Electrifying contemporary dancing
IYKYK (If You Know You Know) is a double-bill of contemporary dance, with works by choreographers Holly Newsom and Forest Kapo, coming to Queenstown this weekend. The two works aim to bring a game-like lens of viewing the human condition asking how do you win at the game of life? What are the rules of the end of the world?
Foot Note New Zealand Dance are behind the upcoming show. They’re a contemporary dance company that have been based in Wellington for the last 38 years and aim to bring creative and artistic dance shows to Aotearoa New Zealand. The registered charitable trust have produced IYKYK, with their core Kaupapa to support and empower domestic choreographers, dancers and the other creatives they work with such as music.
Artistic Director Anita Hunziker is responsible for everything artistic when it comes to the show including curating the choreographers, composers and the lighting design. She’s excited to be bringing the show down here for their third time in Queenstown saying they’ve always had a fantastic response and that here is a community that they really like to connect with. They hope to continue to build that relationship.
“At Foot Note we work super collaboratively, so along with the rest of my team we create all of our shows from scratch,” Hunziker says. “A part of the creative process is getting the works up onto the stage – we did this show originally last year and so we remounted it, basically got it back up and running. We got two new dancers into the show and so I helped them get into the show and get it happening.”
The show will be upbeat and high energy. There’ll be six dancers performing and Hunziker explains that one of the things that makes the show so exciting is the physicality of the dancers. Expect plenty of wow moments on stage.
“There are two different pieces in the works for two different choreographers. The first piece was inspired by board games and the strategy behind board games, so onstage there’s a lot of deals and strategy, and there’s some fake fight scenes. That’s the high energy coming through. Then the second piece has layered a couple of different themes through it – we’re looking at the climate crisis, we’re also looking at relationships between people. The dancers had a really fun task, which was to create a social media or dating profile and so there’s a bit of text in there as well, where they’re meeting someone for the first time.”
Foot Note will also be hosting two master classes at Te Atamira on Friday, 22 March. This is something they like to do when on tour, to reach out to local dancers and get them involved. The first is at 7pm for teenagers and is free, then they have one running at 7.30pm for adults. Tickets for the adult class is $50 and includes a ticket to the show. Registration for each class is now up at Te Atamira’s website.
“What we like to do is give people a really good insight into the show because sometimes contemporary dance can be challenging for people who don’t watch it every day. So we like to educate people and they really get to learn movement from the show. They also get to talk about themes and we do some creative co-graphic tasks that are in the show so they can get a good handle on the themes in the show and so they know what they’re watching.”
IYKYK National Tour will take the stage at Queenstown Memorial Centre on Saturday, 23 March. More information and tickets can be found at Foot Note’s website footnote.org.nz/events/if-you-know-you-know-2024 or at Event Finda.
