I had this thing right from the start that I wanted to make dance for the people that didn't go to dance every other night or, you know, see a lot of theater.

More than the rhythms was the extraordinary precision.

And I had seen cultural groups performing but I had never seen anything like that before.

Black Grace and Neil are part of this fantastic explosion in the developments of Pacific arts By just having a male troupe has allowed men to look upon dance more favorably and wanting to be part of it.

I've been in a lot of dance companies in New Zealand and this is the only one that I have felt like a part of another family.

This program is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

When I was in New York I went to this Chinese Restaurant called ‘Ollies’.

Got a fortune cookie, broke it open and it said, ‘You are on a quest for perfection.’ So the next night after I went to a movie I decided to pick up some takeaways from the same place and try something else, and they gave me another one and it said, ‘You use your creativity to transform a business environment.’ And then I went, I took some friends back a couple of nights later, I broke open another one and it said, ‘Don’t forget your sense of humour.’ [Dancers singing ‘Minoi’] Within the company we have a huge range of ability.

Some people like Sam are just full of this natural surging power, which is so graceful and beautiful and gentle at the same time.

And then we have technicians like Tai who knows how to lift his leg a certain way and, you know, how to do things.

He’s a founding member of the company.

He’s one of our country’s greatest living treasures as far as dance goes.

He’s been at it for a little over twenty years, I think.

And then to have the kind of eccentric energy of someone like Tamihana, where he’s just like, he’s always on this edge, and I say, ‘Bro’, slow down, man.’ You know he’s completely on another ride, you know.

You’re trying to check his ticket and he’s on that rollercoaster that’s over there, not this one that’s over here.

And then you kind of get the grunt, with someone like Mala.

You know he just grunts at it, ‘Rrr, rrr’ You know, ‘Rrr.’ You know, he’s about as delicate as a, as a rhino.

And that’s why I love him.

And Sean, you know he’s been a great expressionist.

He can find the colour in a black and white movie you know, he can make you stop for a while and make you stand still and kind of go, ‘I didn’t see it that way.’ And then you know the kind of wild youth of Jeremy and the kind of eagerness that he has.

Kind of, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’.

You know, he’s kind of, all his muscles are kind of ‘Yeah, I’ll do it, yeah.’ And it’s kind of, ‘Jeremy just relax.’ And, you know, you get someone like Dan, who’s long and tall.

You say to him, ‘Dan, just mark it.'

You know, 'cos, you know, I know you’re a bit sore here, so just take this easy.’ ‘Okay.’ Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

You know, I think, ‘Just slow down, buddy.’ So I guess if I was talking about a rugby team, we’d be fant-- we’d be the champions of the world.

The invitation from Jacob’s Pillow came about initially when the company was in Holland last year at the Holland Dance Festival.

The Festival had invited a few key presenters from around the world to come and see the company perform.

And luckily Ella Baff, the Executive Director from Jacob’s Pillow came to see the show and was really blown away and loved it.

I invited Black Grace to come to the Pillow, because I am starving for exciting, new original work.

I thought that the movement vocabulary was completely different to anything that was being done anywhere else.

So right away I was struck by a level of originality and I found that intriguing, because I thought there are cultural influences that are evident in the work but done in a very original and fresh way.

Jacob’s Pillow is probably one of, if not the most prestigious dance festivals in the world.

Every top company in the world wants to perform at Jacob’s Pillow.

The exposure that it gets across the United States is massive.

Every major newspaper will cover it.

It’s a huge honour for them.

Most of the greats of the twentieth century and now the twenty-first have performed here.

Ted Shawn and his wife Ruth St Dennis were pioneers in the modern dance field in this country.

and Martha Graham was one of their students.

Branislava Najinska, the sister of Nijinksy choreographed here in the early 1940s.

Margot Fonteyn, Paul Taylor, the list goes on and on.

Barishnikov has been here several times Mark Morris of course is here this very week at the same time that Black Grace is here.

Little old Black Grace from down under.

