Presented by Co3 Contemporary Dance Australia and The New Zealand Dance Company

A multidisciplinary, cross-country collaboration undergirds Gloria: A Triple Bill. Dancers from Co3 Contemporary Dance Australia and The New Zealand Dance Company present works by their artistic directors Raewyn Hill (Co3) and Moss Te Ururangi Patterson (NZDC), alongside a remount of Gloria, one of the most consequential works by influential NZ choreographer Douglas Wright.

The program opens with the world premiere of Patterson’s Lament. This “lament” conveys no despair. Traversing the stage with sharp circling fists, jerks to and fro, and fluid stretching motions, NZDC capture the ongoing labour of Māori resistance to British colonisation in a manner more akin to Dylan Thomas’s call to “rage against the dying of the light”.

In motion and in stillness, in groups and in isolation, the dancers fall in and out of alignment with one another – a choreographic exploration of the complexities of whakapapa (genealogy or ancestry). Deeply in touch with its cultural and choreographic antecedents, this considered, and expertly danced work feels at once individual and communal.

Lament’s unrelentingly energetic pace stands in stark contrast with the exercise in control that is Hill’s A Moving Portrait.

A doorway opens in the backdrop spilling cold white light onto the stage, its outline delineating the danceable floorspace for Portrait’s 18-minuteduration. Almost constantly in contact, Co3 move as if through water, ceaselessly surging over and around each other without ever altering their pace: a perpetual motion machine.

The slow-motion effect allows for observation of details easily overlooked at speed – the articulation of toes pressed to the floor, the precise placement of a hand on another’s forehead, the particular angle of an arm’s extension. Even so, some of the lifts read like a levitation; Francesca Fenton simply rises into the air and returns to the earth. If patience was condensed into movement, it would be Portrait.

Following interval, Vivaldi’s titular Gloria in D major is rendered live for Wright’s choreography by WA Symphony Orchestra and St George’s Cathedral Consort, under the baton of Dr Joseph Nolan. Live music is front of mind since recent criticisms of WA Ballet’s decision to tour Dracula without an orchestra, and I longed for “Silentium” from Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa that accompanied Portrait to have been played in-person. These contexts make the “present” quality of the acoustic music in Gloria all the richer.

Choreographed shortly after Wright’s return to his New Zealand homeland following five years dancing abroad in New York and London, Gloria’s joie de vivre is a marked shift from the darker tone taken in some earlier works.

Gloria conveys its joyfulness in part through hints from childhood games. The reckless abandon of dancers holding hands and skipping in a quick circle evokes “Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush”, a game of “milkshake” is suggested when two dancers swing a third by her arms and legs like a hammock. Throughout the work, dancers return again and again to elevated versions of childhood gestures: leaping and springing, rising and falling, somersaulting over one another, flinging their bodies through space, gazing upward to glimpse the divine. Regardless of the technical complexity of Wright’s choreography, it feels like the dancers are playing a holy game together.

Wright’s joy is not straightforward. A highlight of the performance is a kind of fight scene / pas de deux between ‘Isope ‘Akau’ola (NZDC) and Zachary Wilson (Co3). The orchestra is still as ‘Akau’ola strikes Wilson audibly in the chest. The two circle, coming together in a combative yet tender struggle, hurling their bodies at one another as the orchestra returns sound to the stage. The dancers are compelling in their expression of the scene’s complex love-hate dialogue.

Apart from this, it’s difficult to nominate MVPs from the all-star cast. The collaboration between Co3 and NZDC seems to have resulted in a rising tide that lifts all ships. Attending the matinee meant that I viewed the performance through the lens of an announcement, made on opening night the previous evening, that Hill will finish her tenure with Co3 next year. Alongside her choreographic achievements, Hill’s legacy will also include her stewardship of the company’s flourishing artistic partnerships. Gloria gave us a moment to marvel at that legacy.

Performed at His Majesty’s Theatre, 31st March – 1^st April 2026

Lament (world premiere)  choreography by Moss Te Ururangi Patterson

A Moving Portrait choreography by Raewyn Hill

Gloria choreography by Douglas Wright, music performed by WASO and St George’s Cathedral Consort, conducted by Dr Joseph Nolan

Cover Image: Gloria choreographed by Douglas Wright, performed in GLORIA – A TRIPLE BILL (2026). Photography by John McDermott.