Kiko allows you to traverse into an evening of film and dance with timeless souls, into a world-ing that acknowledges the fleshly life of all things, bountiful paradises and running towards the queer and ineffable.
Tempo: Te Rerenga o Tere 2022
Kiko (Flesh) brings together two of Aotearoa’s most influential dance companies - Body Island, a collective that produces both digital and live dance performances and Atamira Dance Company, a contemporary Māori platform whose dreams emerge and find expression through the dancing body.
An evening of short vignettes with a collection of emerging ideas that spring out from our corporeal embodiment, our skin and shape to connect us to this place.
Tasked with having fun, playing and risking discovery, these stalwart artists are here to express the spirit of live performance and create an intimacy in the shared experience of what we cannot escape from, our flesh.
Kiko is the result of a 2 week creative residency (through Atamira’s choreographic Tuakana programme) featuring participating artists Kelly Nash, Nancy Wijohn, Taane Mete, Sean MacDonald + Atamira dancers Abbie Rogers and Caleb Heke.
“Te Hā Te Kā"
by Kelly Nash
In 2021, Body Island produced a series of films and photography thanks to Creative NZ funding.
This work is an experimentation of the relationship to those films and live performance.
"A duet" by Sean MacDonald
Two beautiful people who know each other well being asked to perform set movement that came from random provocations to a piece of music. Made by someone who knew not what he was doing or after. Mauriora.
"A brief encounter with Oli Mathiesen and J S Bach" by Sean MacDonald (choreography credit: Oli Mathiesen)
The brief - Oli to choreograph a 1.5 minute piece in 2 hours. Completed. Everything was decided in that time; theme, costume, music. All came together by the chance method
"Nau Mai"
By Nancy Wijohn
The core idea of this work were imagery based inspirations that I had. In the short amount of time to put together a piece I knew I wanted to incorporate humour, entertainment and a parody of our human desires and relationships.
We managed to bring in Pedro Ilgenfritz to workshop our own clowns through various tasking. Looking at the Whiteface and Auguste and how we could incorporate that within the works. I was really interested in the 'Flop' as a performative state where we acknowledge that your 'gag' didn't work. When the moment of the flop happens or when you feel yourself in the shit, it's that ability to breath, swallow and show the audience that you acknowledge that that part of your act didn’t work and keep going. Sometimes the audience will laugh or respond to your act of swallowing.
I grew up in a family that often used humour to make fun of ourselves, sometimes not necessary for the "good". So the work is a glimpse of this. I also love the transformative states that we find ourselves in each day from moment to moment. We can have tragedy in one moment and then celebratory in the next and so on.
Be entertained. But then the question might be "should I be laughing at this?"
“Sambo Reimagined”
By Taane Mete
When I was 6 my teacher read the story Little Black Sambo, it was my all time favourite that I later told my children growing up. I extracted 4 images from the book as a starting point to reimagine an alternative narrative through dance.
“Ngahere”
By Kelly Nash
We are in the forest.
‘What sickens in the wake of your crescent armature? Your body judders. The steel moon bounces. Your fingers quiver as if to sense the world. Your dream-like wiri is the belly of a tired and irate Earth.
The bite of your eyes makes my skin dance with the imminent recognition of liveness or mortality or the wicked, teeth-grinding pleasure of the senses of an ending-…?’ Amit Noy
BODY ISLAND FILMS
Te Hā Te Kā
Pepe Mā
Ngahere
