22 August 2026. Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
reviewed by Jennifer Shennan
Turid Revfeim is director of Ballet Collective Aotearoa and she never says No to a challenge, which leads to a range of interesting projects for the collective, both locally and nationally. Tānemahuta Gray is an established free-lance choreographer and force majeure for integration of Maori history and myths into the contemporary political, civic and artistic culture of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The evening at this concert began very well indeed with what was probably the best and most informative pre-performance talk I can remember (which was consoling because the last ppt I had attended, by a different group across town, was probably the worst and least informative I’ve ever known). Orchestra Wellington’s director-conductor, Marc Taddei, interviewed Tānemahuta for insight into the choreographic process of his dance work to Darius Milhaud’s Creation.
The Michael Fowler Centre is not an easy space to stage dance, but it is the home venue for Orchestra Wellington concerts so there was some degree of anticipation as to how the musicians and dancers would share the stage. (An earlier project between OW and BCA involved Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin, and the staging of that work, dancing in two dimensions up in the choir seats above the orchestra, was itself something of a miracle).
Milhaud’s music has an atmosphere of 1920s Paris, jazz, rhythms of African percussion and its own air of modernism. Gray confessed that despite listening to the music for 1001 nights he could not source a libretto of a creation story in it. He instead resorted to a selection of themes from Maori mythology of the creation of the world, the separation of Papatuanuku-Earth Mother, from Ranginui-Sky Father, and the role their children played in that cataclysm. Gray then ingeniously wound time back to the original attraction between Rangi and Papa, to the conception and procreation of their children. In other words, the birth of a child was presented as the original creative act. (The truth is that all cultures’ creation stories involve some form of incest to procreate the human race but it was movingly explained in the pre-performance talk that Maori myth accepts that as a reality, unlike most codified religions which ignore the biological necessity). That insight definitely helped us to follow the choreographic play in performance.
The front of the auditorium was treated as the Underworld, so dancers climbing up onto the stage were entering the world of light. Gray stood to chant a powerful karakia before the orchestra began the Milhaud score. The team of seven dancers adopted different forms of stylised movement that broadened the reference beyond Te Ao Maori. The inventive work was focussed and well-carried and arrived at a final sculptured grouping that reminded me of Maori carved figures in a traditional lintel. It was a masterstroke to have Gray again chanting a closing poem after the Milhaud had ended, cadencing in the repeated mantra of Hi ! Ha ! —with the group of dancers rising and lowering in subtle but powerful breathing, in and out, as the first act of life. That image will stay with all who recognised it. Tihei mauriora, the breath of life.
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I found extra resonance in another work on the program, Bela Bartok’s Concerto for two pianos, percussion and orchestra—since that had been the music chosen by Ashley Killar when Artistic Director of RNZBallet back in the early 90’s—for his one-act ballet Dark Waves. After a Nabokov short story, it gave Jon Trimmer one of his finest roles as the blind husband, fearing that his much younger wife was having an affair. The work was only performed on the company’s tour to America (to great acclaim as it happens) but never publicly in New Zealand (I had been privileged to see a studio rehearsal before the tour). Upon return, a rescheduling of repertoire was Killar’s desperate attempt to survive the scandalous chapter when the Arts Council of the day tried to close the Company down. They were unsuccessful of course (nobody closes down the New Zealand Ballet that Poul Gnatt formed in 1953) but that remarkable Dark Waves was lost in the struggle of survival. Jon Trimmer is dead but Killar is not—Sonya Behrnes and Kim Broad played leading roles, are around and could help with staging. It should not be impossible to hope for a revival since historical masterworks in the repertoire are what define a company’s identity.
Jennifer Shennan, 26 September 2026
Featured image: A scene from Creation, 2026. Photo: © James Burchell
