How crucial is race in the execution of so-called cultural dance? I think about this often, ‘cos I’m a white man trained in classical Indian dance.

Welcoming the audience to Tempo’s opening show, festival producer Mary Jane O’Reilly quoted Mata Hari, who masqueraded as an Oriental dancer while cavorting around her native Europe in the 1900s. Some of World’s artists showed Hari’s passion for sequins, chiffon and diamante, but there the similarities end – I trust. Hari was executed for treason, but the artists of World Dance Showcase prove that some things last forever, and the Variety show is one of them!

Te Wananga o Aotearoa perform first – the delicate rattle of swinging piupiu filling the house. The company’s programme intermingles latter-day entertainment forms with actions lifted from long-followed ritual. The formal frame of TAPAC’s black-box studio off-sets the measured frenzy of Te Wanananga’s wahine whose firm voices filled the whare tapiere.

World shows womanhood’s many faces. Rachael Bates dances over a crossed sword and scabbard. Her footwork is utterly decisive and robust. Though trussed up in Scots Victoriana there was no mistaking her virtuosity, made doubly powerful by the live music from her piper – Robert Halliday. The acoustic music in World is splendid. It is a refreshing release from the deadly rigidity of recorded tracks, which destroy the living immediacy of much dance performance. 

When daily movement is left far behind, it seems matters such as race are quite forgotten, and stunning rhythms and bold shapes may indeed eclipse cultural – and racial – divides. There lies the appeal of Khatak – performed by Monisha Kumar, Reema Deo and Pritika Naidu. Their quivering footwork precisely synchronises to purring tabla and their climatic spins fling their turquoise skirts horizontal to the floor. During Sinte, the dancers’ climatic movements are compelling: high leaps with an arm and a leg thrown back; deep forward twists rocking over one foot; and armfuls of air grabbed and thrown to the floor. The verve of these feats transfixes, and suspends concerns about the whiteness of the ‘African’ dancers.

I guess the ‘exotic’ need not always be erotic – but it does rather lend itself to that slant if the artist so chooses. I am delighted by the Tongan item – performed to a jaunty party track. The dancers’ execute rippling gestures, palms flipping and fluttering, and pivot and pad smoothly on steady feet. Their dignified reserve, stiff tapa wraps and lushly oiled skin give them a stately stature that does not aim to titillate.

In stark contrast serpentine bellydancer Ishtar trembles and shimmies beneath a froth of pink ruffles and beaded fringing. She pulsates with minute impulses that created a myriad of quaking motions. When blowing kisses to the appreciative audience her knowing irony shines forth: she relishes her role – playfully fulfilling Vegas-on-the-Nile harem fantasies, while amazing all with her excellent precision and her seemingly infinite movement vocabulary. I’m not sure if Ishtar is Egytpian, but she is a great performer – and when you’ve paid your money, isn’t that what ultimately counts?

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