A stoa, in Greek archi­tec­ture, is a por­tico used as a prom­en­ade or meet­ing place. For the NZ School of Dance, it’s a place to bring people togeth­er for explor­ing new ideas and chal­lenges. Well, tech­nic­ally two places. We returned to our seats after inter­mis­sion only to be lured into a new space. (pro tip: it’s an excel­lent oppor­tun­ity to claim a bet­ter seat)

The work com­prises 11 pieces over two acts, per­formed not in a theatre, but in two sec­tions of the base­ment. The stark base­ment has no back­stage or wings, so everything is on dis­play. Instead of cur­tains, the young cho­reo­graph­ers have ris­en to the chal­lenge of using move­ment and light to cre­ate the trans­itions and dis­trac­tions that keep the piece flow­ing. The large cast – at least 30 dan­cers by my count – means there’s so much hap­pen­ing, par­tic­u­larly in the first act, that you almost want to watch the show a second time from a dif­fer­ent seat to see it all. 

The cho­reo­graphy also make inter­est­ing use of the pil­lars hold­ing up the ceil­ing – some­times they’re a source of sup­port or won­der, and oth­er times a bar­ri­er keep­ing people apart. I love see­ing art cre­ated in a way that really uses the quirks of a space, instead of just being presen­ted in dif­fer­ent places. 

My date – who has now seen a grand total of two con­tem­por­ary dance shows – pre­ferred the stripped back set­ting of STOA over the mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­tion at the Opera House, and I’m inclined to agree. We also spent all of our post-show din­ner talk­ing about dance, so it looks like the NZS­D’s edu­ca­tion pro­gramme is reach­ing audi­ences too. The 11 pieces togeth­er show­case a vari­ety of styles, so STOA makes a great intro­duc­tion for the dance noob: if some­thing isn’t quite your cup of tea, don’t worry – a new piece will soon take its place. 

My per­son­al favour­ites were the ones that show­cased the emo­tion­al range of some of the dan­cers – the lithe young woman, occa­sion­ally partnered by a much taller man, who slowly, des­per­ately unravels is an utterly cap­tiv­at­ing pres­ence. The man who danced through the tini­est sliv­er of light. The two women who per­formed a duet entirely with their hair swept over their faces but still kept the audi­ence riv­eted. The woman who switched effort­lessly between con­vey­ing mis­chief, chal­lenge, long­ing and more with the slight­est flick­er of her face. 

Best of luck tear­ing your eyes from this woman any time she’s on the stage.

There’s a sense of sci-fi dysto­pia under­ly­ing and con­nect­ing the whole series, helped along by the stark set­ting and fre­quent use of urgently throb­bing music that relent­lessly builds ten­sion. I loved the andro­gyn­ous neut­ral cos­tumes, all dif­fer­ent yet almost the same. As much as I love clas­sic­al bal­let, it’s often a bit frus­trat­ingly het­ero­norm­at­ive. It’s refresh­ing to see dance not lim­ited by strictly divid­ing up the boys and girls, both in aes­thet­ics and cho­reo­graphy. STOA fea­tures some beau­ti­fully phys­ic­al part­ner­ing that uses same-gendered pairs as often as oppos­ite. Even the hetero part­ner­ing is more egal­it­ari­an than usu­al, with some impress­ive dis­plays of strength from many of the young women. 

If this new gen­er­a­tion is the future of con­tem­por­ary dance, then I can’t wait to see what they cre­ate next. Check them out now so you can say you saw them before they were fam­ous. 

STOA is on at Te Whaea Nation­al Dance & Drama Centre until 7 July.