Dancers keep it Short Sweet

Short + Sweet dancers step out for no more than 10 minutes. Photo / Supplied

The Short + Sweet Dance Festival has few rules. Number one is that no dance can be longer than 10 minutes - or it will be ruthlessly disqualified.

Rule number two allows just 30 seconds' "pack in" and 30 seconds' "strike" time, with the same consequences for non-compliance.

With 31 works showing over three nights, plus a Gala Final, the Concert Chamber will be humming.

There are 17 dancers in one group, others have props that include huge jars of water (for tipping?), sticky tape for some on-stage sectioning, hand-held lights - and no one can be exactly sure of what else.

Producer Carrie Rae Cunningham anticipates dress-rehearsal time might see her drop her normal sweet and bubbly persona for the wicked witch within.

The Short + Sweet concept, which sees both audiences and a panel of adjudicators decide on finalists and prize winners, has worked successfully in Australia for a decade and there are now separate S+S festivals for theatre, dance, cabaret, musical theatre and burlesque across the ditch.

Auckland has had successful S+S festivals for theatre for the last two years, with another on the horizon.

But this will be the first of its kind in New Zealand devoted to dance.

There has been a huge response from the Auckland dance community, says Cunningham, and more applications than she could accommodate from established professional dancers, emerging performers, community and student groups, and in every dance discipline imaginable - and some not.

There will be hip hop and belly dance, contemporary and conceptual, and contemporary Maori dance. Zahra Killeen-Chance will present an item of 60s style go-go dance.

Sarah Houbolt, who is legally blind, originally proposed an "aerial circus" work, but has had to stay grounded with circus style acrobatics and some contortionist display.

Grae Burton, in the Wild Card programme, is not usually a dancer at all. The recent artist in residence at the Wallace Arts Trust has gathered a group of nine non-dancers for a work entitled The Monsters Ball, in which interesting projections will interact with the physical action.

Backlit Productions, Katie Burton, Liana Yew and Georgie Goater, Anna Bate, Maaka Pepene and the indomitable Morag Brownlie represent more established dance theatre crews.

"The festival offers audiences a risk-free opportunity to sample every kind of dance," says Cunningham.

"If you don't like something - well, it's all over in 10 minutes max."

And it is a good platform for dancers to kick off a work.

With funding spread even more thinly than usual because of the economy, there was no joy from Arts Alive or Creative New Zealand for the project this time.

Stamp at The Edge have provided the venue and some marketing. Cunningham is grateful in the extreme for them "just letting me do it".

Performance

What: Short + Sweet Dance Festival

Where & When: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, February 7-11