Collaborators

Nancy Wijohn - Dancer/performance artist

Nancy is a fresh and new face to New Zealand’s contemporary dance industry. She graduated from AUT’s Maori contemporary dance certificate in 2003 and UNITEC’s Contemporary dance degree in 2007, and since then has gone on to work for two of New Zealand’s finest contemporary dance companies -- Black Grace Dance Company and Atamira Dance Company.

She performed exerpts of Black Grace’s new work Gathering Clouds as part of Manukau Festival 08 and has also worked with Mika’s Torotoro nesian dance crew, Jack Gray Dance in Tuawhenua, Kirk Torrance’s Flintlock Musket production, Charles Royal and Moana Nepia's dance film project09. Other experiences include film/television, modelling, acting and dance teaching.

Nancy is an athlete by nature and an aspiring dance artist with ambitious creative goals.

Pare Randall - Performer

Pare holds a Diploma in Dance and Theatre Arts from East Auckland Performing Arts and is a contemporary dance graduate from the Unitec School of Performing and Screen Arts.

She has danced with fellow UNITEC and EAPA students in a variety of venues, danced with Ahiwai and TDK Dance Krew from 2002-04, and was an instructor and group performer in 47 episodes of the tv series Maraerobics. She has experience as a teacher of dance aerobics, hip hop and the ISTD Modern Dance Syllabus.

In 2008 she workshopped with Atamira and is delighted to join the company for their Auckland Festival season of Taonga.

Tai Royal - Dancer

Taiaroa Royal is one of New Zealand's leading Maori dancers. Tai has worked with all of the major dance companies in NZ including the Royal NZ Ballet, Douglas Wright Dance Co., Human Garden, Origins Dance Co., Commotion Dance Company and as a senior dancer with Black Grace Dance Company from 1996 - 2004. A 1984 graduate of the NZ School of Dance, he has also competed in competitive aerobics and has represented NZ at the World Aerobics Champs in San Diego.

Tai enjoys his many roles as teacher, choreographer, dancer and now as director, along-side Taane Mete, of their newly formed Okareka Dance Company Ltd. They recently premiered their Company's debut work - Tama Ma to sell-out audiences under the Tempo and Stamp Festival umbrellas. Their season won 4 Tempo dance awards and was voted Best Dance in the Metro Best of Auckland 2008 Awards. Tai has been the choreographer for the South Pacific section of the Montana World of Wearable Arts since 2006 and also performs as a dancer in the show.

His latest choreography has been a music video for the Australian dancer-turned-singer Rhys' Hot Summer and is scheduled to choreograph the NZ band Evermore's latest release Boys and Girls. Tai is delighted to be working once again with his Atamira whanau on their new production - Taonga : Dust, Water, Wind.

Bianca Hyslop - Performer

Bianca has danced with the Auckland Academy of Dance since 2000 and is currently completing her final year of JDNZ (Jazz Dance New Zealand) Advanced Certificate. She is also currently majoring in contemporary dance in the a Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts programmet Unitec, with support from a scholarship from Lynfield High School.

Her dance experience inlcudes being a 2008 Warriors Vodafone Cheerleader, featured in music videos including Scribe and Katchafire, being a body art model for the NZ Body Art Awards 2008 (winner of Ta Moko Maori section). When she is not dancing, she enjoys spending her free time outdoors, at the beach, camping and with friends.

Photo: Norman Heke

Paddy Free - Composer

Paddy is a producer and composer, well known for his work with electronic duo Pitch Black. He composed the original music for Ngai Tahu 32 by Louise Potiki Bryant, Hail by Jack Gray, and was the audio producer for Te aroha me te mamae and Whare Tangata by Louise Potiki Bryant.

Paddy has worked as a programmer/engineer/producer with many of the big names of the New Zealand music industry such as Crowded House, Neil Finn, Supergroove, Emma Paki, The Feelers, Stellar*, Oceania, and Salmonella Dub. His solo album, a collaboration with Richard Nunns combining Taonga Puoro with electronica is due to be released in 2007.

Vanda Karolczak - Production Manager and Designer

Vanda has been living and working in New Zealand since 1999 after moving from Montreal with her family. Her working life covers many aspects of theatre, dance, and music during time spent living in North America and the U.K including tours with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens (1993-1997), and Robert Plant( 1987-88), Montreal International Jazz festival 1990-1999. Work in NZ includes Fashion Week from 2002-2005,Trash to Fashion 2005-2008 and 2010, Seven Deadly Sins, Aarero Stone performed at the International Arts Festival 2006, and Penumbra for AKO7. On going collaborations with the Atamira Dance Company as a designer since 2003 have produced pieces such as Ngai Tahu 32, Hail, and Te Aroha me te Mamae, Memoirs of Active Service, Whakairo, and Taonga for AK09. She also has worked regularly with the Auckland Philharmonia on special events for the past 10 years - recent projects include the live video recording of Serge Tankian's orchestral symphony (2009) and the Topp Twins televised concert (2010). During the summer she can be found coaching and lifeguarding at Piha on Auckland’s West Coast.

