Dancing in the street
The streets of Wānaka are about to be taken over by a troupe of inspirational dance luminaries. Tōrua, a show part of this year’s Festival of Colour, has celebrated choreographer and director Malia Johnston bring together seven incredible independent dance artists from across Aotearoa and Australia for the immersive experience.
The show is a celebration of movement and place. It will have the audience roaming the lakefront, streets and alleyways of Wānaka with headphones, following dancers Kia Jewell, Cameron Holland, Jemima Smith, Sefa Tunupopo, Xin Ji, Andre Quinlan-Busby, Levi Siaosi and Ella Williams. The group will be presenting movement in response to the township’s terrain and natural environment as they go. It’s part of the Movement of the Human project, who work with different ideas with a view of engaging the audience.
“Each artist has material that they’ve made, so it’s a curation of them as artists in collaboration with the spaces,” Johnston says. “It’s not improv, it’s all constructed dance work that the performers have made but it’s what we would call responsive to the space, so it gets, kind of, moulded and changed a bit as the dancers workshop that material into the space.”
Johnston will be coming down to Wānaka to wander around the streets, looking at the different areas available and what the space is offering. Then, a week before the event, the dancers will head down and workshop around the streets and alleyways.
For the audience, there will be two different versions of the composition available on the headphones. It’s up to you how close you are to the performers, and at times you will be arranged so that the dancers can move around. For most of the performance you will be enjoying the music and observing.
“This one is totally zero risk for an audience member, you can come along and if you don’t enjoy it you can hand your headset back to one of the ushers and exit. It’s very easy to observe close up or far away. You can take your headset off, you can keep them on. There’s lots of choice.”
Johnston is heading down to Wānaka off the back of recent seasons at CubaDupa and HOTA Queensland (AU) and Nelson Arts Festival. She’s also the artistic show director for World of Wearable Arts in Wellington and explains the inspiration for the unique performance style came out of Covid.
“Getting together after the pandemic, Wellington City Council organised an event called What if the City was a Theatre, and Movement of the Human were invited to curate the movement programme for that. It was really about activating the streets and city spaces again after the pandemic, after everybody had been outside of those spaces, and bringing them in and having them outside so that people could socially distance if required – not feeling like they had to go inside.”
The name Tōrua was gifted to Johnston by Rodney Bell, another member of the Movement of the Human. According to him it means bringing two forces together. Accompanying music for the show is composed by Anna Edgington and Eden Mulholland, which helps to create the fully-immersive experience. The headphones help to stop any distractions and keep you focused on the show.
“It’s a really cool piece. We have had lots of audience members love this work that don’t normally enjoy dance, which is awesome because it’s really fun, really expressive and really interesting because the backdrop is your town – that’s the theatre,” Johnston says.
As this is a roving performance, be sure to wear comfortable shoes. There are several Tōrua sessions around Wānaka CBD, all meeting at Lake Wānaka Centre entrance. The sessions are at Saturday, 29, at 10am and 1pm, Sunday, 30, at 10am and 4pm, and Monday, 31, at 10am. Tickets are $35 or $25 for students. Head to festivalofcolour.co.nz/programme/torua for more information and to grab tickets.
