The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

WHEN YOU RETURN ... LET'S DANCE I see the performances and compositions of body matter and air in the dance of Samoan interpreter of change, Lemi Ponifasio, and the dance company he formed and named Mau, exemplify this spirit and soul. Though composed of the same material, they differ in the spectral composition of the body when natural dark or light activates their surfaces, dictating that air is an internal fixing material unifying spirit and soul (without leucocytes) to produce soil and eventually migration, reminding the body it is the external season of weathering down excessive lies of history into neutral ground, experienced in transferring weight while also acting as courier, disseminating the soil as an anchorage for the body to be rooted down. Dance creates a ground of differing compositions of Mau's interpretations of Pu/oto. Air assists in this Pacific-morphosis only as a complex of intriguing cameras, recording the spiritual scaffoldings called upon when obstacles such as ambulances hinder our progress and belittle our words. The Samoan concept of Pu/oto begins in the stomach area, conceptualising the proximity between bodies, an interior frequently scared by violence but enjoying endless existence as a form of unity. Mau interprets Pu/oto as a shaman that does not stay in one realm but searches hard for where knowledge celebrates true existence, evoking assistance by occasionally visiting sites that are considered sickly, diseased human zones, in pubs, cemeteries, hospitals, jails, thrift shops and a new member to the club, tattooing. Ao and Po are two entrances instigating migratory energy assembled out of debris shaken loose from the body as a way to manufacture materials for air to shape. This itself is not substantial. Mau reinforces materials such as memory as a way to surrender itself entirely to migration and the ships that emigrants disembarked from. Most recently airplanes are used as a rhythm and a possession to discern time. As clandestine angels the airplane has a personal identity that matches the concentric circles in tapa. It understands only masks, essays on how natives think, obscure theses at conferences and military displays. The ship is a landscape with distinct states even when hormones induce direction, goodbyes, fear, anxieties somehow refrain from the handshakes that await them at the other end. Still, as a link the Maori iconographisication of new species begins by arranging the plants that were carried off these ships, sets principles, protocols, and when all is settled, admits to have coloured in the roots. That's why soil does not need adjusting. It humusifies the mountains into soil. Mau initialising apparitions and sacs of membranes removed to reveal sanctuaries of cosmological references to soils carried by the wind or moved by currents of the sea. Bonef!ute 2000 Performance by Mau Dance, Wellington Opera House, New Zealand 2000 Directed by Lemi Ponifasio Courtesy: Mau Dance Mau generates Samoan soil to enable them to take root. Once this is achieved the throat, influenced by the epiglottis root that descends to cover the windpipe when sounds roll in from the streets. Mau circulates around arrivals at airports. Like Mau I have a distinct Pacific Island expression that evolves from my determination to immerse my 'roots/routes' with the soils of other countries. I have never tried to improve my social sanity by obtaining permission to enter another country. Air must have a beginning. For Mau it is the space between a socially constituted beginning that initiates enlightenment and the family that arrives fresh from the Pacific Islands. It is disturbing to know that air does not begin in the circular mouth or in the dilated nostrils, but waits outside the kia ora sign that greets us in black letters at Auckland airport. When soil is laid down, tendered, cultivated, it is landscaped without tools to the conditions of that country, climactically and geographically, honoured by metaphors unifying qualities and organisms as rain procures small amounts of water for soil to revolutionise interpretation for changes in health and employment. 31