Black Grace

On Saturday, April fifth I went to see Black Grace perform at Meany Hall. I was blown away, inspired, and awe struck. They were incredible. I was lucky enough to have taken a master class from the Artistic Director Neil Ieremia and the company members the previous Thursday, so I had some idea of what to expect. I knew that Black Grace was an extremely physical, primarily male company and that their style was inspired by Samoan and New Zealand cultural heritage. Still, I was surprised and impressed by what I saw on Saturday night.

The first piece was Fa’a Ulutao (an excerpt from a larger piece titled Surface). It was about the courage and bravery of young warriors. Translated, Fa’a Ulutao is the Samoan word for spearhead and is in reference to shapes and symbols found traditional Samoan tattoos. This piece was very much about communicating an idea. There were no solos. Sometimes the large group of men would break into smaller groups in different areas on the stage, but they were always connected. The light came from above and was a highly saturated red. The men wore khaki colored T-shirts and capris. There are two images from this piece that have stayed with me. One is of the men jumping up in unison and landing on their hands and the balls of their feet. The other is from near the end when they were in two lines stage left and hopped and bounced rhythmically without plie from side to side with their hand splayed out, the front line opposite of the back line. I read the second image as an echo of the shapes found in the traditional tattoos.

The next work was entitled Menoi. It was extremely powerful. It started out with the men wearing simple black skirts and feathered armbands in a dense triangle pointing downstage. The music started out as a traditional Samoan sung acapella by the dancers as they performed. As the dance continued the music morphed into a children’s counting song sung to the same traditional tune. In this work, and all of the pieces in the show, the unison was impeccable. It was more than moving together. The dancers seemed to be breathing, thinking, and being together. The movement vocabulary was a combination of Fa’atuapati, Samoan slap dance style, and more modern, western contemporary dance. The opening movement of the piece was a unison carve with the right arm and torso, and the hand moving across the mouth. I found this gesture to be particularly intriguing because the dancers were singing, but the gesture made it seem as if they were trying to silence themselves. Another movement that stuck out to me in this piece was a spoking jump with the legs spread apart in a small second position and the arms clapping together overhead as if the dancer were trying to catch something at the height of his jump. The most striking aspects of this dance were the complexity of rhythm, cannon, and pattern that the dancers executed without a fault and the evident camaraderie and virtuosity of the dancers. The men called out and encouraged each other during the dance while maintaining the cannon in the song. When the piece was finished they let out a triumphant and jubilant whoop of accomplishment.

The musical choices in Deep Far were interesting to me. It started out with the sound of wind and then moved into an 80’s techo mix which changed to a folk like instrumental guitar piece. At the end of the piece the dancers returned to their original places and the music went back to the sound of wind, and at the very end turned into rain falling. The choreography was inspired by cyclic weather patterns of New Zealand, particularly the droughts of 1998. The work was originally commissioned for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, and as a result the movement vocabulary and tone of the piece was slightly different than the other works in the show. Several of the dancers in Black Grace started dancing later in life, and do not appear to have any background in ballet. For many of them, their first dancing experience was at one of Black Grace’s Urban YOUTHMovement workshops. The movement in Deep Far definitely required a fair amount of ballet training. The most powerful moments in this piece were the very beginning and the very end. The piece was choreographed for four men. They were costumed in nothing but booty shorts that matched their skin tone. The opening image was of the four men standing in a circle center stage in a pool of blue light. They were swaying gently with their arms above their head like trees in the wind to the sound of wind whistling. It was a simple image and simple movement, but it was exceptionally beautiful. The end echoed the beginning with the men positioned in a circle, center stage facing one another. The wind music came back in and they began a turned in pas de chat type jump with incredible elevation in a cannon. The rhythm of their feet landing on the floor and the sound of their breathing became a part of the music. It was beautiful.

The next piece was War Brides, which is an excerpt of a larger work entitled Amata. This was the first piece in which the female guest dancers performed. They were just as amazing as the men. It was interesting to see how different their quality of movement was compared to the men. I’m not sure if it was intentionally choreographed that way, or if it was because they were guests, or if it was because they were women. The steps they were performing were often the same as the men, but even when their choreographed movement was different, the women’s steps were just as athletic, challenging, and virtuosic as the men’s. The four women opened the piece and were costumed in brilliant red dresses. They started out in unison and then moved into partnering each other. The women’s movement was less angular and softer in a way than the men’s even though they had a huge dynamic range. It was refreshing to see the women after the aggressively male pieces that preceded War Brides. The men were costumed in what looked like military issue Khakis. This work had a very political feel to it and made me wonder about the history and effect of war on New Zealand. I have a feeling that War Brides is specifically a commentary on World War II as the music it was set it is from that era. The movement in this piece had more of a contemporary western modern feel too it and less of the Samoan and New Zealand cultural influences that were so evident in pieces like Minoi. The dancers’ amazing athleticism and technique were showcased in this piece. The women repeated one physics-defying jump over and over. They would do a tour traveling backwards in the air and land with their entire bodies on the ground. They seemed to be hurling themselves to the floor in slow motion and literally defying gravity.

Minoi 2 was a development on Menoi and incorporated more solo work, western style dancing and Hip Hop. Instead of the men singing as they danced the music was pre-recorded and composed by King Kapisi, a Samoan hip hop artist who lives in New Zealand.

Human Interaction was by far the most humorous piece in the show. The girls danced around in bright warmly colored dresses. The men stood in a line at the back and blew up multiple colorful balloons. Some balloons they filled with air until they popped, others they let go, and some just wouldn’t cooperate no matter how hard the poor guy tried. The implications were fairly obvious. The piece was just as athletic as all the others but it had more of a warmth and narrative to it. It featured more male/female partnering than any of the other works and played off the male/ female dynamic.

The show closer was Method and it featured the men of the company. It was inspired by Neil Ieremia’s boyhood memories of wrestling and back yard rugby games. This piece really highlighted the friendly rivalry, encouragement and camaraderie that I witnessed in the company members during the master class I attended. This piece, like War Brides had a more ‘modern’ feel to it. It was set the third movement of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. The well known classical music was a surprise after all of the more tribal and obscure (at least to me) musical choices that proceeded it. The movement was goofier and less codified than in the other works and had a rambunctioness to it.

Going to see Black Grace was an amazing, incredible, inspiring, and awesome experience.