New dance unearths nature’s secret code

When choreographer Victoria Colombus starts work on a new contemporary dance piece, the first things she sees are ‘‘patterns and formations’’ – terms that are as applicable to mathematics as they are to dance.

Of course, maths as rhythm and counting is always essential to dance, but in her new work Colombus has made it the subject.

Called her piece, one of three touring as part of the New Zealand Dance Company’s show based on the famous mathematical principle the Fibonacci Sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two numbers that precede it (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on).

Dubbed ‘‘nature’s secret code,’’ the sequence is found in everything from the arrangement of leaves on a stem to the movement of planets through space.

‘‘I found it fascinating,’’ says Colombus of her early research into the sequence.

‘‘It’s everywhere. It supports the evidence that everything has a connection.’’

This idea of connectivity became the theme of the dance that Colombus built around the sequence.

‘‘It’s reflected in the patterns, rhythms and cycles of the dance,’’

is she explains.

On a literal level, Colombus and composer Rowan Pierce wove the sequence into the rhythm of the music and movements.

It can also be seen in the cumulation of bodies and objects on stage.

Figuratively, asks its audience to consider how we are connected to each other and to our surroundings, both immediate and distant.

Colombus says that the work, though developed in collaboration with her six dancers, is very personal.

‘‘I’m interested in this idea of aloneness vs solitude,’’ she says. ‘‘We can be around hundreds of people and feel alone, or be alone but still feel totally connected to the world around us.’’

Colombus has seen the theme reflected in the earliest performances of the work, too, held in small centres including KeriKeri, Wanaka and Invercargill – towns which, Columbus recognises, don’t typically have a lot of exposure to contemporary dance.

‘‘There has been a tremendous response,’’ she says. ‘‘I’ve felt a real sense of connection with the community.’’

This, for her, goes to the essence of the work and the Fibonacci sequence itself.

‘‘It’s like if you look at the universe from a distance,’’ Colombus says, ‘‘it starts to look like everything is made of the same thing.

‘‘We are all a reflection of the same thing.’’