‘Mana Wāhine’ @ TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND (Ōkāreka Dance Company)

Photos courtesy of ATTPAC, TITAS, and Okareka Dance Company

—Teresa Marrero

Mana Wāhine roughly translates as Powerful Women. In New Zealand´s Māori tradition (and in other Pacific cultures), the word mana means spirit, breath, strength and power. Mana is ancestral in origin, passed down through the generations—and not necessarily akin to the individualized form of strength Western cultures call power or powerful.

Presented by TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND, Mana Wāhine was developed by New Zealand's amazing Ōkāreka Dance Company (choreographers Taiaroa Royal, Taane Mete, and Malia Johnston; musician Victoria Kelly; and cultural advisor Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield, ADD—who composed all the sounds of her own music, lyrics, rhythm and beats, including sounds she made with her mouth, skin and body. Victoria Kelly beautifully incorporated these into her musical components—incantations, invocations and the singing without words. Mana Wāhine is a beautiful blend of dance, multimedia, and soundscapes that immerse audiences in a dream-like journey.

This deeply powerful dance work draws on Māori culture to celebrate the strength, spirituality, and resilience of women. And by powerful, I mean literally strong. The incredible physical strength and stamina displayed by the six female dancers in this 70-minute piece was impressive.

Dancers Jana Castillo, Emma Cosgrave, Alaina Costa, Paige Shand Haami, Abbagail Rogers, and Cory-Toalei Roycroft brought reverence, playfulness, and their own mana to the performance, which earned them a long, standing ovation from the Dallas audience. While some of the segments were performed by five, two, and solo dancers, the driving energy of this performance was in group movement, incessant and palpable. These are very strong dancers; in one segment, a dancer propped herself on her head, legs up in the air in a headstand, and articulated hand-like moves—with her feet!

There is no single narrative to the piece, rather inter-weavings of various stories inspired by Māori mythology, including stories about two of Taiaroa Royal´s and Tūī’s ancestresses, Kearoa and Te Aokapurangi, and their courageous feats of selfless heroism. The production honors the duality and resilience of women, conveying their role as life-givers and protectors. Movements echo the cycles of life, death, and rebirth, depicting the elemental forces associated with wahine and the earth.

Royal, Mete, and Johnston’s choreography is fluid yet powerful, embodying a fusion of strength and grace that emphasizes the reverence inherent in Māori culture for wahine. While one might expect a traditionally Māori dance repertoire (as popularized in social media by the haka performances by both men´s and women´s international rugby teams), the company takes a more modern approach. While there is some blending of traditional Māori movements, particularly in the last segment of the piece, this mix of contemporary dance movements blended seamlessly with the accompanying soundscape.

And the music was a trip of its own! I felt as though I was entering a dream, one populated by sounds from nature and from persussion and wind instruments unfamiliar to me—all of it accompanied by oneiric primal images of forest and sea. As one audience member mentioned in the talk back, “I had no idea what I was seeing, but it was captivating.”

The show’s music/sound element seemed to become another member of the dance performance. Not an accompaniment to the dancers’ movements, but a separate entity in its own right. Sometimes the dancers´ movements playfully mirrored the sounds, but at other moments they seemed to be doing their own thing, dancing within the nooks and crannies of the music. And sometimes, there were only sounds, not necessarily “music” as understood traditionally. Royal mentioned that the soundscape developed organically from Kelly, Ranapiri-Ransfield, the choreographers, and the dancers. Some segments were already composed; others seemed to emerge from the work of the dance iself. Sometimes Kelly came in with an already composed segment; at others the music emerged from the work of the dance itself.

The performance began with holographic projections of a primal birth. Sheathed in a white gauze-like material, the holographic projections of the individual dancers pulsated on the ground. From this, the transition into actual bodies looked so flowing and real! I found the insertion of holographic images quite effective visually and metaphorically. In a hologram the whole in contained within each refracted fragment. Thus, the entirety of Māori traditions can be seen through its individual manifestations. And this use of multimedia, including projections and immersive soundscapes, drew us into an atmosphere that enhanced the emotional resonance of the performance.

Projections also brought the faces of powerful Māori women into our visual field, as portraits of actual members of the creative team´s lineage. This aspect was explained in the talkback by Tui Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield, whose presence underscored the aspect of whanau (family), both as a concept in the piece and as a practice among the company members. This very Polynesian concept of extended family is alive and well in the Hawai’ian Islands as ohana.

I found it meaningful that the creatives who participated in the talkback introduced themselves first in the Māori language of Aotearoa (New Zealand’s North Island but now generally used to refer to the whole country), even though it was evident that we, the audience, had no idea what they were saying. They then translated their intros into English. As a native speaker of Spanish, I find that the assertion of one´s primary language and culture constitutes a powerful statement of identity.

Overall, Mana Wāhine by Ōkāreka Dance Company is a moving homage to Māori women that resonates with a universal audience, as the Dallas audience’s appreciative applause expressed. Its blend of contemporary dance with indigenous narratives makes it a compelling performance that honors heritage while certainly pushing artistic boundaries.

In case you were wondering about the meaning of the word Ōkāreka, I was told by a friend of the company that the group is named after Lake Ōkāreka on New Zealand's North Island, the home of choreographer Taiaroa Royal. Thus, even the name of the company has an intrinsic attachment to the land and the heritage.

Teresa Marrero is, in her current iteration, Professor at the University of North Texas’s Department of Spanish.  She is happy to share her understanding of Polynesian cultures after having lived on the Big Island of Hawai’i and having the privilege and honor of learning Ancient Hawai’ian Hula, Ohana and Ethnobotany with Auntie Edith Kanaka’ole at the University of Hawai’i, Hilo, many years ago. Contact: teresa.marrero@unt.edu

WHEN: November 1-2, 2024
WHERE: Moody Performance Hall, 2520 Flora St., Dallas
WEB: titas.org