Reviews from 2001-2003
Freshly Minted, Auckland Anglican Maori Mission 2001
Reviewed by Bernadette Rae for NZ Herald
The ATAMIRA Dance Company, an emerging force in the Maori contemporary dance scene, consists of five young performers, urban-based and Unitec-trained. Three of them have choreographed the works in this, their first major showing.
Pick of the crop is Whare tangata, Lou Bryant's stunning study of the roles of women in both Maori and Christian creation myths, and the influence of colonisation on Maori women……The clever concept is performed with spirit and heart.
The finale, Maori Kabuki Princess, also choreographed by Gray, is a totally bizarre and excruciatingly funny exploration of "kabuki, woodblock, kimono and karaoke," played to the hilt by Wehipeihana, Hohaia, Bryant and Gray. Atamira show great promise and real talent and have something special to say.
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Reviewed by Marianne Schultz for the NZ Listener 2001
Making their contribution to the Auckalnd Dance Festival, this new collective of young, mostly Maori choreographers and dancers glow in the homely, intimate setting of the Anglican Maori Mission. Seated on church pews and surrounded by kowhaiwhai patterns, the audience are treated to contemporary dance that could only come from the meeting of cultures that is Aotearoa today.
In a programme by three emerging choreographer, you would expect some stylistic borrowings, but this is inventive, fresh, indigenous dance, unafraid to explore sensitive areas of race or religion.
Under Covers by Anna MacRae delves in to the choreographer's past by exposing childhood memories. First seen with their backs to us, MacRae and Jackie Gray move playfully against a background of music interspersed with taped voices of their ancestors. We understand the history of a marriage by the couple's private jabs and pokes. This tender, loving duet is reverent and irreverent at the same time.
Another type of history – that of women in creation mythology from Maori and Christian perspectives – is seen in Lou Bryant’s Whare tangata. As 19th century Maori women, black-clad and slow-moving, Bryant, Dolina Wehipeihana and Justine Hohaia deliver a strong and beautiful work. Their undulating backs and outstretched arms convey ecstasy and grief. A crate with no sides – portals through which the dancers pass – also symbolizes areas of containment.
The two works in the second half by Gray, founder of Atamira, show his iconoclastic nature. However The Horse and the Hinaaki, based on the premise of a Romeo and Juliet from Te Atatu, is strangely unsensual; the beer crates, scaffolding, ladders and dropcloths get in the way of passion.
Maori Kabuki Princess presents a tourist-postcard ideal of women from Japan and New Zealand. Recognisable as contestants from a beauty contest, Bryant, Hohaia and Wehipeihana are alternately geisha and wahine, a weird mix of cheerleaders, kabuki and go-go dancers, in this fast and funny piece.
Sub-urban Legends 2002
Reviewed by Francesca Horsley for the NZ Listener
Sub-urban Legends were three new works by the ATAMIRA Dance Company. Louise Potiki’s Sub-urban was a moving and beautifully crafted piece showing rural Maori women struggling to adjust to city life during the 1950’s. Three women grappled with irons, an ironing board and a dress as they crossed back and forth from traditional to European customs. Dolina Wehipeihana’s Legends on the Dance Floor was a sharp and funky hip-hop encounter, and in Jack Gray’s Hail, the group demonstrated their virtuosity in a dazzlingly energetic ensemble.
Reviewed by Melanie Turner for DANZ magazine
With Sub-urban Legends in the Auckland Dance Festival 2002, Atamira stood out as a collective developing an articulate artistic voice powered by commitment to a clear philosophy and working process. Although presented as a showing of work-in-progress, Legends was impressive for its professionalism and polish, while at the same time sharing warmth and heart in feedback afterwards. The work moved on from their performance last year of Freshly Minted.
Atamira at The Maidment Studio, April 2003
Atamira: Cultural Heritage - Individual Creativity Reviewed by Wendy Preston
The latest ATAMIRA Dance Company performance at The Maidment Studio Theatre 2 – 5th April 2003 was an important event in the timeline of Maori contemporary dance.
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Excerpts from review by Francesca Horsley for the NZ Listener
Three pieces by the Maori contemporary dance collective Atamira could not have been more diverse. Te Aroha me te Mamae by Louise Potiki Bryant was a compelling story of four generations of women…….
Hail by Jack Gray Jnr, …….Gray’s choreography has no hard edges; movements link effortlessly, patterns curve and swirl. As the pace quickened, the dancers leapt with acute angles, culminating in a dramatic exit.
Stephen Bradshaw showed his assurance in the well-crafted Mauri. A celebration of whakapapa and myth, it was carving and custom brought to life…….
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Reviewed by Marianne Schultz for the Sunday Star Times
Three choreographers, six dancers, one vision: to explore Maori concepts and themes through dance.
The dance collective that is Atamira (traditionally meaning platform for the dead) represents a second generation of Maori contemporary dance artists. Atamira has become a platform from which urban Maori choreographers present their works.
Stephen Bradshaw, most senior and experienced of the trio and a guiding force in Maori contemporary dance, returns to the performing arena to give us Mauri. Inspired by the Maori legend of Ranginui and Papatuanuku, Mauri is the life force that is present in all people, as well as the land. The five dancers in Mauri – Corinna Hunziker, Moss Patterson, Louise Potiki Bryant, Dolina Wehipeihana and Maaka Pepene – move slowly at first as if in water, from the ground, to huddle in a cluster waving their arms and grasping at air. Their movements, beautiful and controlled, echo traditional Maori designs. As the dance proceeds, the tempo increases until we are witnessing a swirling orbit of bodies. Patterson displays an assured stage presence which recalls the wonderful Limbs dancer of 20 years ago, Alfred Williams.
The opening work of the programme, Te Aroha me te Mamae by Potiki Bryant, is a deeply personal vision of Maori women from the 20th century. However, the recorded recollections hears as the soundtrack echo stories of women in many land: men at war, unwed mothers, tradition versus progress. While we hear the story of one woman’s experiences growing up in the Sough Island of the 1940’s we witness in movement her grief, struggle and strife. Unfortunately, confined by set, costumes and disjointed music by Eden Mulholland, the three dancers are never fully able to move in the space. There are too many tableaux here and not enough movement.
Wehipeihana though, is captivating.
Hail, choreographed by Atamira founder Jack Gray Junior, with music by Paddy Free, is in stark contrast to Bryant’s work. The empty black space is inhabited by two dancers; Wehipeihana and Cathy Livermore. The women, looking like spirits in their ghost-like costumes from Elizabeth Whiting, move in spirals and curves; now swooping, now falling, often with their backs to us. Their expansive movement brings to mind wind and waves. Of the works in this programme it is in Hail that we see the only instance of the dancers leaving the ground behind and traveling through space.
The very best in New Zealand dance in 2003. The NZ Listener by Francesca Horsley
Best new choreographer: Louise Potiki Bryant. Her Te Aroha me te Mamae, for the ATAMIRA Dance Company, was an inventive work based on the memories and life stories of three generations of Maori women. It contained multiple layers, including a moving voiceover, video images, and struggles with irons and ironing boards as metaphor for cultural dysfunction.
Best female dancer (contemporary): Dolina Wehipeihana. A versatile and beautiful dancer, she has appeared in a number of works this year. In Atamira's production, she was the tense and desperate grandmother in Te Aroha me te Mamae, dancing with sharp, jagged and contorted movement. In Jack Gray's Hail, she was fluid, mysterious and subtle. One of her great strengths is her ability to meld to the choreographer's intentions.
