Artistic director Taiaroa Royal says he and co director Taane Mete had been thinking about this project for three or four years. He is a descendant of Te Aokapurangi, as well as having links to Ngai Tahu through his father's mother, who came from Stewart Island.
Te Aokapurangi was kidnapped as a young girl by Nga Puhi and taken to the Far North where she grew to love her new family and married a chief, according to Royal.
However, Nga Puhi and Te Arawa were still feuding and Hongi Hika planned to slaughter the Te Arawa people with the muskets he had acquired. When Te Aokapurangi discovered this she pleaded for her people. Hongi Hika said the only way he would spare them was if they passed between her legs.
Once people passed between a woman's legs they became tapu or sacred, Royal explained.
Te Aokapurangi managed to wangle her way on to the canoes that in 1823 sailed down the east coast to Maketu and were hauled across to Rotorua, where Te Arawa lived. Her people had retreated to Mokoia, the island in the middle of Lake Rotorua. When the canoe landed she jumped out, ran to the meeting house, climbed above the doorway, stood with her legs apart and called her people to come into the house between her legs to be saved.
''When I was told this story it struck a chord within me of how she outsmarted all the men by thinking laterally and just being clever. I wanted to make a work about it,'' Royal said.
He and Mete collaborated with choreographer Malia Johnston, artistic director of World of Wearable Art, and a team of female designers, composers, and backstage staff as well as five female dancers to create Mana Wahine.
''Mana wahine'' means women with strength, integrity, beauty, power, and he encouraged the cast and crew to draw on the women with mana in their own lives as well as the story as they created the work.
''We don't necessarily retell the story. We find the essence that is in the story and work with that, the wairua [spirit] of the story, the essence, the meaning of the story, what the legend or story evokes in us and the feeling we get from it; those are the things we translate into our works. But we are a contemporary dance company so we a fusing all of those things Maori with all of those things Pakeha,'' he said.
Experience it
Mana Wahine: A journey of strength plays at the Regent Theatre, Dunedin, its only South Island venue on July 11 at 7.30pm and July 12 at 2pm and 7.30pm. The Auckland-based company is also touring the North Island.
