NZ school of Dance

so I spent the afternoon with a first year class that Merenia Gray is working with,using some of Hone Tuwhare poems as inspiration..
I showed them some imagery and some things I'd been playing with,some processing stuff.It was interesting to see there reaction...all unusable at the moment of course..curse you ethics...but soon I'll have a methodology sorted out and some ethics notifications done and then I can really start digging into what they experienced.


A Fall of Rain at Mitimiti: Hokianga

Drifting on the wind, and through
the broken window of the long house
where you lie, incantory chant
of surf breaking, and the Mass
and the mountain talking.

At your feet two candles puff the
stained faces of the whanau, the vigil
of the bright madonna. See, sand-whipped
the toy church does not flinch.

E moe, e te whaea: wahine rangimarie

Mountain, why do you loom over us like
that, hands on massive hips? Simply
by hooking your fingers to the sea,
rain-squalls swoop like a hawk, suddenly.
Illuminated speeches darken, fade to metallic
drum-taps on the roof.

Anei nga roimata o Rangipapa.

Flat, incomprehensible faces: lips moving
only to oratorical rhythms of the rain:

quite please, I can't hear the words.
And the rain steadying: black sky leaning
against the long house. Sand, wind-sifted
eddying lazily across the beach.

And to a dark song lulling: e to whaea, sleep.

1974.