East meets West in dance collaboration
It’s East meets West as two dance companies from different sides of the world come together for a New Zealand tour. At the beginning of last year, dancers from Footnote New Zealand Dance journeyed to China to meet Guangdong Modern Dance Company (GDMC), the country’s first contemporary dance company. Out of that came Hemispheres.
Split into three parts, the show includes one piece created by Footnote, another by GDMC and a third that is a collaboration between the two companies.
Footnote’s Elliptical Fictions is choreographed by New Zealander Zahra Killeen-Chance, while GDMC’s The Spring Tide was created by Wu Jianwei. Together, the two companies – seven dancers from each – will perform Mass Solitude, choreographed by Sarah Foster-Sproull.
Footnote dancer Joshua Faleatua said Hemispheres showed ‘‘a bit of them and a bit of us’’.
A lot of their communication boiled down to sign language and counting the beat.
When he touched down in China last year, it was Faleatua’s first time in the country. ‘‘It was a massive culture shock – I didn’t know anything about China.’’
The first shock came just after the plane trip. A flight attendant had told him not to worry, English was widespread in China and the dancers would have no problem communicating – something that turned out to be much more difficult once they landed.
It wasn’t just the tourist destinations where they struggled with language, either. When they met up with the GDMC dancers, most couldn’t speak English.
‘‘We couldn’t speak the same language but we understood what was happening because we were all dancers,’’ Faleatu said.
A lot of their communication boiled down to sign language and counting the beat – Faleatua and his dance partners would both come away knowing how to count in two languages, English and Chinese.
It was the same for Chinese dancer Ma Man Huen Christy Poinsettia. Despite the language barriers, the exchange of culture and information went ‘‘beyond words’’.
‘‘Body language never fails us,’’ she said.
‘‘I guess this is why the connection is stronger since we abandon our instinct to speak our mind and instead speak with our bodies.’’
But rehearsing and performing together, dancers from the different companies could see the different ways they would dance.
Faleatua found the Chinese dancers would be a lot more technical in their movements, while the New Zealanders would create more abstract dance moves.
Ma said from her perspective, she could see how each dancer’s previous work ‘‘left traces on their body, adding to their movement vocabulary’’.
Hemispheres has already toured four centres in China and is coming to New Zealand from February 15, starting in Auckland and making its way to Palmerston North, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington.