Athough not well-known in North America, Ponifasio's dance company MAU is one of the preeminent dance troupes in New Zealand. Its two performances of "Tempest," held on Friday and Saturday nights in the Moore Theater at the Hopkins Center, comprise one of only three scheduled engagements in the United States and its only appearance on the East coast. The troupe performed "Tempest" in San Francisco in early April and will continue on to Los Angeles for three shows later this week.
Margaret Lawrence, director of programming for the Hopkins Center, saw the group perform five or six years ago and had been working to bring them to Dartmouth ever since.
"Tempest" uses elements of Shakespeare's "Tempest" and incorporates the philosophies of 20th-century thinkers Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, as well as imagery inspired from Paul Klee's painting "Angelus Novus." Ponifasio achieves this effect through both contemporary dance styles and elements of traditional Maori dance.
One of the key figures in the performance, though, is usually not a trained dancer Tame Iti, an outspoken Maori activist known for his combative speaking style, stands on stage to deliver monologues in Maori. Iti, a controversial figure who has been jailed in New Zealand for disruptive behavior, refused to perform in the United States in protest of its current involvement in Libya. His monologue was instead delivered by another dancer Friday and Saturday night.
Despite Iti's refusal to perform, his presence lingered in the performance. Iti has been portrayed in the media as "a rude man, an angry man a werewolf, not a man," Ponifasio said.
This contrast between man and monster is evident in Ponifasio's use of Iti's impassioned Maori monologues to break up the slower parts of the piece.
"Part of our community is made to be silent, invisible," Ponifasio said. "We have created werewolf characters."
Ponifasio has a very organic style of work, and sees choreographing as a devotional labor. The minimalist style of his pieces lends a timeless quality to his performances. The dancers in the piece seem bodiless, moving without effort, as if their actions are being dictated by forces outside their control. The costumes are simple, and the lighting bathes everything in a ghostly white light which contributes to the show's ominous atmosphere.
"Tempest" does not go easy on its audience. A man writhes on the floor, his tendons about to snap. A woebegone, shell-shocked angel with mummified plumage lets out piercing screeches that start out frightening but end up merely grating.
Ponifasio enjoys playing with the conflict of fear and power.
"When you're afraid, you lose power," he said.
He turns that fear on its head. The audience is yelled at, shrieked at and subjected to loud music. Black-robed figures walk in eerie synchronicity across the stage and wag their fingers upward, implying that the audience is being judged. By watching, viewers are complicit in the action.
"Tempest" also wields power through the use of subtle movement and variations in pacing. Every finger twitch or head movement means something, and the dancers stick to a slow and measured pace, sporadically interrupted with frenetic activity. This works to keep audience members on their edge of their seats, but Ponifasio sometimes takes advantage of the audience's patience with his deliberate timing. He delights in having his dancers merely walk across the stage. One of the most frightening parts of the performance features a dancer walking on all fours, so skillfully emulating the walk of a wolf or a panther that at first one thinks a horrifying hybrid has just walked on stage.
Other times, the long entrances and exits serve just to slow down the piece and fill the audience with a sense of dread. Viewers spend a lot of time waiting for something sudden to happen, and though there were several surprising elements including an angel with a blood-soaked right hand and a man who breaks a tablet of white powder over his head the piece does not really have one single climax.
"Tempest" is a powerful, thought-provoking piece, but it is not much fun to watch. The ending is one of destruction, and Ponifasio rejects the notion that humanity can look for an outside force to help them:
"We don't need an angel," Ponifasio said. "Have you ever seen one?"
