DANZTe Pou Theatre
Auckland
15 November 2025
Choreographers: Louise Pōtiki Bryant; Xin Ji; Aloali’i and Tori Manley-Tapu
Reviewed by Jenny Stevenson
Unitec Dance “SHOWCASE 2025”. Photo: Jinki Cambronero
Delving into the world of young dancers about to make their mark on the dance world is always a decidedly captivating experience and as has often been evident in past iterations, this 2025 Unitec Dance Showcase exhibits an in-depth exploration of diverse energies and permutations of new and interesting directions.
Unitec discipline leader and show director Katie Burton is pushing at boundaries, in her selection of four choreographers, all Unitec alumni, to create the programme. Their distinctive approaches to making work demand a full commitment from the young performers – who eagerly take up the challenge and respond in full.
Photography: Jinki Cambronero
The work for the graduating class of 2025 [revel] is described by choreographers Aloali’I and Tori Manley-Tapu as “a gathering of laughter, grief and resistance” and squarely positions itself in a miasma of defiance against those forces that would constrict freedom, while also calling out for personal re-connection in a disengaged digital age.
[revel] depicts a gradual flowering of the souls who have entered into the demanding world of dance, represented by unformed mounds, wrapped in fabric who are gently “watered” by a kindly caretaker and gradually develop into fully formed humans who shed their unwieldy wraps by hanging them on the outstretched arms of a Christ-like silhouetted figure. Further exploration of the “ties that bind” involves two boiler-suited overseers enveloped with strapping, who attach themselves to each other with hooks placed at solar plexus level. The message is both potent and overtly political.
The choreographers give each graduating dancer a chance to perform with multiple disciplinary approaches that celebrate diverse and often very current movement vocabularies. It concludes with a siva-like dance that is both joyous and placatory. Samara Alofa’s score creates space and freedom to explore through its many dimensions.
Photography: Jinki Cambronero
The first and second-year dancers combine to perform in choreographer Xin Ji’s enigmatic work YO/友. It depicts the many aspects of friendship with its various manifestations and again, there is a generosity in the work, which allows numerous pairings, solos and groups of dancers to display their different energies and foci. It is often laugh-out-loud funny and involves complex interaction in the different groupings, multi-faceted gestural-based movements and a deeply concentrated plethora of movement on stage. The soundtrack is equally varied including music by New Zealand quintet, Carnivorous Plant Society.
Choreographer Louise Potiki-Bryant has created the deeply moving opening work Te Ata Kura for the full company of dancers across the three cohorts, to mourn the passing of the many trees that were decimated during Cyclone Gabriel in 2023. Paddy Free’s score opens with reverberations of the living sentinel beings of the land with particular emphasis on our life-giving, shared breathing. Beautiful singing is woven throughout the composition and Potiki-Bryant employs a forked branch carried aloft by the dancers and the slapping of fronds to underscore the connection between ngahere (forests) and humans. The branch often appears to delineate the path of the dancers – like a tuning fork connected to the earth’s vibrations.
Photography: Jinki Cambronero
Different-coloured costumes designed by Grace Lewis denote the different dance levels (Years 1, 2 and 3) as they enter and exit throughout. A suitably subdued lighting design by Jo Kilgour laments the untenable loss. Potiki-Bryant’s facility for group movement is on full display.
The evening is politically charged which is appropriate and lends weight to questioning those in power who continue to place financial constrictions on the creation of art work. Perhaps if they sampled a taste of the energy on display by these exuberant young dancers they might mitigate their stance. Certainly it is the determination of Katie Burton and the many other stalwarts who have determinedly kept things going through the vicissitudes and decline of arts education, which should also be celebrated.
Gallery photography: Jinki Cambronero
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