Dancing with mana is Maori contemporary dance company Atamira's core vision. Charmian Smith talks to artistic director Moss Patterson about Kaha, which they are touring to Dunedin as part of Arts Festival Dunedin.
When he was a child, Moss Patterson imagined the painted kowhaiwhai panels in his marae lifting off the rafters and moving around in space.
Many years later this dream of the designs dancing around him inspires his work as a choreographer.
''That began my choreographic journey of depicting the koru, the spiral, the red and black kowhaiwhai, the moko, the art form of carving, our traditional tukutuku panels - all these designs I've taken as inspiration to create dance,'' the Auckland dancer, choreographer and artistic director of Atamira Dance company said.
They will be performing Kaha, a production of eight short works, at Arts Festival Dunedin on October 14 and 15.
However, the young Moss, who grew up in Alexandra then studied education and Maori studies at Otago University and played in a covers band, had no intention of becoming a dancer.
It was only when he was taking a course at the New Zealand College of Performing Arts, which was based in Dunedin in the early 1990s, and was asked to physicalise the characters, that the idea emerged.
''We came up with these incredible movement scores to describe the character's feelings and emotions. It opened up a whole other area of the performing arts I hadn't thought about,'' he said.
He went to Auckland to study dance at Unitec and after working as a dancer with Limbs and Black Grace, joined Atamira.
It had been established by fellow Unitech students in 2000 and six years ago he became its artistic director.
''One of the inspirations is to draw people with a passion for Maori culture and a passion to innovate and to find ways to enjoy it and to push those cultural boundaries and to find new ways to express ourselves as urban Maori,'' he said.
''It's about creating great pieces of indigenous dance but our core vision is to dance with mana. That's a very heavy, highly respected word, so each day we go into the studio and say how are we going to dance with mana. How are we going to uplift this idea of mana in our lives.''
Kaha is a programme of eight pieces by Moss Patterson and other choreographers in the company.
It starts with Haka, based on a haka about preparing yourself for something about to happen.
It was taught to him by his grandmother, but he has twisted and changed it, he says, to include women.
Te Paki, a dance for three people, is based on wave patterns, kowhaiwhai (rafter paintings) and other traditional motifs brought alive in the body and set to rhythms of the sea, he says.
''In our ancestral past our tupuna would stand in front of the ocean and one of the ways they would find a rhythm for a haka or dance would be to watch the rhythm of the sea to get a rhythm for the dance.''
Pou Rakau, choreographed by Gaby Thomas, is about titi torea, Maori stick games.
Her children were learning them at school and she decided to learn them too and brought them to the studio.
''She made a whole dance about reconnecting to our own ancestry with the use of song and rhythm,'' he said.
Nancy Wijohn, who choreographed Paarua, has a strong sporting background and one day in the studio she started playing around with the drill she goes through when preparing for a sports game.
''She ended up making this dance all about the tactics that sports people use when they are on the netball court, the rugby field or the cricket pitch, and how players goad each other. It's a light, fun piece. You get to have a laugh and watch the dancers throw themselves around the place. It's all about sports tactics and mind games.''
Indigenarchy, choreographed by Kelly Nash, is a global look at how the indigenous body is depicted in mass media, he said.
''It's almost a tongue-in-cheek look at how cultures see indigenous images from outside. It's a light piece but there's a deep undertone of wanting to reassert our indigeneity within it. It's picked up a lot of attention overseas. It's a very strong work.''
Four dancers use a big colourful Mexican blanket that they wrap around themselves and upwrap again, he said.
Another of Patterson's works, Moko, is an exploration not only of traditional motifs which are based on natural flora but also his response to the urban environment.
It is accompanied by music from Richard Nunns' and Paddy Free's album Karekare.
The programme ends with a fast, dancy piece, Dolina Wehipeihana's Poi E Thriller, with bodies throwing themselves all over the stage, he said.
Between each piece, Patterson comes on stage to talk about the dances so the audience can follow what is going on.
