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Dance-theatre tribute to ANZAC sacrifice

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Choreographer Shona McCullagh’s ancestors’ experiences in World War I and a fascination with the now largely unused band rotundas in towns across New Zealand and Australia influenced  her moving contemporary dance work.

Rotunda, which will be presented in Adelaide next month by the New Zealand Dance Company and the 24-piece Kensington and Norwood Brass band, is a tribute to the ANZAC spirit.

Timed to coincide with the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, it seeks to commemorate both the sacrifices of those who lost their lives and those who returned home.

McCullagh says three of her ancestors fought in World War I. They included her grandfather, who survived but was haunted by the fact that his brother-in-law (her great-uncle), who had enlisted while still under-age, had died while fighting with him.

“My grandfather was an incredibly gentle man … but he would scream in the night about the bayonets.

“He was completely psychologically traumatised by what he had seen and felt.

“This is a very common story. These men were told to be silent, to not discuss it, and they had suffered the most horrendous of experiences.”

McCullagh says there is nothing abstruse about Rotunda. She wanted the dance-theatre work to be accessible for a broad audience, so it follows a simple linear structure which presents a snapshot of a community before, during and after the horror of the conflict known as “The Great War”.

“The eight dancers are a community and we see them play together, we see them laugh together, we see them in a kind of naïve precursor to the crisis, we see what makes them love each other. Then we see them go through this dreadful separation of the men and women [when the men went to war].”

Rotunda also looks at how the soldiers returning home struggled to reintegrate into their communities when their own lives and world view had irrevocably changed.

The stage on which the performance takes place is the equivalent of the rotundas that have fascinated McCullagh since she was a child.

In New Zealand, as in Australia, they were a focal point for community celebrations in the early 20th century, providing both a performance space for the local brass band and a memorial for the casualties of war.

McCullagh says she was “completely blown away” to discover a stunning back catalogue of contemporary brass band music, much of which had been commissioned for the highly competitive national brass band championships.

“I felt like I’d stumbled on this goldmine of unbelievably stunning and rousing music.

“One of the things I began to think about was the role brass bands played in society more than 100 years ago, and they still play a very important role in modern ritual – when we welcome something, farewell something, herald something new. They evoke a sense of patriotism and nationalism.”

The music for Rotunda, which she worked on with New Zealand musician Don McGlashan (The Mutton Birds, From Scratch), features highly rhythmic driving scores by Kiwi composers such as Gareth Farr and John Ritchie, as well as hymns such as “Jerusalem” and Elgar’s “Nimrod”.

The New Zealand Dance Company teams with a different local brass band in each place that it performs the work. A percussionist from the NZ Army Brass Band is a permanent part of the production, playing life and death.

NZ Dance Company in rehearsal for Rotunda. Photo: John McDermott

NZ Dance Company in rehearsal for Rotunda. Photo: John McDermott

McCullagh, who has previously worked with contemporary dance companies Limbs and the Douglas Wright Dance Company, as well as the Royal New Zealand Ballet, founded the New Zealand Dance Company in 2012. This will be its first tour of Australia.

Rotunda incorporates elements of Maori tradition, but the choreographer says New Zealand dance chorography is also distinctive in other ways: “We tend to move in a way that’s very connected to the ground; it’s very rhythmic; very emphatic and expressive.

“This piece is all about human feeling.

“I founded the company to be inclusive, not to exclude people who didn’t understand the language of movement. I wanted this to be a work for community and a broad expression of that.”

Rotunda will be presented at Her Majesty’s Theatre on May 1 and 2.

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