Achievement Standard 3.4: Perform a group dance

Manawa Group Dance - Choreographer’s Intention

The choreographer for this dance piece titled “Manawa” was Taane Mete from the Okareka dance company. The word Manawa is a maori word that translates to breath, heart, patience and freedom, these words all connect to Taane’s main inspiration for this dance work; his mother. Taane’s mother became very sick in the later stages of her life, he became her full time caregiver during this time. While taane was his mother caregiver their relationship and connection deepened, his mother told him the family secrets that no one else knew. The feelings and emotions present in the piece were derived from Taane’s mother. The idea of breath and breathing was heavily accented through the movements and music of “Manawa”. In a section of the dance the whole group comes together to form various shapes where we let our chests rise and fall simultaneously  to mimic breathing. The idea of breath is also communicated through the music, the piece of music was made specifically for this dance so it is unique to this piece and Taane’s intention. Throughout the music there are elements of breathing and Taane speaking, the music also communicates more ideas and links to taane’s overall intention which was his mother. Sounds of bird wings were included in the music, this links to his mother because she had a bird sanctuary above her house so they were always surrounded by bird sounds and the sound of wings, the idea of wings also represents freedom. The wing/freedom idea can be seen in the dance when the whole group forms a bird wing like formation and simultaneously move our arms up and down to depict the movement of wings. Another intention of the piece was strength, purpose and focus. Each movement we did, even transitions and walk, were to be done with purpose and strength.

My ideas and understandings

Taane gave us to the task of creating our own sections of the dance which added our ideas to the final piece. Taane instructed us to look through our old emails and texts, pick words from these and create an abstract poem to construct a phrase from. Our phrases were added to the dance piece. Everyone's phrases had different ideas and poems behind them, bringing all new ideas and concepts to the dance from everyone, which in a way made it more personalised to each individual person. There is a lot of use of groupings and synchronization in the piece, to me this brought up and showed the idea of a community and family. The music and dance did not exactly have specific counts so we had to rely and watch each other for timing and to move all as one which to me also gave the sense of community.

Sections of the dance

The structure of the dance was as follows;

1. Box
2. 1 st Group’s phrases
3. Taane’s choreo
4. Lotus
5. Group formations - Flocking, snake etc
6. 2 nd  Group’s phrases

The first section called ‘box’, was a walking section where pairs would walk in time and cross paths with other pairs while confined in a box marked out by the other dances standing still. Taane taught us this section. To me this showed the idea of community and also showed the idea of purpose because we were walking and transitioning with noticeable purpose in this section.

The next section a group of three dancers performing their phrases that they created from their text and email poems. All their phrases were combined into a phrase which taane called a conversation piece, this showed our ideas and own choreography,  

The third section was taane’s choreography. During this section the moves were to be performed strong and sharp, with purpose.  Taane taught us this section, we later varied it by using choreographic devices such as canon.

Section four was another self choreographed section. We were split into two groups and as a group we created a ‘lotus pattern’ which consisted of simultaneous smooth movements of our arms, hands and legs. I felt this was a contrast to the strong movements of the previous section and it brought across that community idea again.

Section five was the group formations and movements, taane called one of the parts in this section flocking as we were all moving as one, this shows the idea of the birds. We made two group formations, a bird wing formation and a snake formation which we incorporated the breathing movement, this formations showed the ideas of wings and breathing.

The final section was the second group’s email and text phrases.

Performing the dance

When I performed the dance I made a conscious effort to make sure that I did every movement with purpose as I had been instructed. I tired to perform the movements that were meant to be strong with confidence and strength and the smoother movements with fluidity to contrast the strong movements. My eye focus was up and out to portray confidence and strength. While performing the dance i keep taane’s overall intention in mind and this raise my focus during the dance.