Heading 1
Container or music series
Whairepo Lagoon Dance
Wellington 2021
MOVEMENT OF THE HUMAN
This vibrant and beautiful performance event brings together over 45 talented performers from across Aotearoa in a visual display of energy, colour and movement. A collaboration and celebration of movement styles and energy, viewable from most angles surrounding the lagoon. Featuring - Wellington Opera, MOTH - Movement of the Human Dancers, Hiwa Kapa Haka, and performers from Le Moana Dance Company. Directed and choreographed by Malia Johnston with additional choreography by Tupe Lualua and Virginia Maxwell.
The Whairepo Lagoon Dance directed by Malia Johnston signals the beginning and celebrates the movement programme created by Movement Of The Human for What If The City Was A Theatre. This vibrant and beautiful work brings together over 30 exceptional Dancers from across Aotearoa, the superb kapa haka group Hiwa directed by Virgina Maxwell, guest artist Tupe Lualua and members of Le Moana Dance Company and 2 artists from Opera Wellington, in a visual display of energy, colour, movement and sound. A collaboration and celebration of movement styles and energy, this work will be presented at dusk. The work is nestled amongst the Whairepo Lagoon Garden (aka Treasure Island), and will be visible from most angles around the lagoon. Audiences are invited to gather round the west end of the lagoon and join us in celebrating the beginning of the movement programme.
Whairepo Lagoon Dance is a development on an earlier work by Movement Of The Human; He Wawā Waraki: Roaring Chorus, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and heritage in 2018 in response to the Armistice Centenary.
MOTH is a company that brings together artists from all sorts of backgrounds, including dance, theatre, design, video and music. We're interested in connecting with artists and communities, and offering different perspectives on contemporary life. We've staged works as diverse as Hurihrui - an outdoor spectacle for the Commonwealth Games Arts Festival in Australia in 2018, to Meremere an intimate dance theatre work right through to directing and choreographing the World of Wearable Art Awards Show, a huge indoor arena event. What drives us is how movement, combined with music and light can tell us and make us feel so much more than words alone. Creating and being immersed in theatrical and imaginative worlds with movement is a huge adventure. We discover new things. We are inspired by other perspectives through this which we discover new understandings and ideas and possibilities of worlds beyond our own. Being creative with other artists is what drives us and the kaupapa of Movement of the Human. We collaborate. Through the process of collaboration we are able to create something more, something bigger and something more meaningful than could be created by the individual.
Thanks to Audio Avenue, Morgan Whitfield
