Owen wrote a cool article re the new dance ‘ winter’ i made recently.
A return to the joy of dance
By Owen Scott View as one page
After a 16-year hiatus, Mary-Jane O’Reilly comes back to dancing with a new-found confidence. Photo / Steven McNicholl
When does a dancer know it is time to stop dancing? Time can be inexorably cruel on performers, but not always. One of New Zealand’s best-loved choreographers and dancers has rediscovered the joy of being on stage again.
Tomorrow evening at the Trinity Cathedral, Mary-Jane O’Reilly, co-founder of Limbs and director of the Tempo Dance Festival, will perform with Bach Musica in the third concert of this year’s series. The event is singular. Until very recently, it has been 16 years since O’Reilly has performed in public.
Tomorrow’s programme features J. S. Bach’s Suite No 2 in B minor and Duruflé’s Requiem. But it is the third item that intrigues – one half of �stor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons. A new-found love of tango and an admiration for Piazzolla’s music persuaded O’Reilly to dance again. “The essence of tango comes through in his music. It’s luscious and then it gets edgy,” she says.
Given the choice of which two seasons she wanted to dance to, she opted for Otono Poteno and Invierno Poteno – Autumn and Winter.
This is a witty and imaginative collaboration. It gives O’Reilly the chance to introduce a new dimension to her choreography, beyond her trademark fusion of ballet and contemporary, and although Piazzolla might appear outside Bach Musica’s traditional repertoire, his music is steeped in baroque.
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From a childhood in New York, both jazz and J. S. Bach significantly influenced his development of nuevo tango for which he is famous.
Remembering the almost casual brilliance of O’Reilly at her best, there is something heart-stopping about the prospect of watching her perform as a “mature” dancer. It is only in the last year that she has discovered she can still dance at all – what her body is capable of. 1994 was the watershed year for O’Reilly. “I was 44, dancing full out and choreographing material which assumed my body was still 30. On the second night of a show called Dust in the Air I wrenched my neck really badly. The injury didn’t heal. That was my brick wall; my body wouldn’t do it any more.”
She stopped dancing completely and focused instead on choreography and administration. If injury were not bad enough, in 1998 she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. “Then I really did have to admit defeat. I even had to stop choreographing, I was in too much pain.”
With typical resilience and determination she went on to teach at Auckland University and in 2006 took up the position of director of Tempo Dance Festival. “By 2008 it was almost 10 years since I’d got arthritis. I didn’t like the long-term effects of the heavy steroids I was taking so I weaned myself off them within five years. The arthritis is now either in abeyance or I’ve just learned to manage the pain.”
