NOW

Overview

Dancers seem to love dancing quite a lot. More than most people enjoy their professions, I think. In fact, I think that dancers love dancing more than I have ever loved anything. Even chocolate (huge cal). It is that unconditional, bottomless, irrevocable, can’t-live-without-it kind of love. The dancers at Footnote Dance must really love dancing, seeing as they’ve been around for 27 years and are still just as passionate as the day the company kicked off. Founded by Diedre Tarrant, a dance-guru who started Footnote because she was determined to create a secure team of dancers who could communicate innovation and new ideas through contemporary dance.

The company’s new general manager Richard Aindow, intends to continue Tarrant’s legacy, and to drive Footnote to create and perform even bigger and better things. That is where NOW comes in. The production is a showcase of home-grown talent, split into three difference performances.

The first performance, Low, is choreographed by Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad. These two talented dancers co-direct The BodyCartography Project, a dance company that aims to convey empathy and the physicality of space in a variety of landscapes through their works. The company has been hoarding countless dance awards since 1997 when Bieringa founded the company in San Francisco. The co-directors waltzed over to Welly from Minnesota to start work on their latest dance venture. Low is the story of bodily experience. It tells the story of life from the perspective of the physical form, specifically how one’s organs and bones witness the world. Low, they say, is how we meet the world.

Lyne Pringle is responsible for the next performance, Thin Air. She has been dancing for 30 years, all over New Zealand, Australia and New York, and has produced over 30 works in this time. That is more than one production a year, and still she wants to continue taking her work in new directions. Seriously? How many directions can there be left to take? But somehow she has managed to create an original work. Thin Air is about enchantment. The production illustrates the art of vanishing and conjuring magic. It sounds all very Harry Potter, but much more graceful and without all the Quidditch.

Depends on You is the final performance, and is choreographed by Craig Barry. He is just your typical local kid from Palmy. Except for the fact that he has danced in the Royal Ballet, and won the Best Male Dancer award  in Auckland, and choreographed and danced around the globe. Other than that, just your average Palmy boy. His performance is a modification of Footnote’s previous season of Straight Laced, Depends on You, which focussed on the themes of sex and sexuality. Don’t take your mum along unless you are one of the rare few who doesn't get squeamish watching sex scenes around your parents, because Barry promises both an erotic and entertaining enactment.