PERFORMANCE
Performances or performance related activities, created by myself, or by other performance makers, in which I have featured.
Hine Downtown 2022 -
Ōtepoti and Tāmaki Makaurau
For the Ōtepoti Pūaka Matariki Festival in 2022, I created a new outdoor, site-specific performance work that drew on the Hineahuone story to interact with my home town of Dunedin. This work followed intersecting histories of the city, myself and Hineahuone, as I explored how the evolutions of body, landscape, universe could be told through poetry, Tāonga Puoro, movement and costume. Again, I was collaborating with Salvador Brown to create the soundscape, which was this time recorded, and listened to via headphones. In Tāmaki Makaurau, I was fortunate to be able to partner with Papāya Stories to provide the audience members with headphones, so the audio experience was seamless, so a big mihi to them. Thank you also to the Ōtepoti Pūaka Matariki Festival Trust for supporting the initial development of the work.
Check out the review of the Tāmaki Makaurau version of this performance here: https://ftp.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=13154
"Like many feminine deities whose complex natures are a mix of wrath, torment, and sweetness, Rachel's movement discourse is startling, sparky, elusive, spontaneous and fantastically honed, bringing a haunting primeval delicacy to an environment still spooked by the violence of its own becoming. The audioscape by Salvador Brown that mixes Tāonga Puoro with Te Reo Kāi Tahu from Rachel's southern whakapapa, brings alive the most ethereal and ancient of Atua, making a vivid immersive sound journey that matches the choreography second to second. " Jaqs Clarke for Theatreview
I Want to Dance With My Atua Bodies - Performance Art Week Aotearoa
As a part of PAWA, I was fortunate enough to present the work I have been doing with Salvador Brown as an online offering. This had been scheduled to be a live event in Whanganui ā Tara Wellington, however due to our current situation, had to be reimagined. As a result of this turn of events, I decided to play with the possibilities of the Zoom platform, and so a whole new performance offering was developed. It still came from the same themes and impetus, but was designed around the potentials of performing in a domestic space, with the technology of Zoom, and its background filter feature. If you would like to view a recording of this event, you can email me at rachel.r.m@gmail.com to inquire about getting a link. This is available on a koha basis.
Whenu ā: Future States/Woven Bones
An ongoing exploration of the Pūrākau of Hineahuone as a model of Te Ao Māori anatomy, a way into an embodied experience of ourselves in relation to the world we are made of, and the potential of this story as a movement practice that leads into performance. This project is also a collaboration with Salvador Brown and Komako Silver, two well respected Tāonga Puoro artists, and experiments with vibration as another element of our anatomical experience.
This practice has developed from a number of different inspirations, including performance art, somatics, Body Weather, contact improvisation, and site-specific performance. Underlying these is an ethics and philosophical kaupapa that draws from Mātauranga Māori, and in particular, Mātauraka Kāi Tahu. In the past five or so years, I have been folding in a growing understanding of Chinese Medicine and Theory, and an understanding of the body as a system of related organs and associated meridians travelling throughout the whole of a person.
In July 2021, this kaupapa will be resident at The Basement Theatre for their Matariki Season, alongside Cathy Livermore, who will be inhabiting the space as a fellow resident and Kāi Tahu Whanauka.
Check out the website for updates.
MiruMiri
MiruMiri is an ongoing interactive movement project exploring the potential of latex rubber gloves to offer performers, audience, and environments an altered experience of themselves as internally and externally connected through our fluid, transformational organ bodies. Images above are from Between Tides Art event, Earthbeat Festival and Performance Town, Sandringham, all in 2021.
MiruMiri is available as a performance work for your event, festival or party. Email to inquire about offering a unique experience for your entertainment needs!
Organs Dreaming/Visceral Evolutions
A performance experiment continuing with previous themes of water and organ explorations, and developed new ways of using props created during The Unfolding. Chinese Medical theories were utilised during the preparation of the work to develop new pathways between organs and specific areas of my limbs. The soundtrack was developed from found environmental sound, recordings of latex gloves and recollections of water stories. Performed for Wellesley Studios Friday Features, mid 2020.
The Unfolding
A performance experience as a part of the glOaming, a night of Horror Choreography, within the Tempo Dance Festival 2019. The night was curated by Tru Paraha, and also featured Charles Koroneho, Virginia Kennard, Kelly Nash and i.e. crazy. The Unfolding was an experiment with images drawn from life as a parent, developed through the lens of somatics. These were collided with themes of climate crises and tsunami and folded in with stories of my own whakapapa as starting points for movement and imagery.