Been going for nine or ten years and we’re going to this huge dance festival.

It’s just, I think it’s phenomenal.

The fact that it was an all male company related so well to the history of Jacob’s Pillow.

That part of it was, as they say, a no-brainer.

Our founder, Ted Shawn, was very frustrated about the role of men in dance, because he felt that were not respected at all and by 1933 Jacob’s Pillow had become a retreat for his men dancers and it was a place where he decided to create work, form a company and ultimately invite other companies and artists from all around the world.

I find that legacy of Ted Shawn, you know, certainly relevant in the case of Black Grace ‘cos if Ted Shawn hadn’t done what he’d done in the 1930’s, Neil Ieremaia wouldn’t be able to do what he’s doing now.

There’s definitely a historical link there.

This is Ted Shawn and his men dancers in a Maori war haka from 1934 when it was choreographed as part of his Primitive Rhythms Suite, which was dances from various different traditions, and I have no idea what Ted Shawn’s source was.

He certainly had never traveled to New Zealand at this time.

The word black is the word that we used to use when we were at high school and um, we would refer to each other as being black and um to what, to the person, who was the most daring, I suppose.

The bravest one of us.

Or the one that would go up and ask the girl out on a date and get completely rejected, you know, or take on the school bully, you know.

That was the blackest one.

We would go, we would say to him, ‘Jeez, you’re black.’ You know, that was our kind of term.

And grace is something us men seem to lack by the truckload.

You know, um, we come from a country which is famous for its outdoors and its a rugged beauty and, you know where men were men, you know.

You’re raised with a kind of rugby ball in one hand and a beer can in the other hand.

That was the place where I grew up anyway.

When I was six and a half, I had rheumatic fever and was fairly sick.

Spent a little while in the hospital.

The doctor said he’s not allowed to move around too much.

He need[s] the rest and don’t make him angry.

Things like that.

I wasn’t allowed to do anything and I hated it, ‘cos I couldn’t go play outside, you know and I always felt like a bit of a freak to be honest.

I remember not being able to go out with my brother and sisters to our Youth Group things on a Saturday night, which was a real bummer.

And I’d lie on the couch with Mum for a while and we’d watch TV and kind of lie there together for a while.

And then she’d fall asleep and I’d get bored.

And so I’d get up and go out in to the dining room, which used to have lino, orange and yellow lino and I’d just move the things aside and I’d leave the lights off and close the door to the lounge so no one could see.

And I’d practise my kind of little dance moves and I remember practising the Moonwalk for ages and ages and ages until I got it right.

And when I was finally old enough to go with them, getting into dance was really fast.

You know I was eager to kind of prove myself I suppose.

You know I wanted to get up there and ‘I’m here, I’m here,’ to all these people, you know, who hadn’t seen me for years and years and years, ‘cos I’d been locked away – ‘I’m here.’ And so I was there.

Everybody at the back stop and listen to what this is.

Hold the ….that’s it, move it in, move it in.

My memories of Cannon’s Creek was rugby league, go to church every Sunday, break dancing, graffiti, lots of trouble.

We started to get a bit of gib from some of the local lads, thinking that it was a bit of a soft thing to be doing.

And so I got clever and asked Mal, Mala who’s in the company now.

Back then, the Tevita boys, Mala's brothers and Mala, were the baddest boys in the Creek.

I asked him to join my dance group at Church.

And he goes, ‘Oh yeah.

Come and have a look.’ - That’s our stage.

- Our first stage.

So he came and had a look and he goes, ‘Oh, yeah, that’d be cool.’ First time I wore tights.

He made me wear these tights and he made me play the devil.

And then he was Jesus.

Going to dance school to get some training was one of the hardest things I think I’ve ever done.

No, let me rephrase that, staying at dance school was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

It was just soul destroying for a young, proud Samoan New Zealand Creek boy to kind of be chuckled at and to not quite get it, you know.

This kind of ballet, crazy stuff, man.

You know, my body wasn’t built to do that.

