An extraordinary digital dance showcase, featuring a collection of films, real-time digital audience performances and an improvised, fan-directed dance battle between the most talented freestyle dancers in Aotearoa, will light up Auckland in October.
Tempo Te Rerenga o Tere, in partnership with Auckland Live, will bring Capture: Aotearoa’s first live Digital Dance Showcase to Tāmaki Makaurau for nine days from 12 October. It will perform at Aotea Square and other central city spots.
The event showcases humankind’s oldest artform with a modern world expression; as an explosion of innovation, creativity and audience participation. Some of the country’s most celebrated artists are showing films, alongside exceptional, up-and-coming talent.
Tempo’s Cathy Livermore says the event captures a new era of dance-making, after artists were relegated to their living rooms during COVID. Many films being shown were created by dancers who pivoted their artistic expression to a digital medium during the pandemic.
The films will be shown on a giant screen, and in between showings audience members are invited to participate by creating their own real-time, cinematic dance designs through tech developed by the Blob Collective.
Cathy says: “Dance is innate in all of us, it is our first language; we dance in our mother’s bellies before we are even born. Dance has always provided a social connection and is like a medicine that brings humans together, to celebrate, to have fun, and to enjoy social connections."
Capture brings the exponential growth in digital dance to our public spaces where audience members can see it, hear it, and enjoy their experiences of dance in new ways, all in the heart of Auckland.
The films will be shown on rotation, in Aotea Square and other CBD locations including Auckland Library. Artists include Freshman Dance Crew, Taane Mete, Daniel Belton, Charlene Tedrow, Oli Mathiesen, Threading Frames, Mary-Jane O-Reilly and many more. Topics range from exploring the delicacy of the insect world, to reimagined love stories, to volcanic eruptions in the Pacific.
There will also be an epic, one-off, audience-directed dance battle from Street Dance freestyle collective Projekt Team. The event, called TECHnique, is a collaborative project with Blob Collective. Projekt Team includes Happy Feet, who will represent Aotearoa at this year’s Worlds in Germany after winning the country’s first Red Bull Dance Your Style national competition.
Capture will also feature a live performance from the New Zealand Dance Company, which explores visual relationships between live dancing bodies and the screen.
www.tempodancefestival.co.nz/capture
Photography: John Vaifale
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Published: September 2023