Ad Parnassum – Purapurawhetū

In a film by Good Company Arts – dance artists Jahra Wasasala and Christina Guieb open with a 6 minute “Prelude” for Ad Parnassum - Purapurawhetū. You can see linear scaffolding of a Pyramid, inspired by Paul Klee's iconic painting "Ad Parnassum".  Dance activates geometry with the conductive power of gesture and breath. Centipedes partner mountain ranges and dragonflies play with Wasasala as the Flower of Life kaleidoscope portrays a group of women who will appear in forthcoming film episodes during 2022. The Flower of Life is the geometric blueprint within which all life is born, seeded and formed.  All life is interwoven from the cellular to the cosmic.

Ad Parnassum - Purapurawhetū brings together Pacific and Mediterranean influences. Dancers become part of a shared visual and sculptural language for this project.  Imagine the film engine room as a kind of digital kiln, where editing is a collage of materials bound together by artistic decisions in rhythm and tone, that ultimately metamorphose as stories synchronised to Gillian Whitehead's music. Music drives the total work which carries human figures in an elongated vista - a singing bowl brimming with movement and colour codes. The channel for union with something mystical and divine, is dance.

The Muses of Antiquity had twenty-five siblings.  In the opening dance, Christina Guieb can be seen as Athena with her Sword of Truth. The vast linear depiction of Mount Parnassus is ancient and futuristic in one. This represents the old hierarchical world - a model now being superseded and rebalanced through the heart-based leadership of women.  Ad Parnassum - Purapurawhetū advocates for an inclusive vision of co-creation, and wholeness for all beings and all life.

FREE in the DPAG Auditorium