KEY POINTS:
Suzanne Cowan, dancer and choreographer with mixed ability dance company Touch Compass, has already won an award this year: the inaugural Attitude Arts Award, plus that organisation's Supreme Award.
The Attitude Awards honour the extraordinary achievements of "ordinary New Zealanders with disabilities". Cowan's legs are paralysed following an accident.
In reviewing the year for its dance offerings, Cowan again rises to the top, and wins My Most Memorable Work of the Year prize for Grotteschi, performed for Touch Compass in the October Tempo festival.
The snappy duet, danced by Cowan, in frilly red polka dots and white stockings encasing six dangling legs, and an extremely agile Adrian Smith, was a standout for its mind-boggling movement, its drama and uncontrived originality, for the passion and intelligence of its underlying voice and for taking its audience along with its artful presentation and humour.
Other significant events in the busy Tempo line-up were Michael Parmenter's new-style work Tent and Tama Ma, by the fledgling Okareka Dance Company that showcases two dance veterans still going strong: Taiaroa Royal and Taane Mete.
Parmenter considerably and excitedly changed his modus operandi in Tent. The high drama and heroic dancing of his previous works has vanished and Tent was a gentler collaborative and improvised affair, performed at a generally slower pace, but pierced with both the pleasure of some fine solos and duets, notably by the very fine Craig Bary and Sarah Foster, inanity in some of the spoken sequences, and a nasty little bit of violence that remained unsatisfactorily unresolved.
But while Tent was only moderately successful, the section in Tama Ma choreographed by Parmenter was brilliant, elucidated Parmenter's new fascination and was danced magnificently by Royal and Mete. Another section in the work, showing the behind-the-scenes drama of life as a drag queen, and choreographed by Douglas Wright, was a sordid blend of the comic with tragedy, and not very attractive. The third major section, choreographed by Royal and Mete, on themselves, showed their talents definitely lie in performance rather than choreography. The endless spinning in angelic white skirts smacked of undisciplined sentimentality.
But Tempo produced another gem in Flicker, by Ann Dewey's company Spinning Sun. Here is a choreographer who takes time to polish her works and they subsequently shine like the jewels they are, and leave us yearning for more.
The year brought three famous visiting companies. The Kiev Ballet displayed its pedigree by filling the stage with its grand and gorgeous corps de ballet, in an exquisite Swan Lake and a matinee performance of The Sleeping Beauty, though not all the soloists were up to such a high standard.
At the opposite end of the dance spectrum came the Pilobolus Dance Theatre in an extraordinary display of the human body as kinetic sculpture, all rippling musculature, mainly masculine grace and powerfully captivating.
Mark Morris arrived in August with Mozart Dances, a mesmerising spectacle of choreography turning on every subtle nuance of the music and displaying a company of 18 highly individualistic performers - from the "husky, bandy, sickle-footed and gorgeous" alpha male of the pack, one Joe Bowie, to the tiny and expressively articulate Lauren Grant.
Amy Hollingsworth, feted principal dancer in the Royal New Zealand Ballet at the tender age of 24 and who left to seek - and find - fame and fortune in Europe a decade ago, also visited in July to triumph as Juliet in the RNZB's Romeo and Juliet.
The RNZB presented triple bill programme Red in April, which featured a challenging new work for its young dancers by Jorma Elo. Seven of the company's stars showed they were more than up to the task with a stunning performance. Bouncy red tutus were the stars in the "tutu spectacular" Pacquita and the strength of the male dancers shone in Adrian Burnett's Abhisheka, the other components of Red.
The company's final triumph this year was the feel-good and fantastic Don Quixote which has just completed a national tour and still has its audience smiling.
