DANZSt James Theatre
Wellington
14 March 2024
Director & Producer: Malia Johnston
Design Director: Rowan Pierce
Composer: Eden Mulholland
Aerial Apparatus Designer & Choreographer: Jenny Ritchie
Reviewed by Brigitte Knight
Photograph by Andi Crown
Best known for her choreography and movement direction for World of WearableArt | WOW since 2002, Malia Johnston brings together contemporary dancers and aerialists for her multimedia production and Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts exclusive BELLE – A Performance of Air. Named for libellule (the French for dragonfly) a symbol of transformation, BELLE’s planned 2022 premiere was a victim of Covid-19 cancellations, opening to 30 invited guests in a gymnasium in place of their planned premiere at the TSB Arena. Transformed for the proscenium stage of the St James Theatre and with new cast members, BELLE achieves its captivating and cohesive abstract world-building with resounding success.
A thoroughly collaborative creative process is evidenced in every moment of BELLE and this is a pivotal facet of the performance. Rowan Pierce’s sculptural, illusory, layered design for set, lighting, and AV are fundamental and inseparable from Johnston’s holistic production overview. Composition by Eden Mulholland was developed in collaboration with musician Motte (Anita Clark) who also appears live onstage during the performance (vocals, violin). Although the sporadic lyrics of Mulholland’s composition and Motte’s performance are not especially audible and occasionally at odds with the otherwise mesmeric nature of the work, the music is varied and lends momentum to the performance. Aerial apparatus design, costume, and aerial choreography by Jenny Ritchie ensure the flawless integration of the aerialists and the flattering exposition and utilisation of their exquisite skill and breath-taking strength, and the nine female dance and aerial artists are credited with co-creation of the choreographic material. The success of this rich and considered integration of elements and artists speaks to the importance of funding time itself in the creative process – the enveloping, cinematic concepts and designs on display in BELLE cannot occur with a one-day technical rehearsal in the final week of a production.
Programme notes for BELLE reference futurist meditation, circadian rhythms, the otherworldly, the cosmos, and igniting a sense of possibility in the audience; abstracted thematic material that is delivered with sophistication as gentle mood rather than a potentially kitsch sci-fi narrative. Pierce’s magnificently structured haze, projection, sophisticated staging, and optical illusion bisect and disrupt the space, utilising darkness and negative space as impactfully as light. Johnston’s direction and concept deeply flatter all of BELLE’s performers, moving artists in and out of the walls of light in powerful, ritualistic, gravity-defying ways, and realising the movement vocabulary deftly with a superb balance of grace, strength, and precision.
Movement of the Human’s BELLE – A Performance of Air suggests a new standard in the integration of multidisciplinary performers in Aotearoa New Zealand – a welcome step forward into sophistication and conceptual depth.