Fringe Festival: A sense of otherness

Fringe Festival dance Mother/Jaw is an expression of people who are in lands other than that of their birth.

Ethnic isolation is explored in dance, writes Bernadette Rae

Mother/Jaw is a youthful, passionate and promising exploration of being and identity. It emphasises "otherness" - arising from ethnicity, on one hand, and states of mind on the other - and takes a significant stance in the Fringe Festival dance programme.

A 10-minute excerpt, "made in advance" and "premature", scooped three awards at September's Short and Sweet Festival for the creative partnership of Jahra Rager Wasasala and Grace Wollett, majors in contemporary dance who graduated from Unitec in 2012. They are fast developing an interesting and individual choreographic voice.

Mother/Jaw takes its major inspiration, they say, from marvellous Auckland poet Grace Taylor and, in particular, from her book Afakasi Speaks. (Afakasi is Samoan for half-caste.)

They take her words, "I am the Va. Cut me up, scatter me among yourselves", as their motto.

Wasasala, also a successful spoken-word poet mentored by Taylor, is of a diverse ethnic background. Wollett is a Kiwi of European descent.

"It is all about what it means when the mother country is stripped away and people lose their traditions, language, a sense of where they come from," says Wasasala. "It happens to black people, brown people and white people. In New Zealand especially, there are so many people in that space of isolation and confusion."

The work references obvious historical issues: Australia's Stolen Generation, the institutionalisation of America's native people, the arrival of the missionaries in the Pacific Islands, as well as colonisation in Aotearoa.

"It happened all over the world," Wasasala says. "But in my part, the ensemble part of the piece, I don't focus on a specific event, more a global reference on a personal level. It's a very general metaphor.

"We are young and I just want to express who we are, where we are from, how that sense of otherness feels - and question where we go from here."

Wasasala and Wollett are joined on stage by dancers Alisha Anderson and Vivian Hosking-Aue, musician Liam Kiely and possibly Addison Chase, though much of his accompaniment is pre-recorded.

Wollett's choreographic contribution - though both emphasise the collaborative nature of the work's creation - is a solo, accompanied by Kiely and his guitar and about 20 pedals with which he embellishes the sound electronically.

"My solo is not so much about culture but consciousness," she says, "and that sense of being 'in between'. It is an exploration of the mind space between being present and being distant, about the quality of being in between."

This section is loosely structured but almost entirely improvised and Wollett and Kiely expect to have only two or three rehearsals together. So the performance will differ each night. What links the halves into a coherent whole is that all their movement is intention-based, they say. Every movement derives from a source.

"It's an instinctual communication of deeply held ideas. It all comes from ideas we have had for ages, ideas that have brought us all together and the movement shows that. It comes out in spurts of meaning."

Fringe Festival

What: Mother/Jaw
Where and when: The Basement, February 25-28

•The Fringe dance calendar also includes Vivian Hosking-Aue's Jabber, The Basement, February 25-27; and Wet Hot Beauties' Wipe Out! at Splore Festival today at 10.30am and 11.30am; Takapuna Beach, February 28 at 3pm; Pt Chevalier Beach, March 7 at 10am and Judges Bay Lagoon, March 14 at 2pm.