Kirsten Kemp - Costume designer

Kirsten started at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in 1997 expecting to finish as a jeweller, but found herself majoring in textiles and graduated in 2000 with a BFA. Her graduating project Tupuna was exhibited within Taiawhio Te Timatanga at Te Papa in 2002. In that year she was also the second artist to receive the Ngai Tahu artist fellowship from Otago Polytechnic School of Art.

After two years teaching art, dance and art history at Onehunga High School in Auckland, she and her husband left for Japan. Apart from creating two children while there, she began painting and continues to find inspiration in this medium.

Waimihi Hotere - Kaiarahi - Performer/Dramaturg

Waimihi is a versatile actor, director and dramaturg and currently the Kaiwhakahaere i Nga Mahi Toi- Maori Arts Advisor for Arts Waikato in Hamilton.

Waimihi has directed and produced television programmes for Maori Television and TVNZ including Ask Your Auntie, Warrant Of Fitness, Kia ora, Belau!
Waimihi's strong vocal talents have seen her guest star in the New Zealand International Festival 2006 in the tribute show Maori Showbands - Taking on the World (2004), as a Festival MC (2002), in Fane Flaws' theatrical adaption of The Underwater Melon Man and 2000 with festival hit Blue Smoke.

A graduate of Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School, Waimihi was most recently seen in The Large Group and Silo co-production of The Threepenny Opera. Waimihi has appeared in many Downstage Theatre productions including Little Shop of Horrors, Lets Go, and Blue Smoke and has toured Hawaii with highly acclaimed playright Hone Kouka's productions of The Prophet (2006) and Waiora 1999.

Waimihi is an active member of Atamira Dance Collective and returned to Hawaii in January 2008 with their production of Ngai Tahu 32 by Louise Potiki Bryant.

In 2003 Waimihi toured with kapahaka Mauritaiaho to support a NZ contingency of Maori Master Carvers including Fred Graham, Kereti Rautangata, Roi Toia, Todd Couper and Te Warehi Hetaraka. They performed at The Unlimited Wood Passion Festival, Holland and the Daetz Centrum Wood Carving Museum, Germany where she also took part in carving the waharoa made for the museum.

Waimihi has also had close collaborations with musicians Richard Nunns and Horomana Horo, Paddy Free (Pitch Black), Warren Maxwell (Little Bushman), Jeff Henderson with Urban Taniwha, soundtrack recordings for Hone Hurihanganui's play Awhina(produced by Taki Rua Productions) and Gareth Farr's composition Te Papa at the Governor General's Millennium Dawn Celebrations.

Richard Nunns - Musician/composer, adviser

Dr Richard Nunns has been described as one of New Zealand’s most remarkable musicians. A Pakeha (European New Zealander) who has become the living authority on Taonga Puoro (Maori traditional instruments) his journey has required a great deal of respect, perseverance and sensitivity – characteristics that inevitably emerge in the depths of his own music. He has a long history of personal commitment to researching and presenting/ performing the traditional musical instruments of the Maori, and to organising this body of knowledge into a form which is immediately understandable to people in general, particularly Maori who have lost contact with such knowledge.

Since Richard first began public performances on Taonga Puoro, he has developed an amazing international and local profile, both with the diversity of his recorded work, along with performing with a wide variety of people in many differing settings and circumstances. From WOMADS to World Expo, Contemporary awards at the Vodafone Music Awards, to composition for Gallipoli, Richard Nunns is an astonishing and celebrated artist.

Becca Wood - Print and web design

Becca has been designing for the arts since 1992, after graduating from Wellington Polytechnic in Visual Communications. After freelancing in design for a year she pursued her love of dance and trained in contemporary dance and choreography at UNITEC.

She enjoys the many possibilities that fall in between both disciplines and has embraced this interdisciplinary thinking as a way of extending the boundaries of both her practices.

Her work is inspired by the things that interest her most; colour/light, bodies in motion, deconstruction, minimalism, mundane and the ordinary, old and found objects, typography, photography, contemporary music, contemporary technology, 20th century design.

Photo: Glenda Roberts

Glenda Roberts

Glenda has worked internationally as a producer, stage & production manager for almost 20 years, with a particular interest in dance. She has been involved with Atamira since 2002 within the production team, and as a mentor on various projects.

She also works as a contract photographer, and has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and South East Asia photographing military action. - East Timor, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Macedonia, Iraq and Israel between 1999 and 2004.

Having just completed two years as the Project Co-ordinator for The Trash to Fashion® Awards in Waitakere City, she is currently focusing on developing her own photography business, and buying and selling real estate.

Glenda is available for advice on Production, Photography and Real Estate at either 021 336301 (NZ) or gr8productions@xtra.co.nz and is primarily of Irish and Aboriginal descent.