By Ila Couch in New York

In the early hours of the morning I'm woken by the sound of street sweepers and garbage trucks in collection of the day's refuse. If "all the world is a stage" as Shakespeare says then the city's sanitation workers are its stage hands, clearing the streets for tomorrow's performance. Acts include: shopping, eating, protesting, undercover drug busts and though not scheduled, probably a death or two.

Death, specifically loss and transformation, is on the program of this year's Mostly Mozart Festival at the Lincoln Center and in keeping with this theme is Requiem, a performance by New Zealand-based dance troupe MAU. By Ila Couch in New York

In the early hours of the morning I'm woken by the sound of street sweepers and garbage trucks in collection of the day's refuse. If "all the world is a stage" as Shakespeare says then the city's sanitation workers are its stage hands, clearing the streets for tomorrow's performance. Acts include: shopping, eating, protesting, undercover drug busts and though not scheduled, probably a death or two.

Death, specifically loss and transformation, is on the program of this year's Mostly Mozart Festival at the Lincoln Center and in keeping with this theme is Requiem, a performance by New Zealand-based dance troupe MAU.Originally commissioned in 2006 by the city of Vienna as part of the 250th Anniversary of Mozart, Requium is the creation of Lemi Ponifasio, a Samoan born Choreographer and founder of MAU.

On the way to the backstage dressing room for our interview Lemi stops to talk to a member of MAU about extra rehearsal time and props for the night's performance. The concert halls and sound stages of New York City are unionized which means nothing gets touched, turned on, or even dusted by anyone other than a Local One member. Local One is known for being particularly uptight which as Lemi explains is odd for those in MAU who helped build elements of the set and are used to pitching in and packing it up at the end of the night. Usually they sweep the stage after their performance but that won't be happening tonight without a fight.

Behind closed doors we get down to the interview, a challenge for two reasons. Firstly I missed opening night and have yet to see the show and secondly, Lemi doesn't want the interview to be filmed. "Maybe when I was in my 20's I would have courted such publicity" he tells me, "but not now." he concludes. We agree I can set up to record sound as long as I promise not to broadcast it in any way. With the first major hiccup out of the way, Lemi explains to me how Mozart's Requiem informed MAU's Requiem.

"In his last days Mozart created Requiem. I think Mozart was trying to talk to his God or ancestors because his time was coming near. When I was asked to create Requiem I immediately thought of Pacific rituals of farewell. In Pacific ceremonies you are trying to talk to your ancestors so for me Requiem is a contemplation, a preparation, a creation of a ceremony that might point us to some place or someone."

In creating Requiem Lemi drew upon some of the central values of the various cultures represented in MAU. The stage is the fale and the powhiri unites the audience with the troupe comprised of people from Samoa, Tonga, Aotearoa, Kiribati, Rapa Iti, Kanaky and the Cook Islands. In addition to its cultural make up, what makes MAU unique is the fact its performers were picked for their lack of formal training not because of it.

"For me I needed to start from a new place so I asked people who don't really study dance, who are not experts of dance because their condition of body and mind is not complete. They are still saying 'what is dance Lemi?' and that is great. I know we are on the right path. The person is still searching for an idea. I did not want to become a class of humans called Dancers. I just wanted to be a human who dances. It was that kind of a beginning."

In the Festival program the arts director writes of people looking for performing experiences with an impact. I ask Lemi what he thinks MAU's impact has been on a New York audience. "Our impact is a crash" he says with a laugh, "but the most amazing thing happened last night. There was silence. It was unusual for me in a theater, in a huge venue for nobody to leave. Usually people walk out of my performances."

Since it felt impolite to ask I wonder later that evening what could possibly drive someone to leave a performance they've paid $92 to see. Everyone around me seems excited as the lights go down and Requiem begins. A disembodied torso bathed in a single spotlight writhes like a stingray, a gasping man arches so far back he looks ready to fall into his own grave and women in long dresses walk from the shadows in slow motion waving fans and issuing forth a karakia. I feel like I am home but in the row ahead of me there are already wriggles of discontentment.

The music and songs in Requiem reflect the cultures of the various members of MAU and at times they are loud. Not loud enough to drown out the woman in the row in front of me who leans over to the person next to her and asks "is there going to be 90 minutes of this?" I wonder what "this" means to the woman in front of me who eventually leaves. Did she come to this dark place to escape the city only to instinctively run away with her fingers in her ears like you do when encountering roadside construction or wailing ambulances. Outside there is some predictability as to how long an audio assault will last and a visual indicator of what it is your dealing with. Maybe without any cultural context or understanding it was too much, too foreign.

I wonder again - did she read the program? Lemi's "Note from the Artist" and Albert Wendt's Note about Requiem were both exceptionally written, in English and encompassing of the performance and its meaning. Perhaps the Whaikorero, the shrieking woman or the clanging cylinder drove a few more people from their seats but their departure feels like part of the performance from where I'm sitting.

Since I couldn't get a date for the night (everyone I knew went to see Radiohead) I end up eaves dropping on people's conversations once Requiem is over. The gaping women carried across the stage miming rigor mortis and the smooth, black birds heads are talking points. I thought those moments stunning too but the golden light and cleansing vessels of water near the end of the performance uplifted and delivered me back to the world of the living.

Later that evening I meet up with my better half after the Radiohead concert and he tells me how an insider hooked him up with a birds eye view of the stage. It sounds like I missed a great show but no worries. I just spent 90 minutes in the South Pacific and with escalating airfares it might be the closest I get to going home in awhile.

Image
REQUIEM by Lemi Ponifasio
Photo by Joseph Brown

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04/09/08