Grace under pressure
Black Grace founder faces own mortality, again
As he lay on the operating table, preparing to have his chest cut open and his damaged heart repaired for a second time, choreographer Neil Ieremia thought about life, and about death.
That moment of facing his own mortality sparked his latest dance work, about death and dying, when 12 performers from the company he founded two decades ago displayed the powerful, athletic dance moves that Black Grace has become renowned for.
Appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in this month’s Queen’s Birthday honours for services to dance, the 46-year-old has often created works close to his heart – Relentless was about child abuse, sparked by the kids who came to his Cannons Creek school with broken bones; Gathering Clouds was his reaction to an economist’s report about the drain of Pacific Islanders on the economy over 40 years; and his first piece, Black Grace, told of the struggle of male dancers in a rugby-fuelled Kiwi culture.
But this last one, A Letter to Earth, which premiered at the Auckland Arts Festival in March, shared the self-reflection that has come with age, about his own mortality and the death of two close relatives in recent years.
About the piece, he wrote: ‘‘Death – the bringer of change, liberator from pain and suffering, a keeper of its own time. Distant and close it touches everyone, brutal and peaceful, quick and slow.’’
Ieremia describes dance as his greatest love. But his damaged heart had long since forced him from the stage. He hung up his dancing shoes after he performed in Gathering Clouds in 2009.
‘‘I stopped dancing because my heart wasn’t pumping effectively, and it was dangerous. I was trashing myself and working very long hours. I had these physical symptoms that I was choosing to ignore.
‘‘When each dance day was over, I was having to go into the office and writing a report, or doing the budget, when everyone else from the company was going off home or going for a massage. Yes, it’s been hard not being able to dance any more.’’
In 20 years, the dance pioneer has helped change the face of contemporary dance in New Zealand, producing a dance style that audiences queue for here and overseas – hard, fit bodies hurling through the air, bouncing off each other, running and leaping as they move with passion and urgency on stage.
As he has juggled business and creative roles, the values he learned from his parents growing up in the thick of state housing land, in Porirua’s Cannons Creek, have stayed with him through his career – about discipline, hard work, and perseverance.
Ieremia is the youngest son of Samoan parents who moved from the islands to better themselves. His mother, Kiona, worked as a sample machinist for a Porirua clothing factory, while his father Siufaitotoa was a freezing worker, and later a factory hand. They were poor, and while there was food on the table, life was a struggle. ‘‘Mum was always the book keeper and she taught me to be tough with money, which has been good when you’re running a company like Black Grace.’’
At the age of 5, Ieremia was struck with rheumatic fever, which damaged his heart and meant he couldn’t play sport with his friends.
He was scolded by his mother if he tried to exert himself. That was difficult for a Pacific Island boy living in one of the country’s poorest suburbs where boys were expected to be sporty and tough.
His father bought his sons boxing gloves, and the younger, weaker Ieremia had to try to fight his older, athletic brother, Lale. Ieremia always tried to please his father. ‘‘He would tease me and say, ‘You’re not very good’ at something, and that instilled in me a need to prove him wrong.’’
In this world, Ieremia found solace in dance. First home from school, one day he pulled out a vinyl record from his sister’s collection, popped it on the turntable, and began to dance. Hurling his body around the living room in a style that was the genesis for the Black Grace signature, became a secret afterschool ritual that he came to love. ‘‘I needed a physical outlet because I wasn’t allowed to play sport, and I would dance around and make things up.’’
Ieremia was just 13 when he choreographed his first group dance for a church youth concert, dancing to a song by US gospel singer Amy Grant. It was 1982, when Pacific Island males were allowed to throw a ball around but weren’t allowed to dance.
‘‘People hadn’t seen anything like it,’’ he reflects. Were his parents proud? He tries not to laugh. In his community, he was allowed to dance the haka and Samoan cultural dances, but not the moves they watched him do. ‘‘No, they were a bit embarrassed. The Samoan culture is very strong, and that didn’t involve dance.’’
But a lightbulb went on for him. ‘‘I really enjoyed the sense of freedom and expression that I was able to experience during that performance.’’
Swept up by the hip-hop craze, he was a creative teen who taught himself to play the drums and other instruments, while also learning to DJ with a friend. He left college to work for Post Bank, continued to dance, and was offered a dance place at the Auckland Performing Arts School.
Quitting his job was the easy part. His parents, though, were horrified. ‘‘Dad told me off and he wouldn’t talk to me. Mum cried. I felt really terrified about going, but I knew that I had to follow it through.’’
The two-year course was one of the toughest things he has ever done. A late starter to the dance scene, he was thrown in at the deep end, learning plies and jetes with a classful of students who had been practising since primary school, including just three other males.
‘‘On the train on the way back to my aunty’s house, I would cry from shame and embarrassment. But there was no way I was going to throw it in.’’
‘‘Every time I talked to my parents, Mum would say, ‘‘Have you had enough? It’s time to come home now.’’
‘‘But that attitude did strengthen my resolve and make me realise it was not something to mess around with.’’
In his final year of dance school, Douglas Wright invited him to his company upon graduation. ‘‘I saw from Douglas that it wasn’t easy being a choreographer but a hell of a lot of hard work.’’
