KARANGA

Karanga means to call out and to call in at once, to send a voiced vibration (song) into the world. It is old this song. From where we stood - women, artists, one queer, one mother, Australian, Māori - and in considered relation to the social and political conversations of our world, we asked how we could work with the concept of Karanga.

What does one want to call out for, and how is the body affective and affected in this action? What are the words, what is the energy of the calling, how does it feel and how is it shared?

What is it like to embody the concept of karanga in a contemporary performance model? How does it feel and how might it be shared? What does it sound like? How does it move?

Karanga is a duet, presented as two solos: resilient, dark, receiving. A performance experiment and a bodily encounter with fragments, energies, power and grief.

“Key words in stutter, whisper and repetition suggest the thinking body that drives movement. Whakapapa is heard in fragmentation, and at times almost frustration as her body and breath articulates what might be familiar kinaesthetic histories.

In her performance, eventual emerging motifs that connect to sound and self, are strange, simple, personal and gentle. There is nothing aggressive throughout that exerts a fixed identity to audience... more a play between spaces. The tohu are there yet they are not overt gestures of culture, instead appearing as moments in the quest of something near?”

A CALL TO HOME, reviewer: Dr Tia Reihana-Morunga, 14 Oct 2019

Premier at Basement theatre with TEMPO festival (as a work in progress) - Auckland, Aotearoa, October 2019.