Dancers back from the brink

Black Milk bears Douglas Wright's bizarre hallmarks and genius.

Dancers' bags, bundles of extra clothes, discarded shoes and water bottles skirt the walls of Unitec's dance studio. The gladiators flex and stretch in preparation, move mysterious props from this corner to that, and overlay the potent aura of concentration with friendly smiles.

Two visitors watch the run-through of Black Milk. International interest is already high, and a European tour is being discussed with Gie Baguet, the agent and international producer for cutting-edge Belgian dance collective Les Ballets C de la B.

Stefan Schmidtke, artistic director of Theaterformen International Festival in Hanover, has also flown to Auckland from New Zealand International Arts Festival events in Wellington to watch a rehearsal - and is profoundly impressed by its "astounding quality and broad significance".

Choreographer Douglas Wright steps to the front to paint a word picture of how the stage will be set for the small audience intrepidly perched on student-issue chairs. Two dancers hold up a placard as he speaks.

It reads: PAIN EXAMINED
WITHOUT PREJUDICE
IS METAMORPHOSIS

A pink plastic sex doll lies on a small plinth in front of this prologue, slowly inflating and deflating, with a raspy breath. Then the music begins, by Gyorgy Ligeti - percussive, Spanish in theme - and dancer Sarah-Jayne Howard, in practice shorts and vampish scarlet shoes, stamps and quivers this new creation into being.

It is a dark and confronting child, with all the bizarre hallmarks of its maker, as well as his potential for genius. Three nurse figures administer a deadly looking hypodermic to the floor. Two dancers advance threateningly towards the audience on bouncing buttocks, screeching "Death! Death! Death!"

A hanged male figure is spat on and wiped clean again by the women with their hair. The physical act of giving birth is challengingly described as "a bandaged fart", while the degradation of homosexuality is angrily replayed in a torture scene from Abu Ghraib.

And two gorgeous and athletic angels dance out the beauty and innocence of love between two young men.

When Wright wrote his first autobiographical book, Ghost Dancer, the waiting world was amazed by his display of a second major talent. In Black Milk he demonstrates further this skill with language.

Central to the work is a ventriloquist and his dummy, Joe. Originally, an actor was in training to be the "vent" but plans changed and now dancer Brian Carbee has joined the stellar cast - Howard, Claire O'Neil, Craig Bary, Helaina Keeley, Alex Leonhartsberger, Tai Royal and Jessica Shipman - to mime and move the dialogue between himself and Joe to a recording of Wright's voice. The technique leads to some illuminating insights.

For example, the dummy asks, "What's death?"

The ventriloquist replies, "Death is a jewel you swallow in the womb. It sits in a secret place inside you your whole life until the walls of your body fall down. Then it catches light, hatches like a bird and flies off to a sparkling nest in the tree of heaven. Or else death is a dark place where nothing lives except a monstrous spider waiting to eat you. It has black milk.

"Or maybe death is nothing; just a hole aching for the thing that filled it. The sleep that never wakes. Actually, I don't know what death is. Don't ask me."

Death is the obvious theme of Black Milk. A year ago Wright attempted suicide. He had suffered a long period of depression and despair after the deaths within 18 months of his three closest friends - Malcolm Ross, Janet Frame and Tobias Schneebaum.

According to his doctors, he swallowed enough pills to kill two men but, after lying in a coma for three days, he slowly regained consciousness. "I didn't die," he says. "I had surrendered totally to the idea of dying. It was as if I had. Now I am reborn. I am different. I am totally happy - well, that happiness is far more constant.

"And I believe that as I didn't die after a full-on attempt, there is something I am meant to do, so I am doing the only thing I can do - my work."

Funding of $165,000 from Creative New Zealand came at just the right time to fuel Wright's rekindled creative fire.

"Actually, I feel like a volcano erupting with creative energy, and I am going with that, allowing it, not judging it."

Wright is channelling his new energy into more endeavours. His second book, Terra Incognito, picks up his life story where Ghost Dancer finished and details the process by which Black Milk emerged.

It has been launched alongside the dance/theatre piece. He has created 40 paintings and sculptures since January and an exhibition is in the wind, and he also plans a novel.

"What has happened to me is that the inner voice that constantly used to criticise and doubt has gone.

"I am still incredibly clear about what I want in my work. But I am not the slightest bothered about what any critics - inner or outer - might have to say."

One moment in Black Milk celebrates this freedom from previous hyper-sensitivity. Another placard arises as the dancers perform some vigorous running sequences. "Critics say too much running", it reads.

But Wright's flippancy ends there. His ideas, his convictions burn deep and fiery. "Black Milk is about death, and about death avoidance in our society," he says.

"We never confront the reality of it. But you have to face it before you can begin to live. Black Milk is about that - it is meant to be confronting.

"But in the end the ventriloquist character is ready to put aside his dummy, that unhealthy part of himself, and move on. In one way he does leap from the frying pan into the fire into the lap of the Dark Mother Death.

"But that is also a sign of growth. I think the work is very optimistic."


Performance

* What: Douglas Wright Dance - Black Milk
* Where and when: SkyCity Theatre, April 5-8