Current choreography

New Zealand-based theatre-artist and choreographer Lemi Ponifasio and his troupe MAU have taken Tempest: Without a Body to this year’s Venice contemporary dance festival. Guardian reviewer Judith Mackrell called the performance “an intensely crafted piece of stage ritual that feels as though it’s about a lot of things — the destruction of the natural world, the clash of old and new civilisations. Although it was originally choreographed in 27, some of its images carry uncomfortable echoes of the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: among the dancers on stage, one wears a bedraggled pair of wings, moving brokenly like an injured sea bird, while another is naked apart from a thin slick of oil coating his skin.” Samoan-born Ponifasio is a High Chief of Samoa and holds the title Sala. MAU was founded in 1995.