It was kind of like ‘I can’t put my thighs together.

Have you seen the size of them?’ You know, ‘I dare you to find a Samoan man that can.’ A woman touched my inside legs for the first time in a dance class.

I think it was Marianne Schulz actually.

She came up to me and said, ‘That’s good.

'That’s good.

You just need to open.’ and she touched my leg and I’m in love.

‘Cos you know as a young man, you know, if you touch those, we’re married.

That’s it, you know.

We’re getting a house.

I saw Neil dance with Douglas Wright and Michael Parmentier.

Just seeing him up there I was really proud, I was really proud of him ‘cos he was from Porirua, he was from Cannon’s Creek, he was one of the Creek boys.

From early on going to dance school I wanted to make, to have my own company or to do, you know, I didn’t quite know what it was but I wanted to do some singing, some dancing, you know, a little bit of acting, just do whatever I wanted to do, being a crazy Islander.

You know, it’s all part of our thing.

I just thought I’ll just do all of this.

And I got given a grant from Creative New Zealand for twelve thousand dollars.

So I called up Tai, called up Mal, Mala, called up Sam, got some other guys along, got together, said ‘I want to make a work.’ I got a call from Neil asking if I wanted to be part of his project, which was called ‘Black Grace.'

The concept of creating a dance company just for males with the same vision of, you know, just dancing you know, alongside males that could dance and were so physical and like and the art form.

And to me that was really, really exciting, ‘cos I was actually such a young dancer.

This was so fresh and so new I remember we sold our first season at the Maidment.

That was like, ‘Yeah!’ You know, ‘it’s happening.

It is happening.’ I had my father come up and my father was the one who was so reluctant and who wanted me to get a job, a real job, a real nine to five sort of thing, bring money for the family and stuff.

The audience erupted.

Got on their feet and started yelling and cheering.

And I saw my Dad, um, afterwards and he was so proud, you know, and was something that, well, just to see his face, you know, beaming and um you know just that look of ‘This is my son.’ Support each other, give each other energy, help each other out.

I’ve been in a lot of dance companies in New Zealand and this is the only one that I have felt like part of another family.

You go through so much emotion with everything.

You know, like there is a tense time and it’s full on and it’s hard.

And then you have the elation of opening nights and you have the whole dynamics of being part of this extended family.

You have a little growing family within this other growing family.

While it's hard sometimes and sometimes I wish there could be some really clear separation, um, the stuff we’ve gotten out of it, the stuff Isabella’s gotten out of it, I mean, she calls all the guys her uncles and she has these amazing relationships with the company and I wouldn’t change that for the world.

Hi!

Welcome home.

I’m more trusting of other people and I’m prepared to give more of myself to those around me and that’s something that’s come through my work with Black Grace and my relationships with the other dancers and Neil.

Black Grace is the ensemble, it’s about being an ensemble really.

And it’s just always been there, like from day one.

We all just trusted each other and that’s been the trademark of Black Grace, it’s just that whole energy, group energy where we’re one unit all trying to achieve the same goal.

There’s no sort of individuals, or no stars.

My father came up and I said, ‘Dad,’ I was really excited.

‘Dad, come in, come into the studio.

Come watch this thing I’ve just made this morning.

It’s really fresh.

It's great.'

I was so excited.

They started doing this thing.

My Dad leans over to me.

He says, ‘Son, what are those people doing rolling on the floor?’ And I said, ‘Don’t, don’t you see it?

Don’t you get it?’ Then he's like going, ‘I think it looks stupid.’ You know, and I was like.

But you know, in a way he was kind of right.

You know I kind of feel like I’d started to develop these art, arty kind of um contact lenses.

I had this thing right from the start that I wanted to make dance for people that didn’t go to dance every other night or you know see a lot of theatre or live theatre and dance and go to galleries.

So I wanted to make some dance for people like me.

So we went back at the end of that year with a more challenging work which was inspired by the death of a young boy who had been beaten to death by his father I think it got me because the kid was late because he was at a school dance, dancing and he was doing something that he really loved.