Also dancing with Michael Parmenter and Mary Jane O’Reilly, Black Grace was born through a desire to tell stories about ‘‘people like me’’. ‘‘No-one was telling our stories. I wanted to have some space to explore some of the ideas to do with my culture and the culture of the country.’’
Propelling his all-male, allbrown company on to the stage at Maidment Theatre in 1995, the season was a sellout. Calling the work Black Grace too, because he couldn’t think of a better name, that inaugural piece was about the pressure that male dancers feel in a country with such strong male stereotypes. Dancing to music by Jimi Hendrix, Public Enemy, and Bach, his parents sat
in the theatre circle, facing the stage. ‘‘At the end of the show, people just erupted and it was great to see all our parents there.’’
With all the works that Ieremia has created since then, audiences have been enraptured by the strong dance aesthetic, often incorporating Maori and Samoan dance traditions. ‘‘I just wanted to move the way that I had as a kid, which was always expansive, and very male, and often very fast, and extremely physical.’’
But although he called the company Black Grace, Ieremia never intended it to be made up of solely brown-faced dancers. Instead, the company name was because, in his ’hood growing up, black meant brave. ‘‘It was like, ‘You’re black’, meaning, you’re daring or brave. It was meant to be cool.’’
In 2003, Ieremia mixed it up, bringing in female dancers for the
first time for the work, Human Language.
One of those is dancer Zoe Visvanathan, who first performed with Black Grace in 2009 for
Gathering Clouds, and has been dancing with the company since. The physicality of the work and speed of the dance drew her to the company, though the works are exhausting. ‘‘When I rest, I can’t do anything. I can’t even walk around the shops,’’ she says.
Audiences are often surprised to see female dancers. ‘‘The Americans say things like, ‘Oh the women are so fierce’, but the power surprises them too.’’
Visvanathan describes Ieremia as an extreme perfectionist, more than any choreographer she has worked with. ‘‘He sees potential in the dancers that they don’t see themselves, and always pushes you to be better. He has a very definite aesthetic that he wants to see. It’s not loose, which is what I love about the company. Each work is a constant challenge.’’
While he’s tough in the rehearsal room, Ieremia has a caring side. Visvanathan has a 9-month-old, Harvey, who Ieremia allows her to bring to work, and on tour.
‘‘Neil is always driving for a result, but he cares about the dancers and he is kind.’’
Over the years, though, Ieremia has upset dancers with his creative decisions, and he admits there have been tough times, although he has to be pushed to talk about one. ‘‘I overlooked a colleague for a role that he would have been fantastic for, in favour of someone from the outside. I listened to the wrong people, and that hurt us both: we haven’t spoken since. The dance community is very small and it’s a blessing and a curse depending on how you use that.’’
One of his greatest fans is New Zealand Festival executive director Sue Paterson, who was on the Black Grace board in the early days. Paterson, who also ran the Royal New Zealand Ballet from 1999 to 2006, says: ‘‘Running a dance company for 20 years is no mean feat. It’s extraordinary.’’
Running any arts organisation is a tough road. Black Grace has built a successful international touring schedule, mainly to North America, Europe, and Asia, while the fees paid by overseas venues, and festivals keep the company going and allow it to tour domestically. In one difficult time, Ieremia got a collateral mortgage on his parents’ house to keep his inner-city studio going.
Paterson remembers first watching Ieremia dance with Douglas Wright in the early 1990s. ‘‘He was quite breathtaking. And through Black Grace, he has been such an advocate for male dancers.’’
‘‘He trains beautiful dancers, who have an amazing urgency to their work, and a vitality which is guaranteed to fill houses. His work always looks so immaculate, and he understands the aesthetic and the importance of building a strong brand,’’ she says.
With an expansive dance repertoire of works, will the choreographer take the company through another decade? Ieremia pauses. ‘‘I love what I do. I hope it continues to grow and to expand, whether it’s me there or not.’’
Ieremia has other things he would like to pursue, creative passions outside of dance. An aspiring musician, he also likes to write. ‘‘I’ve been writing throughout my career. My first love was actually visual arts. I won a painting competition at high school.’’
His mother has finally given up telling him to throw it in. At the Black Grace 20th-birthday celebrations, his parents turned up in traditional Samoan dress. His father stood up and spoke about how proud he was of his son and the dance company. Last week, Black Grace was rehearsing new works in Hamilton, stopping in at Ieremia’s parents ‘‘for a feed’’.
With a fourth child to a second partner on the way, Ieremia is working on his next piece, Crying
Men. Again, it’s a bit of selfreflection.
‘‘It’s about our experience of the other side of our lives, the more emotional side, and how we men like to hide that from everyone. I’ve got a cousin who is a lawyer and he represents some pretty tough men. It’s so sad, the journey they’ve taken, and it goes a bit deeper than what’s on the surface,’’ he says.
‘‘As tough and as hard as I am, there is another side to me than what many people see. I’m curious about how we see ourselves. I tell dancers that it’s important to embrace our failures, that we need to embrace that in order to grow.’’
‘No one was telling our stories. I wanted to have some space to explore some of the ideas to do with my culture and the culture of the country.’ Neil Ieremia