Neil Ieremia creates a new masterpiece

Black Grace, As Night Falls
Herald Theatre, Auckland 
Until November 5

In one corner of the dark stage a figure trembles in the harsh light, hands raised in surrender.  She is clothed in a light shift or burial shroud and we hear her gasping and heavy breathing. Then we detect other ghostly figures similarly attired. They react to the distressed figure, their bodies twitching as though from electric shocks. This is the stuff of nightmares

This is the opening of Neil Ieremai’s latest dance work As Night Falls, a work which is full of inventive choreography and thoughtful concepts. It is a continuation of the choreographer's continued exploration in capturing the rhythms of life.

The impetus for the work came from Ieremia’s despair at the social, environmental and political environment.

While this is a core element of As Night Falls, there is also a corresponding sense of hope, redemption and resurrection. This reflects the choreographer’s ability to translate the rhythms and narratives of life into a collage of dance sequences.

This opening sequence is performed to the music of Vivaldi but then, as is common in Ieremia’s work, there is a soundtrack of traditional Samoan hand clapping but the dancers' movements are more contemporary and insistent.

One of the final sequences features the Lord’s Prayer intoned in Samoan with the dancers on their knees shuffling across the stage to a light source. This redemptive sequence is then flowed by a lighter wistful passage 

The predominantly classical soundtrack allows the dancers to perform in an extraordinary fluid fashion, with a mixture of contemporary and classical with occasional baroque flourishes.as in much of Ireemia’s work the dancers are often airborne, leaping or thrown.

The endless movement of the dancers walking rolling, twisting and twitching occasionally morphs into hints of a narrative at one point they seem to be like a line of refugees.

In one of the sequences the dancers, on their knees with hands raised seem to be both supplicants and hostages. Then there are times when the figures appear to have entered a ghostly twilight realm conjuring up the half-light of despair then finally they advance towards the light of redemption.

The work is like a series of rituals with repeated movements and sequences of action and reaction where the physical exertions of the dancers reflect ideas about passion and emotion.

This is also reinforced by the use of Vivaldi’s music, notably his Four Seasons and the expressive faces of the dancers.

Ieremia creates an inventive dance vocabulary combining classical, dance, Pacific dance, gymnastics, religious rituals, wrestling and street brawling

Ieremia uses the dancers as though they are building blocks of an elaborate   constriction with various parts taking on the appearance of rituals.