Mozart meets Pacific art

Choreographer Lemi Ponifasio (right) with John Raoren, who stars in Requiem. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Home to Lemi Ponifasio's dance theatre company Mau is a dark, cold and cavernous shed in the Corban Estate in Waitakere City. A small office on the side offers the comfort of a one-bar heater. Beyond the rutted carpark lies an expanse of green, rimmed with dark trees, the setting of the company's last Auckland performance, in February.

In that, the result of a two-day workshop, Mau emerged from the distant dark to slowly walk the perimeter of the football field-sized stage, with tremulous flames flickering, strange totems beckoning, a solitary bass player, a light show in the trees, and a boy washing himself for long minutes in a bowl of blood.

Mau's next work has been commissioned by the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, an event that will feature the work of a select group of contemporary international artists, chosen for their creative engagement with the cultural, intellectual and social issues of today.

Titled Requiem, it is Ponifasio's response to Mozart's Requiem, a response that encompasses themes of magic and transformation, truth and reconciliation and the Samoan ceremony for the dead.

Ponifasio uses not a single note of Mozart's music in the project. Instead, his Requiem is composed of "ancient ancestral chants, oratory, incantation, songs of love, songs of lamentation, songs of wandering, songs of joy, songs of the navigators, songs of the frigate bird. I wanted to use what we have here," he says.

He has used the structure of the powhiri as the basis for the work, and intends Requiem to function, as a powhiri does so well, in "bringing together people who might not all be friends, acknowledging their differences and then dropping those differences to find what is shared. It gives a foundation to talk from this part of the world," he says.

Ponifasio's style of dance theatre has evolved from his roots in contemporary dance and Butoh, infused with a strong Pacific flavour. Increasingly he has become more concerned with communication - on and off the formal stage - than in entertainment. He views his work for Vienna as more a delegation than an ensemble of touring dancers.

Ponifasio has been more feted in avant-garde Europe than Auckland, to date. "That is because in Europe they are interested in serious theatre, the uncompromising and the controversial," he says. "Here we still approach theatre as a business proposition, a place to put on shows, tell stories."

Ponifasio is increasingly driven by the idea of theatre as a marae, a hui, a community that celebrates above all human relationships.

"We have spent centuries discovering the world. Now it is time to discover each other," he declares. "That is what all this terrorism stuff is about - not knowing each other. We need to improve the quality of how we think, how we see, how we dream."

Each year, after the Mau Forum, a summer project in West Auckland that offers a variety of workshops for all ages and interests, Mau tours the Pacific for a month, building relationships with neighbours through sharing ideas, music and dance.

Mau has a core group of about 12 but there are always invitations to others to join the community, the ceremony. This year the small Kiribati community is involved and will take part in the Vienna delegation through recordings of their choir and the presence of 12-year-old John Raoren, who will tour with the company, bringing to the performance a "sense of hope, beauty in the ordinary, community and the preciousness of life", says Ponifasio.

He believes "it is the smallest places, the unknown, from which issues the new hope. I think the world is waiting to hear from everyone - not just the big guys."

LOWDOWN

* Who: Lemi Ponifasio, choreographer

* What: Requiem, commissioned by New Crowned Hope festival, supported by the city of Vienna, produced by the Wiener Festwochen to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart; premieres in Vienna, Nov; Royal Flemish Theatre, Brussels, Dec

* Previews: SkyCity Theatre, Sep 15-17, 8pm