DANZTe Whaea: National Dance and Drama Centre
Wellington
15 February 2025
Director & Choreographer: Jeremy Beck
Sound Designer & Composer: Benny Jennings
Lighting Designer: Tony Black
Costume Designer: Gabrielle Stevenson
AV Production Studio: RDYSTDY
Reviewed by Brigitte Knight
In 2025 Footnote New Zealand Dance celebrates their milestone 40th year, opening with Jeremy Beck’s Modern God; a dance theatre work 3 years in the making. Closing night in Wellington sees the company play to a packed Te Whaea theatre, where space is maximised with wings flown out and white tarkett reflecting the light. Director and choreographer Jeremy Beck’s extensive programme notes detail the ambitious scope of the production, spanning themes of religion, social media, technology, human relationships, and capitalism.
Photographs by Andrew Turner
Footnote has invested in significantly higher value production elements with Modern God, centring the integration of smartphones and simulated livestreams/content creation projected in real time onto an enormous stylised phone screen. AV, set, lighting, and sound technology interplay are critical to the success of each performance due to the way the production has been designed, and Modern God benefits from Te Whaea’s distortion-free sound system in the dialogue-heavy work. Moving through a plethora of props and costume pieces in a palette of blue, red, black, and white, the world of Modern God is appropriately bolshy, bombastic, and loud; structured around a near-constant stream of to (phone) camera monologues and vignettes, the work is interspersed with small dance sections informed by hip hop and pop movement vocabulary. Footnote company dancers along with guest artists Joshua Faleatua and Tyler Carney slip easily in and out of characters drawn from social media stereotypes, and these parodies provide familiar points of humour. Beck’s intended contrast between IRL and online personas and experiences is clearly portrayed but challenging for the dancers in terms of hitting the right notes in acting for stage. Modern God is entertaining and moves at dynamic pace, while tonal repetition precludes deeper consideration of the intended wider issues (insidiousness of technology, democratic destabilisation, capitalism, exploitation, religion) which are present but worthy of exploration beyond superficial media tropes.
Photographs by Andrew Turner
Footnote’s current company dancers are especially technically strong, and the highlights of Modern God occur when their movement qualities are featured: an original and creative duo by Cecilia Wilcox and Veronica Chengen Lyu with safety harnesses as points of contact; the highly choreographed movement of a phone passed between dancers creating the video image of a vibrant crowd scene which is contrasted by the mundane small group reality appreciated by audience-observers; and a string of fluid hip hop/freestyle/contemporary fusion solos drawing in elements of breaking, tektonic, and liquid dance. Modern God closes with an ensemble section of beautiful and thoughtful contemporary movement vocabulary, which will land with even more weight as challenges with unison, formation spacing, and cleaning are ironed out. Beck’s choreography is sophisticated and alluring here, and a vital relief from the deliberate relentlessness of the work’s clamouring voices.
Maintaining a small arts company for 40 years is a wonderful achievement, and Footnote New Zealand Dance have won a loyal following of supporters in Wellington and beyond. Congratulations to the company, cast, and crew as they celebrate their landmark achievement and take their vibrant and energetic new work on tour around Aotearoa in 2025.
Photographs by Andrew Turner
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