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PŪMANAWA - Hawaiki TŪ 
1-3 March 2018, TAPAC, Auckland
Auckland Fringe Festival

Reviewed by Tru  Paraha

Collaborators/Performers: Te Arahi Easton, Beez Ngarino Te Waati, Kiwa Andrews, Nancy Wijohn, Kura Te Waati

We enter. Five tukutuku panels inhabit the peripheries of a dim performance space. A visual genealogy/prophecy of colour and symmetrics. Five performers clad in blacks, ngā pou e rima. Appearing as singular, collective, forging an alliance. At first, solitary vessels morphing through the nothingness, turning on axes. Later, embodiments of otherlings, ira atua, ira tangata. Revealed through gradual, upright motion there are beginnings.

Three light bowls, luminate and chime downstage. A hooded man releases their vibrations, stirring. Throughout the work his breath enacts karakia, waiata, taonga pūoro. Flames are extinguished. Later re-lit.

Dancer’s movements curl, fade, and flow alone-together. Slow, partnering sequences in simple unison, canon, repetition, lift / lean / give weight / extend / fall

sensation lines across a dark surface. Partnering work and other couplings, a tender pairing emplaced across a distance. Someone set apart.

Dancers glancing over the shoulder, checking behind, a quick disturbance - walking back to go forward. Haunted or waiting. Parallel lines, toward, away, decide.

HAZE

faux fog creeping in from the wings

Rhythm and swelling. The music increases, the dancers
pursue

A snakey trio pulsating and de/forming, like a shamanic waka bound with flesh and pūkana.
Limbs grounding, wrapping over, strangling, embracing

The performers construct a human pyramid, building and collapsing a whare made of meat and bones. Playful wrestling games and movements of chance developing. A trio grappling and locking till one standing rock bears down on a back. Prevail,
surrender

Laughter and unseeing, kanohi ki te kanohi.
A man screams and sweats and tenses.
release

The solo dancing of a wahine with feathered hand, on her own (but not alone). There is an unutterable emotion - casting in-visible spells in the air, or attuning. She traces the insides, outside.

A flurry of white feathers pouring down from the roof.
gathering into the bowls of hands, unsettling, settling

remnants of birds on a man-made stage

Orbiting like a chief amongst, the hooded man draws nearer,
and facing into each other, the group collaborate into a kind of healing circle. On a single leg balance, posing as trees.

Intuition is a clever heart - draws a long breath

PŪMANAWA by Hawaiki TŪ

 
 
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