The process was consciously engaging parents within the performance community, as well as younger artists. I was intentionally offering a different way of working together, across many months, using movement forms that were based in image work and rehabilitative and somatic practices, as well as allowing space for the individuals to bring themselves and their own movement requirements to the work and our process. This was to create a way of working that was as easy and enjoyable as possible for all involved, whilst still being engaging and challenging for all levels of experience.
"Much is active in this work, with strong images invoked, but it’s the timely and clear unison that offers the eye space to resolve the emergent themes as well as props presented.- Highlights are many in the air-filled surgical gloves tied together to create two separate parasitic type bodies, one blue and one white, disguising Rucksthul-Mann, and performer Claire Luiten as they move. These performing objects need to have a life beyond Friday night, as do the billowing duvet covers that were unfolded and then filled in unison by roaming trio Liana Yew, Katrina George and Rewa Fowles, reforming the covers by a simple walking pattern into sculptural assemblages."
Forest Kapo for Theatreview, https://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=11934
Wānanga Kanikani X
A curated experience of opening, easing into, welcoming, nourishing and inclusivity.
The intention was to provide a way into the Experimental Dance Week 2019 that allowed space and time for reconnection between people, for nourishment of physical and emotional requirements, and for whānau of all ages to be able to be present and included. It also was the first time that the hall had been used as a venue to sleep in for the purposes of extended community experiences. There was a range of people who attended for different parts of the weekend, and the overall feedback was that participants felt like they could relax, whilst at the same time be engaged with the kaupapa of the various offerings over the course of the wānanga.
Mythological Motherhood
A collaboration with Clare Luiten for the Undisciplining Dance Symposium at The University of Auckland in 2016. We we lucky enough to be supported by Wellesley Studios as resident artists in order to develop this work, exploring ideas of motherhood and failure. Three small 'moments' were presented over two days during the Symposium using the material developed during the residency. Images above represent two different moments.
The first image is looking at the invisible labour of parenting. Rachel stood behind the wallpaper holding a knife, dressed in underwear. Clare offered symposium attendees the opportunity to cut a hole in the paper, and then to hold a cutting board with an apple on it in front of this hole. Rachel would then slide the knife through to cut off a piece of apple for them.
The second image was an exploration of the marks we make on the landscapes we inhabit through transportation systems, maps and the use of marker pens as an object of domestic space. In this instance we were looking at our relationships to the earth as a mother, and the politics of moving through space as a mother.
Fun Feeding Feelings
Another collaboration with Clare Luiten, this time a light hearted exploration of the taboos of touching others in public, through the offering of a collaborative game that participants of the 2016 Whau Arts Festival could choose to engage in upon entering the venue. People were asked to work in pairs to transport fruit from one side of a room to another, where they were then asked to cut up this fruit and string it onto a piece of string, whilst blindfolded. These fruit strings were strung together in a large 'fruit loop' and were later eaten without using hands in a collaborative eating act.
Wai Kōrero 2014 - 2018
An event-performance exploring waters, bodies and memories through practices of yoga, collaboration, somatics and improvisation. This extended on my masters research into intersections of Māori and somatic worldviews and performance practices, and aimed to be inclusive of children as well as adult participants. Participants were invited into a space in which they were lead through a somatic remembering of waters they personally had a connection to. As they did this, they were holding on to a balloon filled with various temperatures of water. From there, I lead them through different stories that had been gifted to me from people since 2011, and asked them to collaborate with me to 'perform' the waters of these stories through action.
This work was performed four times between these years, in Auckland Central, Prana, Voices of Sacred Earth and in Melbourne.
Ah Hā: Masters thesis performance AUT
Final Masters performance 2012. A group of about 20 people were lead through a process of experiencing their bodies in relation to stories and memories of water, and balloons filled with different temperature waters. They were taken on a performative ‘tour’ of Auckland following the path of an old stream, the Wai Horotiu, now under Queen Street. This was supported by Sean Curham, Sarah Campus and Johannes Blomqvist.
You can find the written thesis of my masters- haerenga kōrerorero - choreographing sensing relations - at Academia.edu
River Crossing
An invitation to wait, to attend to the space of an entry, the threshold into the building, into the archives and into a space of memory. An invitation to link with another person, time, place. An invitation to walk with me across and up a river, to create a river with our steps.
The performance of River Crossing involved an extended entry into the Artspace building, starting with an informal kind of welcome, replete with the removal of shoes. It asked people to form groups of threes by linking arms, in which they would ascend the stairs to the Film Archive space. A question was asked of; Why water? Wai? Water? Another question was asked of which waters were we walking through, or across, or which waters were we creating? Each trio was asked to consider these questions and at the conclusion of our walk, tell me their answer, negotiated through the journey up stairs and their conversation.
Two people were invited to walk with me, first adorning themselves with scarves, hats and woolly socks, and stepping into gumboots filled with ice and water. Each step brought us closer together in a synchronicity of frozen feelings, but also brought forth different memories of rivers and places we were embodying in these boots.
At the top of the stairs, drinks were served, each trio still negotiating the stairs, the doorways, the questions, and each other. Inside the Film Archive exihibtion space were placed three buckets of warm water, initially meant for the relief of those in gumboots, but ended up being appropriated by many who were not walking up 'frozen' rivers. When inside the space each trio declared the river they were walking, and donated some of their beverage to our gumboots, thereby sullying the 'purity' of the boot's glacial river, and turning them into a kind of drain.
Finally the boots were left behind along with socks, hats and scarves, feet were warmed by the buckets of warm water, and the alcoholic river-turned-drain was left as evidence of the event. Multiple questions of how archives are created, for what reason and by whom, how they are collected (in this case by bodies, objects and conversations), and for what reason might they be accessed again (for social cohesion, connections to particular places or events as being important for individual or communal identities), were made evident in a subtle exploration of the power of sensation to evoke and provide evidence for the relations between people, place, time and bodies.
Part of a month-long performance series in 2011, Forever Tuesdays hosted by the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Film Archive, curated by Campbell Farquhar and Kristian Larsen, including performances by Sean Curham, Alexa Wilson, Anna Bate, Brent Harris, Mark Harvey, Val Smith and Cat Ruka. Each performance responded to the conditions provided by and questions raised by the content and form of the Film Archive.
Vltava/Wild Waters
Vltava act started at the point where the city meets the river. Its story was developed from myths and facts surrounding the location. Together with ritual and insight from the international student team, the global became local and the local became global. The Third Act took place on the Slovasnky Island (Žofín) on June 20, 2011.
Shifting Tamaki/Auckland/Utrecht
A 27 km walk from Woerden to Utrecht along the Oude Rijn in The Netherlands. Tracing and re-performing walks and stories from two hemispheres, three walkers engage in an intimate conversation with each other, themselves, the landscape and a smattering of friends across the world via Facebook. This was another iteration of Walking (Laing)Home performed as a part of the PSI Conference 2011.
Two Waters
Juxtaposing Waititiko/Meola Creek with Mt Albert Wave pool, a somatic journey was undertaken to uncover the ways in which we can experience and transform ourselves, our perception of these waters and the waters themselves. Participants were lead on a slow walk, a performance of a traditional initiation rite involving a drop of water into their ears, and invitation to bathe in the polluted waters of the creek. Then followed an investigation of the swimming pool as the contemporary construction of rejuvenation and community health, and the sonic and aural possibilities of submerged listening as a poem was read underwater, recalling the drowning of part of the Otago town of Cromwell to create Lake Dunstan.
The Narwhal and The Bull
A collaborative dance performance with Anja Packham as a part of Te Ngaru Hou The New Wave, contemporary dance performances by indigenous choreographers, within The Dunedin Fringe Festival. Other performances were by Louise Potiki Bryant and Vicki Van Hout. The whole evening won the Best of The Fringe 2009.
"Whakapapa – The act of layering upon one another, to make relations between.
The Narwhal and the Bull explores the shifting process of creating our own landscapes; of culture, identity, and environment. This is an ever evolving and reciprocal cycle of transformation, a feedback loop between inner and outer stimulii. The ideas of transformation and evolution are applied to our bodies and identities in relation to our immediate surroundings. As both bodies and scapes move, each takes on parts of each other, an evolution of form and meaning."
Walking (Laing)Home
A walking performance from Queens Wharf to Laingholm with Becca Wood, exploring aspects of mapping, archives, landscape, technology and the notion of re-performance as a way of creating space and defining place. Created as a part of my masters research.
Points of Contact (New Plymouth)
A restaging of Jim Allen’s Points of Contact series in New Plymouth, 2011. “ At its core Contact speaks about a release from social alienation through collective activity—literally ‘making contact’. The three elements—Computer Dance, Parangole Capes and Body Articulation/Imprint—deploy formal structures in which the interplay of bodies use movement, form, sound and light to strive for transcendence.” (Quote from Artspace’s website: http://www.artspace.org.nz/exhibitions/2011/jimallencontact2011.asp)
Te Karohirohi/The Light Dances
A performance based on research by Charles Royal, choreographed by Louise Potiki-Bryant. Charles' research looks at written and oral histories about traditional Maori performing arts, collectively referred to as Te Whare Tapere. This was workshopped and performed in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Urban Devas
Urban performance by Carol Brown and Phil Dadson, as part of the Auckland City Council's A Week of Kindness. Also performed in Wellington. See http://www.carolbrowndances.com/projects.php?pid=73