Choreography by Neil Ieremia
08 Worldstage Dance
at the Premiere Dance Theatre
April 30-May 3, 2008

                New Zealand’s premier indigenous dance group—once wholly male but now with four female guest dancers to complement the six striking males—made a splendid Canadian debut with seven short pieces that ran the gamut from Samoan tribal ritual to slap dance to martial arts to cultural fusions of ballet, modern expressionism, and hip hop. The actual choreography of South Pacific dance seems simple by western standards in terms of vocabulary and phrases, being rooted in bent arm movements and strong stomps, rolls, and crouches, but Black Grace is distinguished by its well defined sense of rhythm, tempo, and energy, all varnished by a distinct sexiness in both genders. At times (especially in “Fa’a Ulutao” and “Human Language”), Founder/Artistic Director/Choreographer Neil Ieremia seemed indebted to Jerome Robbins, almost as much as he was to Maori dance and hip hop, but his signature was indelible, and his dancers segued easily from brisk military marching patterns and martial arts aggressiveness to tender lyricism and satiric, cheeky humour. The tendency towards repetitiveness was offset by a soundtrack that combined vocalizations, Western music, and traditional Maori song.

               In black sarongs and dancing in red cones of light, the males of the first piece (Fa-a Ulutao, an excerpt from “Surface”) defined masculinity in their trios, quartets, and various other configurations, executing leaps, rolls, and crawls with breathtaking force. These were dancers who knew how to do simple things (nursery rhyme recitation and slap dance in “Minoi”) simply, before dazzling an audience with cumulative velocity and accelerated kinetic energy. Although at times, it looked like a pep rally, it was marvelously engaging, though the most sophisticated piece in the first half was “Deep Far”—a dance about the cyclical nature of weather, where the males performed in lovely blue light and with restrained but beautiful lyricism, mixing Western choreography with Ieremia’s indigenous vocabulary, particularly in graceful swoops and backward bent torsos.

               Cultural fusion was inescapable, of course—from the ethnicity of the dancers to the music and choreography—but the rewards were delightful, for the most part. Kitsch did raise its spectre in “War Brides” (via the folksongs and rock’n’roll) but there was no denying audience appeal. “Human Language” was a laugh, with the men’s blowing balloons to indicate various stages of tumescence, frustration, and detumescence as the women strut their paces individually. Jerome Robbins’ testosterone raunch got some play in this piece, but Ieremia put his stamp on the ending as the ensemble touched the ground with an ever-faster beat to simulate orgasm. The sexual humour of this piece was complemented by the explosive, rushing force of “Method,” whose inspiration were memories of rugby, wrestling, and other masculine games of boyhood. The fascinating element in this progressively dynamic number was the use of Bach’s “Brandenberg Concerto no. 3 in G” that sealed the playfulness within a sophisticated musical form. An intriguing modification of the idea of going native.

photos: Scott Venning



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