Word: nawalowalo
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...perfectly with artistic director Charles Merewether's "Zones of Contact" theme, which seeks to introduce audiences to world cultures not often presented in a contemporary-art context. Just as Palestinian artist Raeda Saadeh makes viewers peer through wardrobe doors to see her recreated lounge room, so Vula director Nina Nawalowalo immerses audiences in the Pacific flow...
...swimming pool through which her actors move, and imaginatively by cutting the action between real and mythological time. Even when the village women gather to wash clothes, the constant call of the conch reminds them of a more spiritual life beyond the lagoon. Devised by Nawalowalo and her four actors, Vula evokes a state of being as natural as the tides. "You shut five Pacific Islander women in a room," the director says, "and then you come out with this piece that's that kind of rhythm...
...four New Zealand-based performers of mixed Samoan and Fijian ancestry, there was the opportunity to share their stories through the unifying medium of water: Hellen Stowers performs a Fijian meke that was originally danced at the water's edge to farewell men going to war. But Nawalowalo, who is more interested in "how one adds to a picture," pushes traditional imagery into new realms. In a Samoan siva dance, she spotlights the hands so they appear out of the darkness like swimming squid. Later, she dramatizes the arrival of missionaries with a ship's sail, which passes before...
...After such deft sleight of hand, it's not surprising to learn that the director's preferred medium is magic. New Zealand?born Nawalowalo, 43, played basketball for her country before joining a mime troupe that took her to Europe in the late '80s. For seven years she worked with English illusionist Richard McDougall, melding mime, masks and magic. But a 1994 trip back to Fiji with her ailing father proved to be a turning point. Being exposed to the female rituals of village life made the director "want to go deeper into my own culture," she says. By decade...
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