Reflections on love lost and found

By BERNADETTE RAE

Raewyn Hill's AK03 offering When Love Comes Calling is a solo dance show. But Hill still shares the stage with a larger-than-life co-star.

"Norman is real," she says of the 50-year-old she scooped off the street and videoed, and whose face and words partner her in her choreographed study of love. "He's not scripted. He is just phenomenal. He encompasses everything I wanted to say about love so completely."

But Hill is not about to be completely outshone by Norman.

A serious dance talent from her teens, at 30 she is "in my prime" as a dancer. And her original choreography sizzles.

There are two separate strands to her work. Her shorter pieces, which have often been commissioned by other companies, such as Footnote Dance Company and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, focus on pure movement.

But her larger Soapbox Productions creations have been very tactile, with stages littered with feathers or marbles or even, in the case of When Love Comes Calling, a good layer of earth and a sprinkling of "rain".

She uses electronic scores, text, graphics and documentary-style video imagery, and she makes full use of clever designers and a dramaturge.

When Love Comes Calling was made two years ago, when she was Christchurch Arts Centre Artist in Residence. Her second full-length show, White, which explores the misty state between waking and sleep, premiered at Bats in Wellington, in July 2002. Both works received resoundingly enthusiastic reviews and she is now working on a third full-length piece, Angels with Dirty Feet, dealing with drugs and other issues of addiction.

She has not had the financial resources to cultivate an Auckland audience, she says, and is glad, as Auckland audiences have to be, that the festival has provided an opportunity for her to be here.

The good news is she plans to return with Angels with Dirty Feet in August next year.

Hill's inspiration for When Love Comes Calling was a small book written by a 16th-century nun known only as Mariane. Mariane, says Hill, was sent to a convent by her father, as often happened in middle-class families then. But in her mid-20s she met and fell in love with a French officer. They had an affair, then the officer returned to France.

Mariane wrote six love letters, the subject of the book. The French officer never replied.

Mariane's story forced Hill to reflect on her own stories of love lost and found, and on the love stories of people around her. As she explored the subject, the need for a strong male perspective became obvious. Hill interviewed six men, of whom Norman was the last.

Six words repeatedly arose from the real-life stories that were told, says Hill. The work follows the six themes of regret, denial, trust, temptation, desire and truth, danced by Hill against a backdrop of Norman's face and some stunning projected graphic design.

Two years on, Hill has another perspective on the work. She can agree with one critic who suggested that joy might have been the missing element.

"I have had a new relationship since then," she says. "I feel differently about lots of things. Some days in rehearsal I have seriously wondered if it's a boring work. Some days I have hated it and thought about making a completely different solo. But I couldn't really do that. So I have had to be brave and stay true."

Performance

* What: When Love Comes Calling

* Where & when: Herald Theatre, Sept 25-28

Herald Feature: Auckland Festival AK03

Auckland Festival website