And he was good at it apparently.

People were going, ‘Man, you’re great.’ And everyone was watching him and his parents were out at the pub or whatever and he was supposed to be home looking after his younger brother or sister.

And his father pulled up to the school, dragged him out of hall, threw him in the car again, so he flew and hit the other side of the car, chucked him in, got him home, beat him to death, put him in bed, you know, and the kid died.

And.

And the piece was called ‘Relentless’ because of the relentless nature of this thing.

It had been years of getting little grants here, little grants there and trying to make ends meet.

And then in 2002, we were made an annual client of Creative New Zealand and that was a big, a really big moment.

I remember we got the company together and told them and it was like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s going to be amazing.’ And then, of course, the really hard work started.

And then we began this journey, a new journey, moved studios again.

And Black Grace started to run.

This particular job is to try and find a way of making Australians feel that New Zealanders are not what they thought they were.

And that they could have an extraordinary experience there.

I’m a good Jewish London boy and I’ve never been exposed to those kind of rhythms before, but, even more than the rhythms was the sort of extraordinary precision and I’d seen cultural groups performing, but I’d never seen anything like that before, that kind of merge the choreography and precision and grace of contemporary dance with traditional Samoan stuff.

Black Grace and Neil are part of this fantastic explosion in the development of the Pacific Arts in New Zealand and especially in Auckland.

I think by just having a male troupe has allowed men to look upon dance more favourably and want to be part of it.

It’s come a long way even just in the way that Neil’s developed his choreography.

[Neil giving notes.]

A lot of these guys when I first started had more of the size I am, a rugby build, and now they’ve developed into more of the dancer’s build.

They’re moving more fluent than they used to and Neil’s choreography is, yeah, it still blows me away.

My choreographic process has changed quite a lot over the years.

And...

I employ different techniques depending on the subject matter and how I feel or how I respond to the subject And, um, it’ll start with words, it might start with a poem, with an image, um, it could start with a movement, hearing a sound, um hearing some music, it starts all kinds of ways.

In something like ‘Human Language’ and discussing a particular point in a relationship between men and women.

I had a dream about this stupid thing.

You know the balloon represents egos, it represents your penis, it represents, you know, your your dreams of a relationship with a person.

It’s like premature ejaculation, it’s like coming too soon.

[Crowd laughs.]

These guys appear to be very much in control of themselves and very manly in this pack, but when they, they get to a particular point, you know, it’s all kind of gone, it’s over, it’s finished.

And these beautiful women just go about their business and kind of play with us.

[Crowd laughs.]

[Balloon pops.]

[Crowd applause.]

That was the first time I’d worked with women in Black Grace.

And many of the guys in the company had never worked with women.

And we’d become so accustomed to working with each others’ bodies, you know everything was kind of everyone’s.

And so when the women came in, the guys were like, ‘Where do we?’ ‘What do we touch?’ And so we had to deal with that and that took us a wee while to get over.

Besides all the Brylcreem, and the aftershave and the new rehearsal gear.

That’s ‘Human Language’.

[Singing] Again another stupid dream about the kind of impossibility of two fairytale kind of sci-fi characters ever coming together in our lifetime.

I’ve got a bunny rabbit and a, and a stormtrooper in a bath towel.

You know, it’s like he’s just come out of the shower and he’s kind of like going ‘Who are these people in our front yard?

What are they doing?’ And it’s kind of like they’re looking at us thinking you guys are mental or really strange.

And their life is completely normal.

This work is based on proximity.

And so there was a lot of working with the space between people, and between body parts.

You know what happens when you move you know, when you suddenly drop a shoulder and drop your chin, and look up from under your eye, you know your eyebrows at someone with a little grin.

You know all that kind of subtlety.

There’s a whole world within that space.

When they touch it’s almost, it’s like a death.

You know when they touch each other it’s like a death.

Because, you know, the possibilities for that space have just collided with reality and died.

