KEY POINTS:
It's a stunning opening. Neil Ieremia on a zen-like stage, in traditional Samoan wrap. A trunk from which he draws, for a brief moment, two icons of previous Black Grace productions (a girl's dress and that Rabbit). Then they, like all memories and pasts, are again stored carefully
away.
When the trunk is opened again, it is the late-comer to the new Black Grace lineup that emerges: Luke Hana, a rogue male among a dozen girls, 2006 graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance - and he totally steals the show.
His duet, with Ieremia, is a reworked segment of Ieremia's 2004 Objects.
And if any former members of Black Grace were in the audience, Hana's performance would have had them eating their hearts out.
Hana is splendid, definitely one to watch. And Ieremia himself does a lot more than the "stylish walking" promised.
Then there is a long interval which seems premature after such a brief, if fantastic, first act. It might have been better placed between the second and third sections of the work, which run together with no delineation and confuse the transition of ideas from loss and recovery to that of hope.
The much-awaited girls, individually costumed in Elizabeth Whiting's finest funk, scatter across the stage throughout, like a dozen bright jewels, rarely breaking from their ranks of threes and fours in a busyness which almost disguises the odd dud among their numbers.
Company veteran Abby Crowther has a welcome and emotionally powerful solo spot, but a few more such breakouts would break up the monotone of this all-chorus creation.
The soundscape (Ieremia) is great, drumming and birdcalls and ancient chants intoned, and the lighting (Bryan Caldwell) and set (John Verryt) are restrained yet lush. Ieremia's choreography is complex and clever and demands an exceptional physicality from the dancers - which they deliver, inarguably, through every flex and spring, stamp and shudder, and toss of their long, untamed tresses.
But somehow 12 basically white girls don't quite cut the mustard when it comes to embodying Pacific rhythms and Polynesian angsts. And the whole leaves an uncomfortable feeling of girls doing boys' dancing.
Review
* What: Amata, with Black Grace, AK07
* Where: Skycity Theatre, to March 25
* Reviewer: Bernadette Rae
