2018

Tempo Dance Festival - 2018

For Carrie Rae Cunningham’s fourth festival Tempo’s scope expanded by presenting  an internationally renowned company from the USA, the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company. The four works in this headline programme highlighted both the similarities and differences between contemporary dance from opposite sides of the Pacific. Other international acts included Sarah Aitkin and Rebecca Jensen from Australia with Deep Soulful Sweats, a participatory event involving spectators as dancers, encouraging ‘exorcise through exercise.’    

Another company firmly based in the Pacific, Le Moana, presented 1918. This dance theatre work chronicled the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic and the devastation wrought on the people of Samoa by the arrival of the New Zealand ship, Talune. Atamira Dance Company once again presented new work at Tempo in two programmes; Kotahi 1&2. These productions were a collaboration between Atamira and Australian dancers from the NAISDA Dance College led by choreographer Frances Rings, who also contributed choreography for Kotahi. 

In two programmes consisting of duets, one female/female the other male/male, the environment of the performance space was transformed, acting as almost a third performer.  Soft Co., (Jessie McCall and Rose Philpott), presented Healr, a duet involving raincoats many radiant heaters, while, Ross McCormack’s System (with dancer Luke Hanna) explored future human development in a confined and constructed space. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Boyz Dance 2, Josh Cesan choreographed for the latest incarnation of Boyz Dance 2 in Metamorphosis.  Another celebration was the Honouring of Russell Kerr. A revered ballet choreographer, Kerr’s fifty-plus years working as a dancer and choreographer in New Zealand was highlighted in photographs and films.

Douglas Wright’s M.Nod, a solo for dancer Sean Macdonald, was an intimate work presented in Q’s Vault in the programme, Between Two. This proved to be the final work of one of New Zealand’s most gifted choreographers; Wright passed away a month later. Sharing the bill with Wright was Kelly Nash’s My Inner Sound, a trio for two women and a baby.