Hard dancemaster

As Black Grace marks 30 years with an anniversary double bill, its founder explains why he continues to be so demanding.

- 

In a studio just off Karangahape Rd in central Auckland, bodies are leaping, diving, falling. Bare feet slap the hard floor and the sun beats down through corrugated plastic skylights.

"1-2-3 ... and 5! 6!" Numbers and sequences, movement and muscle. Dancer Demi-Jo Sefo takes a pause, bending her toes so they curl backwards, parallel to the sole of her foot.

"It's supposed to look like chaos," says choreographer Richard Chen See.

It's supposed to hurt; the path to poetic chaos is killing. Chen See, director of licensing for the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation in New York, is on day two of rehearsals with the Black Grace Dance Company. The company helmed by choreographer Neil Ieremia will perform a double bill for two milestones: its own 30th and the 50th anniversary of US choreographer Paul Taylor's legendary Esplanade. Taylor created Esplanade in 1975, inspired by the sight of a girl running for a bus. It's been described as the “dance of all dances” and it's the first time the work has been licensed to an international dance company.

The threads of the work and its practitioners are interwoven. Ieremia was 20 when he started working with creative iconoclast Douglas Wright, who'd danced for Taylor in New York. Chen See was also a dancer for Taylor for 15 years. Taylor in turn was a protégé of the matriarch of modern dance, Martha Graham.

Chen See was once described in a New York Times review as “the air to [dancer] Patrick Corbin's earth”. And to Ieremia?

“I would describe myself as water to his earth,” Chen See says. “He knows where these dancers have put down roots and I think that I bring a different kind of mineral vitality to them. It gives them something within their roots. It's not saying that you have to become something different; just that we can add to... your artistry. We can add to Black Grace's audiences' perspectives on Neil's work.”

Ieremia first saw