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Reviews of Te Houhi: The People and the Land Are One Te Houhi: The People and the Land Are One Reviewed by Jock Phillips for The Real NZ Festival 24 September 2011 I had not intended to write this post. I had done my piece for the day and now was the time to relax. So I had a quick bite at ‘Angie’s kitchen’, just as Mum used to make – if you were Malaysian. Then I decided to relax even more by seeing some dance at Q Theatre. Te Houhi: The people and the land are one, it was called. The theatre was only a third to a half full, so if people vote with their feet I was not expecting great art. An hour and a quarter later I heard the longest and most sustained applause I have heard in the theatre for many years, and people were turning to their neighbours and saying, ‘Gee, wasn’t that good.’ So, I hope you will forgive me for this blogging excess. I just have to tell you about it. It was one of the most powerful and moving theatrical experiences I have ever had. Te Houhi is an original work by the Atamira Dance Company, described in the programme as ‘New Zealand’s leading Maori contemporary dance company’. The brilliant choreographer is Maaka Pepene. With an intensity that could only have come from someone who has lived with this tragic story all his life, he tells the story of his people, a Ngāi Tūhoe hapū, Ngāti Haka Patuheuheu. The evening begins with the sounds of Tūhoe creation and swirling images of mist and cloud thrown onto a large screen. Throughout the evening this screen serves as a visual counterpoint across the top half of the stage. The God of the mists and the mountains of the Urewera are giving birth to Ngāi Tūhoe, the children of the mist. For centuries the people lived as one with the land – and this is beautifully represented by three intertwined couples moving delicately and in unison on the floor of the stage. Then as the narrator tells us, there was foretold the arrival of strange beings with the colour of the earthworm – red and white. Land was lost and, although Te Kooti offered hopes of resistance, the sacred places were destroyed and many people killed. All this is represented with the stirring beat of the music, and a feverish dance of falling bodies as soldiers wield their rifles. Eviction ensued and again this is wonderfully evoked on stage. The ‘soldiers’ slowly drag the people across the stage. They attempt to run back; but each time the violence becomes more aggressive and pacy, until by the end the people are locked to one side of the stage. The choreography here was memorable, and it was all done with such passion and precision. Then comes an amazing scene where the hapū goes to court. While the legal pronouncements are read out in ever more overlapping complexity, bits of paper descend across the screen and merge with real paper floating to the ground. The people collect up the paper, the legal judgments, before that too is ripped away. The courts offer no protection. The dance ends with hope. Ngāti Haka Patuheuheu retain their dignity and look forward to the day when once again the people and the land will be one. This is now the second night in a row I have had an outstanding experience of Māori creativity at Q Theatre. The previous night it was I, George Nepia, also moving in its way but with a gentle comic tough throughout. Last night it was Te Houhi. There were no laughs; but there were intense emotions wonderfully expressed. If the REAL New Zealand Festival has shown me anything, it is that Māori theatre and dance is very much alive in Auckland. But why, why, I asked my neighbours as we left, were there so few people there?
Reviewed by Roxanne de Bruyn for Theatreview 25 September 2011 INTELLIGENT, HEARTFELT, AND COMPLETELY ENGROSSING When Te Houhi begins with a slow, rhythmic beat, there is an immediate sense of anticipation, a feeling that the story which is about to start will be a good one. A huge screen above the stage shows a swirling white cloud, which combined with a strong narration and slow movements, creates a hypnotic opening to the production. The second part tells the story of colonisation, the rise of Te Kooti, the hopelessness of losing the land and the futility of resistance when faced by the Crown's lawyers and military. It is an intense and enthralling piece, using silence and slow movement to build tension before releasing into fluid, passionate dancing. The maturity of the dancers is obvious; they are precise and expressive, fully portraying the emotions of the story. There is a gritty resolve and determination as well as a hint of desperation which is almost tangible in the dancing. Eventually, time passes and the wharenui is at last returned, bringing back a feeling of peace and hope for the future. Te Houhi is wonderfully crafted - the story is told well, the narration making it easy to follow and the screen giving it context. The music moves with the dancers, but isn't afraid to stop, which ensures the story moves at a deliberate pace, continually building suspense and giving an added weight and respect to the performers' movements. Most importantly, Te Houhi gives an intelligent, heartfelt and completely engrossing look into some of the history and heart of this land and its people.
Reviewed by Richard Howard for The Big Idea 27 September 2011 Te Houhi - The People and the Land are One performed by Atamira Dance Company vividly recalls a tragic historic episode of land acquisition fraud of a massive scale at Waiohou. It is a story of individual and official betrayal, of greed, Maori and European complicity, ignorance, murder and mass enforced eviction. This impressive dance theatre production, a living contemporary memorial to those people of Tuhoe Hapuu and the village of Te Houhi who fought for their ancestral lands in the late 19th century and perhaps also to those who fight for return of their lands and their livelihoods even today. Te Houhi, choreographed by Maakaa Pepene is a shadowy, misty almost meditative piece, carefully and crisply delivered by seven high calibre and experienced dancers -Taiaroa Royal, Taane Mete, Jason Moore, Justine Hohaia, Kelly Nash, Jack Gray - in impressive ensemble mode, supported by a skilled production and technical team. Each element of the story and the extent of the tragedy quietly, shockingly, unfolds from the lengthy opening Karakia , through the nascent like emergence of the earth and people as one being, to the events that lead to violence, eviction, the total abandonment of the people and the lengthy, ultimately unsuccessful process of restorative justice. In the 19 Century a man called Harry Burt, a European fluent in Maori, an interpreter of language, familiar with native land issues and laws advisor, adopted as a trusted member of the Ngati Tuhoe hapuu Ngati Haka Patuheuheu of Te Urewera used his favourable position to persuade a small number of owners in the Hapuu to sell their land. At the time the law allowed sale of jointly owned Maori land to non-Maori through the Maori Natives Land Court according to the majority decision of the numerous small land owning interests within the tribe. Burt had nothing like the majority of owners on his side that were willing to sell their land, nor were any but two vendors represented when he fronted up to the Native Lands court hearing in 1886. Nevertheless, having bribed a handful of Iwi of the related Ngati Manawa who were also present at the court to blatantly lie to the Judge, Burt walked out that day owning 7000 acres of Tuhoe’s best ancestral land. This block included their village, their school, their burial place and their Tipuna Whare; half their ancestral holdings and the very basis of their livelihoods. Burt’s actions were officially acknowledged even back then as a cold calculated betrayal, a fraudulent transaction under the law, nevertheless he, his wife, their investor and the complicit members of Ngati Manawa all got away with it. We clearly experience in the dance the events and the overwhelming anguish of the people as they face the injustice and struggle with Burt, the Land Courts and the Government of the day. The choreography had a very carefully plotted, almost Greek Chorus like quality to it, often soft in tone, tidy, controlled and rounded in movement and angle. Although superbly performed and pleasant to watch to my mind it is a little safe in its nature. The approach apparently shied away from fully portraying the devastating, bloody, hard, chaotic, sharp edge, angular reality that I imagined must have been present in the events of the time. This is not a showy piece of impressive leaps and bounds and bewildering manipulations of the human body, it is largely simple in form, emotive and demonstrative both danced and acted, expressing mood and holding a sense of mana and integrity. Indeed the responsibility for portraying such a painful and deeply unresolved issue would require a very thoughtful and sensitive approach – which was evident in this production. Of the sequences several are memorable, the portrayal of the passive protests and the brutality and murder of the protestors by the colonial police which conveyed the sense of place and the tenacity of the people determined to stay on their land. There was a superbly performed ensemble rhythmic sequence with stamping feet and slapping hands advancing and receding across the stage. The musical sound-scape composed and produced by Paddy Free and Stephen Hussey was impressive and in a highly contemporary mode interwove and accented the emotional and cultural qualities of the story. The dance was well supported by the lighting design (by Vanda Karolczak) and operation and by skilled use of potent imagery (by Louise Potiki Bryant) which successfully conveyed the higher, broader context of the dance and the story and which added large splashes of colour and a dynamic quality to the masterful setting by John Verryt. Burt went on to sell the land. In 1907 one of the successive owners, a man called James Grant, instigated the mass destruction of homes, crops, the local school, the murder of many and the eventual Police and Army supported eviction of the remaining people of Waiohou. The long tentacles of loss, poverty, injustice, displacement and the yearning for remedy still wind around the hearts and minds of the Tuhoe people, more than a 100 years after their 17 year struggle to re-secure their ancestral lands. This show is a timely reminder to continue to tread softly but decisively and with wisdom in the present time, to bring understanding and justice to the relationship between Maori and non-Maori and to hold in our minds that the land and the people are always vitally interconnected.
Atamira Dance Company's's beautifully crafted new Te Houhi - The People and the Land are One draws on intricately connected layers of dance, video imagery and narrated text to share poignant ancestral stories from dancer and choreographer Maaka Pepene's Ngai Tuhoe lineage. Pepene himself is downstage right throughout proceedings, an intriguing, shamanistic figure who appears to morph through a series of leadership roles - tohunga, priest, military leader, peacemaker - along with being the choreographer's grandfather, and the ancestor Tama Ki Hikurangi for whom the wharenui is named. The wharenui (design John Verryt) is present throughout as a glimmering, skeletal form along the back wall of the stage. Above it hangs a narrow horizontal video screen which shows a continuous stream of animations (videographer Louise Potiki Bryant) ranging from photographs of Urewera locations, to steadily morphing abstract patterns drawn from traditional designs, and photographs of the actual pou of the house. A steady, resonant drumbeat is heard throughout the work, at times doubling or speeding up, accompanied by percussive sticks and stones and an ambient drone, and at time replaced by strings (composers Paddy Free and Stephen Hussey). Like a Renaissance triptych, the work is structured into two smaller sections which act as bookends for a more substantial core, at the same time creating an overarching narrative which links all three together. An interspersed voiceover narration ensures that the key aspects of the story are not missed, and the stream of video imagery subtly draws attention to the symbolic interconnections between the various elements. Te Ao o Neheraa (the ancient world) establishes a relatively untroubled past, the Ngati Haka Patuheuheu people living in harmony and respect for the land and one another. Te Ao Hurihuri (the world turns upside down) shows the impact of Pakeha colonisation, the rise of Te Kooti, military reactions to passive resistance, the demoralisation of the people through many years of court battles over the fraudulent sale of their land at Te Houhi, and finally the eviction of the people from their land, leaving behind their treasured wharenui which was inlaid with early Maori figurative art, and central to their Ringatu religion. Te Ao Marama (the world of light) shows the eventual re-uniting of the people with their meeting house, which they dismantled and carried by hand to its new home at Waiohou, along with ancestral remains and other artefacts necessary to the development of a new harmony of the people with the land. - though even today we hear on the News of ongoing tension between the Crown and Ngai Tuhoe. The imagery is rich, the story well told, the many elements very carefully integrated thanks to the sophistication of the work as whole, and it is beautifully presented by a team of mature dancers: Taiaroa Royal, Taane Mete, Jack Gray, Jason Moore, Maaka Pepene, Kelly Nash and Justine Hohaia.
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