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.