Float, dance or run to see this spectacular show at the Auckland Arts Festival, but whatever you do, don’t miss it.

A realisation of the very best of this country’s creative ambition

It’s easy to forget the  Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre at the Aotea Centre, with its three tiers of seating and large capacity, has the potential to be an immersive cocoon. The revamp, completed in 2012, saw the installation of sizeable warm-wood panelling, vastly improving the acoustics.

Belle – A Performance of Air, an Auckland Arts Festival show that opened on Thursday night, wrung out every drop of potential from the theatre, filling the space with haze, light, shadow, and sound to create the illusion of precisely what is promised in the title: a performance of air. 

The work is both restrained and spectacular. As Shanti notes below, meals would be made of some of the singular feats of physicality in a less balanced production; instead, this production’s choreography, performance, set, lighting, music, and sound design work in perfect harmony.

The jaw-dropping aerial work, as aerialists spin in hoops and dancers work ropes, bouncing across a large obelisk-like beam, their movement fluid and precise, is not gratuitous or gaudy but controlled and beautiful.

Belle reminds me of shows I’ve seen at past festivals, conjuring memories of the immense theatricality of Robert Lepage’s dazzling productions and the awe-inspiring open-air pyrotechnics in the Domain from Groupe F.

I caught myself holding my breath at times and then expelling air loudly as the experience of being wholly immersed in this spectacle of the body, light and sound pressed into my chest.

I am trying to embrace being surprised by going to things without knowing much beforehand. I left Belle assuming that a European cultural ministry had poured a lot of money into this show. They haven’t. It’s a show made here with New Zealand creatives Malia Johnston, Rowan Pierce, Eden Mulholand and Jenny Ritchie at the helm. The dancers, aerialists and live musician Anita Clark are also all from New Zealand. Shame on me for thinking otherwise. The stagecraft, scale and perfect execution are a realisation of the very best of this country’s creative ambition. It should go on to be one of our greatest cultural exports. / Anna Rawhiti-Connell

Utterly breathtaking, immersive and unique

When the lights went down at Belle, I had no idea what to expect. Lights combined with circus combined with dance? What does that even mean? From the moment it started, though, I was utterly immersed. Smoke machines make the light dimensional, slicing the stage. A performer’s legs descend from above, twirling. 

Then barcode-like lights start to play over the stage, and there are echoes of voices talking about gestures. There are low, throbbing bass notes and the high melody of a violin. Dancers leap over a box holding ropes, almost like they’re floating. There are strange scenes in the background: a dancer with perfect poise walks across the stage with another dancer standing still and strong on her shoulders. On a rotating hoop, two performers perfectly mirror each other’s movements. Another dances and cartwheels through a hoop – at this point, I thought about the core strength that was required – while another bends and twists inside a plexiglass bubble that hinges open and closed. On geometrical equipment, dancers bend and twist, their shadows echoing over the stage. A violinist and vocalist (seriously – what it takes to do both at once) emerges from the shadows. 

None of this description really does Belle justice. Like Anna, I was struck by how lavish and coherent the show felt, the product of lots of creative minds working together – the performers apparently helped with lots of their own choreography– and how exquisitely the music and lights worked with the actual dimensional equipment on the stage. There’s a confidence to the show that allows it to do things like have performers in curled handstands, rotating on platforms for less than a minute. A lesser performance would have made each of these elements a centrepiece, but Belle never feels like it’s overstuffed with visual impressiveness (even though it is!)

There are very few words in the show, and the performers’ faces can rarely be seen. That didn’t make it feel like a blank bag of tricks, though. There’s no explicit narrative, but I felt like it was exploring ideas about grace and power. As two dancers pushed a solid box together, I grasped something about the nature of collaboration. As three different bodies spun down ropes, one after another, I noticed something about the nature of echoes and mirroring (and also thought about Len Lye’s Sky Snakes sculpture). As grids of light magnified performers poised in the smoke, I thought about how we interact with technology, a future where screens could serve us better. At times, Belle felt like walking through an art gallery in the middle of the most impressive performance art you have ever seen; at all times, it was utterly breathtaking, immersive and unique. / Shanti Mathias

True beauty and grace

Belle begins in almost total darkness, and slowly. Six bodies appear, one by one, in flickering outlines. Through an abstract and ambiguous narrative, these six bodies proceed to perform a number of impressive and sometimes tearfully beautiful dances alongside live violin, guitar, and singing over the next hour. Colour is used sparingly, as is equipment.

As I watched, I couldn’t help but make many connections to art history. There was the large, clear, shiny disk that rotated and threw light and shadow across the room like an interpretation of Olafur Eliasson’s many disk works, the series of dancers spinning on complicated acrobatic contraptions that looked like an Eadweard Muybridge photograph series come to life. Aurally, the deep, dark resonant soundscapes, paired with restrained yet bold lighting, were at times like Len Lye’s motion and sound sculptures. 

Perhaps because it was so beautiful, and a combination of light and smoke was used to create planes of sky, I read the narrative as a transcendental tale. There was a touch of 1970s-style cultism, like the quest in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain and the worlds that Jean Giraud created on the page under the pseudonym Moebius. It is hard to describe the dances with justice. Three highlights were an impressive and elegant Cyr wheel solo, an angelic duo on one aerial hoop and an incredibly choreographed piece that had the six dancers counter-weighted with ropes in pairs. Despite incredible performances, Belle never felt showy, rather it felt like everything was adding to a bigger vision and experience. I came out reminded that humans can make beauty. Everyone should go. / Gabi Lardies

Belle—A Performance of Air is part of the Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival. It runs until Sunday, March 9, at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in the Aotea Centre, Auckland.