This is part of Foot­note’s Forte series which “has a spe­cif­ic objec­tive to bring New Zealan­ders who have excelled off shore home to make work here.” Berlin based chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Lisa Densem has cre­at­ed a work set to music by Andrew Thomas. In the pro­gramme she writes the per­for­mance aim is “to cre­ate a struc­ture that could allow the height­ened ‘atten­tion’ and charged space to con­tin­ue liv­ing with each per­for­mance.”

The stage is com­plete­ly open and bare of props. Six dancers mean­der around, occa­sion­al­ly paus­ing to pose. Some­times they slow­ly turn their heads towards the audi­ence as if to check that we’re watch­ing. There is some­thing slight­ly unnat­ur­al about the way they move.  A knee is bent at a strange angle. Hands are held awk­ward­ly. They often remind me of dolls. A plas­tic doll has limbs set in a posi­tion and when they are moved past a cer­tain point the posi­tions look unnat­ur­al. I can sense their con­cen­tra­tion. They are aim­ing for speci­fici­ty in their pos­es, some­times only a few mus­cles move as they stretch.  Grad­u­al­ly the move­ment changes as the dancers come togeth­er and now there are two peo­ple mov­ing as one crea­ture. The crea­tures feel strange­ly famil­iar despite their mul­ti­ple legs (and arms, hands, faces.) These crea­tures break and now the dancers are like pool balls bounc­ing off each oth­er, clump­ing togeth­er, scat­ter­ing, and form­ing again. The six of them weave their arms around each oth­er, hold­ing on to shoul­ders, waists, faces. They are in con­stant con­trolled slow motion. Occa­sion­al­ly one will cart­wheel in the group, or be spun on the side. I find this the most com­pelling sec­tion of the per­for­mance.

The per­for­mance is sub­dued com­pared to the exu­ber­ant chore­og­ra­phy usu­al­ly seen in NZ and it reflects the aim per­fect­ly.