Matariki is a good time to reflect on culture whether through dance or art. Rebecca Fox discovers two projects doing both in Dunedin during Matariki celebrations.
Sharing ideas and insights about wellbeing with the wider community is the aim of a new dance project, The Seven Sisters.
The project is named for Matariki, the Maori name for the cluster of stars known as the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, which come into view on the northeastern horizon in the last days of May or early June, heralding in the Maori New Year.
It began with a workshop in January at the University of Otago's physical education department, where participants shared their thoughts and ideas about attending to wellbeing through movement.
Pacific Institute of Performing Arts head of dance Cathy Livermore and Jessica Paipeta Latton of Ake Ake Theatre Company say the ideas from the workshop should be spread more widely through performance.
"So we could connect with a wider community of people and they could benefit from what we are doing,'' Livermore said.
Many of the old feminine ways of promoting wellbeing had lain dormant or been overlooked for a long time so this was a way to resurrect those skills.
The project was long term, the dance performance at the weekend being just stage one.
Matariki was a time of year when people gathered inside and talked, resolving past issues and reflecting on the present and future.
"It's about reharnessing and regathering purpose and direction.''
There was so much going on in people's lives at a community and global level it was time to look at what direction people were going in and attend to their wellbeing.
Given the pace of living, wellbeing was often overlooked in the daily grind, she said. Paipeta Latton said they were connecting with women throughout the world who had similar cultural experiences such as last year's Caroline Plummer Community Dance Fellow, Uzo Nwankpa, of Nigeria.
Livermore said also contributing were dancers from Japan and Finland.
"It's important to get a global perspective. It is an important time to share.''
The performance was a way to show the processes involved in getting to that point and how they were evolving and manifesting themselves.
At a workshop the next day, the dancers would share some tools and other ways of attending to wellbeing through dance.
To see
The Seven Sisters Project, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Saturday. Workshop on Sunday; also at the gallery.
