Hamilton audience hungry for contemporary dance

A recent performance of the dance programme Lumina Tour 2018 demonstrated an audience hungry for contemporary dance in the city. On Tuesday, May 29, there is a second opportunity to see some of the best of New Zealand dance. Footnote Dance New Zealand, a company which has been in existence since 1985, arrives at the Meteor Theatre to dance its new show, Search Engine. The Meteor Theatre provides a superb environment for a show which uses light as an integral part of dance, and has excellent sight lines and proximity to the stage. The ideas which drive the three sequences revolve around the tensions between individual freedoms of thought and belief, and the technological environment in which we now live. The reviews have been good, and the Meteor has turned out to be a great venue.

A preview note:

Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chord/That David played, and it pleased the Lord/But you don’t really care for music, do you?

The opening lines from Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen’s extraordinarily musical hymn to humanity are also the perfect thumbnail to introduce an event which had a packed Claudelands Arena thundering from the start. Out of an exuberant light show appeared 10 oh-sofashionable men, tenors all, black-tied, bouncing, passionate, and all the women in the audience breathed in … in unison. The men began to sing. By the time they were delivering Freddie Mercury’s apparently personal tribute, We Are the Champions, and we were hearing the Mercury music sung by classically trained, talented tenori, the testosterone was flowing from the stage like a tsunami, and we, the audience, were captured. The stagecraft was superb and the choreography uniquely polished. The lighting captured mood and triggered imagination, and the group moved from Winehouse to Puccini without missing a proverbial beat (ha). That the Ten Tenors could elicit such applause for Granada and cheers of recognition for Nessun Dorma – with the added interest of that great solo being sung by a chamber choir of 10 – is a testament to the extraordinary musicality of arranger Steven Baker and the accuracy of the classical crossover labelling of the group.

We need to book them for the opening of the new auditorium, where the planned acoustics will show how great voices can sound and encourage crowds to enjoy the theatre.

How interesting. Here is an afternoon of crossover classical music, the fourth such concert I have experienced in a fortnight. The TWSO, beginning with the spectacular brass opening to Copeland’s An Outdoor Overture, a work which includes haunting passages of unique French Horn performance, delivered the familiar and inaccessible with equal aplomb.

They followed the Copeland with Charles Ives’s audience dividing The Unanswered Question, a work at once modern, and to most, incomprehensible, even with guest conductor Rozemond’s cogent introduction. For those who entertained Rozemond’s explicatory comments, however, and allowed openeared listening, it was a wonderful melange of beautifully executed, almost sotto voce strings offering musical normality, the superb and familiar mastery of Hiro Kobayashi asking musical questions on trumpet, and woodwind responding with wonderfully articulated confusion.

That apparent conundrum was countered with the iconic crossover classic, Gershwin’s unfading Rhapsody In Blue, for which the orchestra did not simply give a sigh of relief and strum on. Instead, they displayed all the musical sensibility needed to play swing as if it were a baroque cantata, and so support a wonderful performance from pianist Noelle Dannenbring.

Dannenbring is an award-winning master’s graduate of Waikato University, majoring in piano under Katherine Austin. Her confidence and understanding of the rhapsodic Gershwin mind set blasted a new and creative energy into a work which has been heard many times over. And that really summed up the day. On this occasion, the TWSO exhibited a mastery of the medium, an enjoyment of its potential, and a musical cohesion as good as I have heard from them. And those horns!

Events next week: Tuesday, May 22, 7pm, Meteor Theatre:

Wednesday, May 23, 1pm, Gallagher Centre:

Saturday, May 26, 3pm, Gallagher Centre:

Tuesday, May 29, 7.30pm, Meteor Theatre:

Ecstasy;

Judgment of

Parisian Belle Epoque;

University of Waikato String Orchestra;

Theatre Footnote NZ Dance.