That’s late, just a bit late.

Just a bit off the count, okay?

Now I’m going to start sweating on you, just make sure you’re, you’re all there, okay?

As a choreographer it’s got to go here to here and then to someone else’s body you know and then into an, an ensemble, if that’s required.

And that process is just harrowing.

It’s you know.

The room to get it wrong is just enormous, you know.

And just to get this one little gesture right, to get someone to do it the way that you want them to do it.

You know I kind of rise and fall on their accuracy and precision and interpretation of that idea.

You just need to adjust your rolls.

That’s better, that’s better.

Back you go.

I like it to be the way we have agreed it to be because it’s taken us days, hours, months to get it to that point, where it is speaking in a particular way.

And for someone to mess around with that, because they’re interpreting it tonight, because they had a really good sleep and want to give it a little bit of a juzh, you know, kind of defeats the purpose of all of that.

When you’ve got to this point you put your foot down on him you let him go, you’ve got time to kind of take your time to get up here, take your time and you want to go, ‘Go’ out of here.

This piece, ‘Objects,' this is the second version of it.

I wasn’t all that thrilled with it, it was okay, but it was more that you know I didn’t have so much time, didn’t want to look at it too much because I didn’t want to dig it up, and have to face a whole lot of things.

Watch your knees, Tamihana.

Down and down and down and down and… I’d gone through a year of getting to this point where we were about to deliver something and having it all crumble away on me.

No, no, no… You work on that with Mal, so I don’t… Getting people to talk about your idea through their bodies was becoming a real son of a [...].

And I, I’d kind of given up a bit.

So I didn’t have anything to lose, I didn’t care.

And...

I guess...

I was going through all this stuff and when I went to remake it I was in a really, really at the bottom of this barrel.

That is not right.

Get on the timing.

Get on the pulse.

It was like we have lost our soul, as a group of men.

We have lost the thing that keeps us ticking.

We have become you know kind of corporate in a way.

You know we have forgotten the essence of Black Grace.

I don’t understand.

To me it just looks like you aren’t respecting the work and the craft or the choreography enough to make sure that it’s right.

Last night you did it and you showed me how good you are.

You brought the work to life.

I don’t know what you did today, but I’ll tell you something, I’m not the kind of person that is going to let you [***] my work up, there’s no way.

Neil is a perfectionist.

Yeah, definitely.

It’s only ‘cos he wants everything to be the best.

And I mean, if he wasn’t, if he wasn’t a perfectionist, then I doubt that I would be in my position that I am today in the company.

I don’t think I would be the kind of performer that I am today if he wasn’t, if he wasn’t as driven as he is.

When I got back from Sydney that was it.

I did not rehearse with those people for two weeks to get them to do five minutes wrong.

They said, ‘Oh, we couldn’t hear the sound.’ I don’t care.

Their eyes hit the floor, their body language slumped, they became afraid.

You know, no one, no one fronted up and picked up the dance by the scruff and went ‘Aaggh’.

And got out there and gone, you know gone like this and performed their way out of it.

They didn’t do that.

I got back from Sydney, went straight home and wasn’t interested in going back to the studio, didn’t really want to see anyone, didn’t want to work with people any more.

And you know felt like I was, um, on the verge of, um, losing it.

I turned to Jess, and I said, “Find me someone to talk to.” She did.

Made frantic phone calls.

I went and saw someone for the first time, sat there, spoke to them.

Had an amazing experience.

Sorted some things out, got myself back into the studio and basically said that these are the reasons Sydney hurt.

I can’t go through that any more.

I’m here to get to Jacob’s Pillow and I will endeavour to speak to you in a particular way but that doesn’t mean that my standards have changed at all.

I still expect the very best.

Eventually I cleared out the studio, worked with three people and made the first part of ‘Objects.'

And getting back to that and talking with the guys and just talking about the subject, you know, it got back to the real thing.

And these guys worked so hard for me, they worked so hard.

Speeding up.

Seven!

One!

