AARERO STONE: TWO SOLOS IN A PERFORMANCE LANDSCAPE

Commissioned by the New Zealand International Festival of Arts, 2006
Choreographers/Dancers: Carol Brown and Charles Koroneho
Performance Designer: Dorita Hannah





Aarero Stone was an interdisciplinary collaboration between choreographer-dancers and performance designer, commissioned and premiered by the 2006 New Zealand International Arts Festival. Aareo means Tongue and the tongue of stone was a speaking landscape upon which journeys of transformation were woven from the strands of Mâori ancestral stories and European mythologies. Sited on the stage of Te Papa’s Soundings Theatre, this architectural installation was comprised of a cartographer’s grid of reflective crosses, a shadowy tomb embedded in a slab wall, a vessel of white stones, an obsidian promontory jutting into the auditorium and a black mirror hovering over a dark pool of water. Open, abstract and elemental it formed an atmospheric space that shifted subtly through movement, light and reflection to evoke a multitude of places.

Aarero Stone in 2006 New Zealand Arts Festival