The Festival of Colour’s first dance performance was a bold start to the event with a diverse range of performers from all over the country.
Tōrua was an immersive dance performance, choreographed by Malia Johnston, founder of performance design company, Movement of the Human.
The show consisted of nine performers who guided the viewers across town through vivid expressions of dance.
The idea first sprung in Wellington right after the Covid-19 pandemic where Ms Johnston recalls a general sense of weariness among the public to be in theaters and enclosed spaces for performances.
Simultaneously there seemed to be an eagerness for people to get back out there and experience art.
"So I workshopped the idea of bringing solos, duets, trios and group composition to life in amongst the city spaces so that people could observe from their own perspective and comfortability after the pandemic."
Johnston then helped gather performers from all over the country and even Australia, each of whom brought their own style and ideas to the project.
Just like that, Tōrua was brought to life, a performance named after the Māori word which roughly translates to bringing two energies together or the movement of the wind.
As part of their tour, they did five performances for the Festival of Colour, with the last one being on Monday, all of which were well received.
"We had a very strong response to the show, I think quite a lot of emotions were expressed to us through the people that live here, because I think you’re connecting with the town with a form of movement and expression, and it is emotional," she said.
The performance started off at the Lake Wānaka Centre where each viewer was given a headset to get a full immersion experience.
The viewers were then taken between buildings and alleyways, stopping every now and then to watch a different type of dance unfold outside storefronts, between the bushes of bullock creek or in the forefront of the lake view.
Each performance explored a broad spectrum of human experiences as they related to the idea of land and relationship with the environment.
"The concept behind this work is about the autonomy of body and relationship to land," Johnston said.
As the dancers and the music takes the viewer further down the rabbit hole, the experience also becomes gradually more surreal.
With each participant being secluded in their own headset, the outer world begins to dissolve, and they find themselves in a trance like focus on the performance and environment in front of them.
The performance ended at the lakefront with a final group performance and the picturesque Lake Wānaka acting as the perfect backdrop to the show’s finale.
The group has the final stop of their tour in Auckland where they will perform in Britomart and Aotea Square.