They're getting tired.

Stop.

Stop stop stop stop.

That’s not acceptable.

All right, that’s not acceptable.

If you are having problems with this, if you are getting tired and your brain’s going soft on you, then you do something about it, you fix it.

If you’re not on time, if you’re not in the right place, if you’re not on the right leg, if you’re not doing the right arm, you are not doing the choreography.

If you’re having trouble now, imagine how much trouble you’re going to have in another [....] country with a bunch of people watching you after doing four shows in a row.

I mean I don’t even know what they expect from us.

I’ve no clue.

But one thing that I know they expect from us is professionalism.

That’s why we’re going there.

They expect artistry, they expect excellence.

That’s why we are going there, do you understand?

We are not going there because we’re some [....] novelty from the South Pacific.

They gutsed it out and having me, you know, kind of yell at them and prod them and push them.

They stuck it out, man.

You know, they showed their heart.

In traditional costume, slow down, with a flower in your hand Keep going.

I instinctively moved back to the thing that keeps me breathing I suppose.

You know being able to bend bodies, being able to take an idea, something that has affected me and my people, and my parents, and my family and people around me so, so much and get it out there.

[Female narrator: ‘That was my grandmother,’ he said.]

[‘She was taken along with many of our people] [to their land, where they were exhibited in zoos,] [our new land.

People, this is what exhibitions were about.]

[Did you know that?]

[When they took her, she was nineteen.]

[My father was already born and was left behind.]

[Look closely to the veins and you will see her] [and she will be swimming in blue.]

When I worked with this, this new thing, you know I spent -- I finished it and I, as soon as I finished it, I watched it through and I cried watching it in the studio because it had, finally I had managed to speak some truth through the movement and honour the subject in my best ability.

[Maori song.]

I kind of still have to laugh at this idea of a kid from Cannon’s Creek and a bunch of his mates, some other cats from, you know, other places around the country, kind of getting together and arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, for one of the oldest dance festivals around and having all these wealthy, arty types come and watch us.

I mean, it’s, it’s, I don’t know, it’s really surreal.

Thank you.

-- You all right with those blues.

-- Yup.

Blues are fine.

-- Just not the gobos.

I like to see parts of a person, or not even actually seeing them directly, but maybe they’re kind of backlit and you get just their outline or their shape.

Some people think that it’s too dark, which is kind of good because they’ve had to really look.

They have to think about what’s going on.

This is to help Neil to get people to think about things.

In addition to his work for Black Grace Neil Ieremaia has choreographed work for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Opera New Zealand and the New Zealand School of Dance.

Blaaaaaaaaack.

Grace!

I am absolutely delighted to be bringing Black Grace here to the Pillow.

This is their very first appearance in the United States, so you are the first people in the United States to see this company.

Thanks so much for being here, let’s dance.

-- Stand by for... [Drums/music starts] There is so much going on in those pieces, so much imagination and um humour and poignancy sort of surprisingly bursting out at times and I thought, ‘Well they do have to come to New York because I think anybody who loves dance will have a good time.

In my mind there is no such thing as perfect in dance, but perfection is what you’re striving for and that pushes you to be constantly working and, and refining and thinking through your process and how you’re approaching a particular movement, and it can be right down to you know the most miniscule movement but right through to a whole work or a whole show or a whole season.

[Audience applause] A work-like method.

It’s about us.

You know here are these Maoris and these Samoans and Pacific Islanders and Dan, you know, kind of dressed in white and dancing to Bach.

When I saw it at Jacob’s Pillow, I cried and they made me cry because they looked like a bunch of my mates running around the backyard having the time of their lives.

[Classical music playing.]

We got there and we got there and I feel like we did a fantastic job.

I’m really proud of the work we did, of the work that everyone back here did.

You know, I’m so glad that we went.

I really do believe that we got on that stage and behind us were our family and our friends, everybody, and we were representing them.

And when people responded, they were responding to them and to us in that way.

And I feel like we did it.

We did it well.