moves between contemporary styles and traditional motifs, playing modern street dance (complete with Planet Hollywood jackets) next to the equally dextrous dance work that looks more traditional – the extended arms with swivelling wrists, slapping, and exclamations over the movement. There is a spellbinding gospel song sung as the girls slowly rotate in the space, drifting on pivoting feet. In another moment they squat, bouncing on their toe-tips, become almost weightless in unison. Directors Sophia Uele and Jayden Luapo have a created a work here about womens’ relationships with one another that is bold, energetic, and confident – while also revealing the tensions between the old and the new, between tradition and modern culture. It was the highlight of the evening.

The final work in the Tama’ita’i showcase is Lemau-Notstuck by Jasmine Leota and Isitolo Alesana. Drawing on the Samoan Mau Movement, the performance is a melancholic look at the trauma and oppression of Samoa in the 1920s but also celebrates resilience and faith. Bodies fall to the crash of drums but rise again with joyful shrieks and ‘Teeeaaahooo!’. The cast hurtles across the stage, and there is a wonderful, wild and proud energy to it that is both surprising and refreshing. Throughout all of this showcase’s dance the movement language is confident in a language of its own – drawing on tradition Pacific forms, but negotiating them with contemporary urban concerns. Perhaps in this work, there is one lovers’ duet that features Western tropes – with contemporary dance leaps between male and female lovers – the ‘to and fro’ between two principals which seems almost balletic in its romanticism. It is well executed and beautiful work nonetheless, and the audience is ecstatic about it.

After a short break and a reset, the venue is ready for Mixtape – the next programme in the evening, and a collection of five dance works by Trip the Light Dance Collective. In this suite of works, the choreographers move beyond their communities to explore contemporary dance forms. The works deal with different issues as well – adapting a fairy tale, the inner child exposed, organised groups and cults, the life of a NZ wrestling legend, and faith.

The first piece, Queen of Shards by Perri Exeter, features fantastic costumes and some well-trained movement, but on the whole seems too affected by its own sentiments. There are balletic aspirations in movements that start with the leading chest and there are contemporary dance tropes in the making of shapes, fall/roll/leap sequences, and tight formations of choreography. There is even some sense of the glacial distance of the source material, Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen. But on the whole, the work requires more layering, subtlety, and delicacy in its rendering.

Me, Myself and I by Joash Fahitua is a short, playful work set to the sound of chattering voices rather than music. This unusual soundtrack features the three dancers in the kind of conversation or game that children play – moving between mundane or puerile observations through to conjuring up imaginary worlds. The choreography weaves through this score, using physical wit, the tumbling athleticism of children, grimaces, and other funny twists of the face. There is farting, aliens, nose-picking, and a lot of rough-and-tumble. At the end, the voices layer, condense, and join in a cacophonic crescendo that brings everything down.

The third work, Secta, addresses organised group dynamics of the gang, religious sect, cult, or institution. It is the strongest work of this programme, featuring tight diagrammatic movement set to powerful musical imperatives. This quality seems almost digital in its structuring – not just in the reticulated blocking of movement across the stage, but also in the elaborate fingerwork or ‘tutting’ that traces tearstained cheeks in parallel lines, and curls digits into shapes like gang signals. It is hard to explore group dynamics in a small cast, because the work becomes more about relationships on a smaller scale – between friends, within families, or cliques. But all the same, groups form in the fast textures of the work, groups that slide away from an individual and isolate them from the pack. This dynamic between the one and the many is played with great dynamics, and is probably choreographer Perri Exeter’s strongest work in this programme.

Beyond the Mat, also by Perri Exeter, is an homage to her uncle – NZ wrestling legend Steve Rickard. With three dancers, Exeter has made a funky mix of contemporary dance sweeps, interspersed with street and urban dance tropes. This foray into masculinity is wonderfully accompanied by a montage of sound-bites and samples arranged by Richard Breed. It would have been nice to have seen more of the body-building preps or wrestling poses in the sequence in order to delve more into the tribute, but as it was there was a warm look at a kind of Kiwi masculinity that is seldom seen in NZ dance that was refreshing and well composed – full of great male partnering and brotherhood in the excellent work of dancers Callum Sefo, Taitanyk Toniu, and Joash Fahitua.

The final work is Fahitua’s Keeping the Faith. Along with Exeter’s Secta, this piece seems the most developed, the most worthy of development into a full work. For the first time, set elements are employed – three benches that function as church pews in the opening sequence. One by one each performer enters the space – the fool, the devout, the drunkard, the flirting girl… a community of characters gather for a service. The choreography leaps from the benches, rolls, trades spaces in what is almost a montage of masses, a dance of faith and devotion set to a beautiful Samoan choir. The programme notes talk about faith as a combination of trust and intellectual assent, which is an interesting provocation for the work. While there aren’t specific answers, the work moves through some beautiful sequences that capture the challenges of faith. A bench becomes a coffin to bear the body of one who has passed. The benches become a crossroads, a crucifix, with the same body (Sione Fataua) in the centre. As the other figures lament, she rises, they rise with her, lifting her as she climbs a staircase of outstretched hands to fall into the unknown darkness.

After eight works over two programmes, I am excited and energised by the work being presented at this year’s Measina Festival, and encourage all to get along to these fantastic programmes. Together they represent our unique place in the world, where living Pacific cultures are being nurtured and maintained, but also developed. New languages are brought to old art forms, and questions of faith, sovereignty, and relationships are all explored. Venues like Pātaka and festivals like this are not just resources for their immediate community and for Porirua, but provide something that cannot be found elsewhere. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer