Hearty applause and rousing cheers greeted Limbs@40, a homage to ground-breaking New Zealand contemporary dance company Limbs, featuring six reconstructed works from its historic 160 work repertoire.
Given beautifully polished performance by 27 mostly student dancers form UNITEC and the NZ School of Dance, who would never have seen the company perform live, these works provide a blast from the past for Limbs fans.
It is now 40 years since Limbs was founded and 20 years since they ceased performing. The six dances are barely representative of the company's range - oldies but goodies which have stood the test of time.
Three works from the early years show two different directions within the repertoire and are performed with appropriate mien. Two of Limbs co-founder Mary Jane O'Reilly's populist works are danced by members of her current company, In Flagrante.
Perhaps Can (1979) is a sensuously self-contained solo for a bare-breasted dancer in skirt and shawl, while the laidback quartet in Talking Heads (1980) wear sleek grey unitards and have bobbling heads and sashaying hips riding over quickly shuffling feet. By contrast, Melting Moments (1980), by the director of Britain's Rambert company Mark Baldwin, is a slow and controlled sextet, very much a form-based modernist work.
