Black Grace
Photo by the Black Grace crew from their Facebook page
Saturday I saw Black Grace perform in the Schouwburg. Black Grace is a New Zealand dance company led by Neil Ieremia. Ieremia choreographs dances inspired by and drawn upon both his Samoan heritage and the current world of New Zealand. They’re doing a tour of the Netherlands with a show called Verse 3: a collection of five short works and excerpts of various older works.
Pati Pati (2009) was the first. It’s a mix of fragments from four other works using Samoan seated dance (Sasa) and slap dancing (Fa’ataupati). It has pieces from Relentless (1998), Black Grace (1995), Fia Ola (1998) and Amata (2007). I really loved this because of the rhythm and repetition. It’s meditative.
The second was Human Language (2002), a work inspired by the body language of men and women when they start getting romantically interested in each other. It also mimics various forms of mating behaviour. It starts out, for example, by the men blowing up colourful balloons. As the girl parades in front of them they raise their heads so the balloons hang at throat level. Similar to how some birds inflate their necks to show of their vibrant neck and belly feathers. As the girl turns them down, they let go of the balloons in defeat, letting them shoot away as they deflate.
Gathering Clouds (2009) was made in answer to an article in a New Zealand newspaper. The article went on about how Pacific Island immigrants to New Zealand had the lowest education levels, were most represented in prison, most without jobs and so on, basically saying they were bad for New Zealand. This pissed Neil off so made this work to deal with his feelings and show that things aren’t perfect, they evolve and change and unrest comes from that, and helps with that. The dance starts with strong Samoan influences, traditional dancing and traditional music and halfway through morphs into more modern dancing on a number of Goldberg Variations by Bach to show that yes, we’re all different, but we’re all also the same.
Mother Mother (2013) was choreographed on request of New Zealand group Fat Freddy’s Drop. They wrote a song called Mother Mother and wanted Neil to make a dance for the videoclip. Ieremia refused a couple times but eventually agreed. The work starts out with a lot of physical manipulation of the body culminating in the literal raising up of women as a symbol for how Mothers help their kids up.
The final piece, Minoi (1999), is traditional. It is a Samoan song which literally means to wiggle. It starts with a woman singing the song and then blends with the dancers. They appear behind her and take over the singing. Mixing it with slap dancing and turning the song into a round it becomes a mantra.
So, today we went back to the furniture store with Dad. After some trying out of both, the decision was made to get the one we chose Wednesday. Except in a different colour.
Thus it was decided. After filling out the order form, Mom decided she also wanted a new chair to go with it. In the showroom across from the sofa was a chair she had been eyeing while we were there. It’s a more modern and streamlined shape than the old-fashioned wooden chair they currently have. The covering resembled that of the sofa on display without being too matchy-matchy.
Next stop was the thrift store one town over. As of today Nienke has a new house, so I will need some additional furniture when she moves out. That will still be a few weeks away but we’re in the neighbourhood anyway. The thrift store didn’t have anything that struck my fancy in the furniture department. I checked out the books, and hit the jackpot there. I found both the third part in a three-book series that I’ve been missing. I got the first two parts as a kid and always wanted to get the third to go with it. Here it was, for fifty cents 🙂
We then made our way over to the town center to check out a few other stores and to have lunch before heading home.
A little after five Mom picked me up to drop me off at the 
Saturday Mom and I went grocery shopping. While underway, she said she also wanted to check out the furniture store. The current sofa set they have isn’t very comfortable and some of the stitching is getting loose. Mom’s been thinking about getting one sofa and two recliners so she wanted to check it out.
Later on, we stumbled on another sectional. This one a different shade of brown with the stitching in a contrasting lighter colour. This one was also comfortable, and also available as separate sofas.
Yesterday being a Wednesday meant only half a day of work so lots of time for fun things! I’d planned to meet up with Gert and see two movies. I was in the city centre a bit before him so I browsed the market square and then headed for the News Café to have a drink. Gert met up with me there. We chose our movies and headed on the way to the cinema. However, we had some time left so we decided on some clothes shopping. This turned out to take more time than we thought as there were sales going on at several stores. I managed to score a pair of pants and a belt for under €20 and then another pair of pants elsewhere for about €10. Score!
Ingrid called, earlier this week, if I wanted to go out for dinner and go with her to pick out a new fridge on Saturday. Of course I said yes 🙂
Saturday Ingrid had her housewarming get together. In the morning I took a quick trip to the town centre to pick up a small gift. I found a pretty vase, vaguely diamond shaped, and a jar of coloured stones to fill it with. I then added a fake flower from my collection for a pleasing little arrangement. In the afternoon I headed over there and had a pleasant time with Ingrid and friends. We all ate together as Anne and her boyfriends made a huge pile of pancakes. Nom!
It was still cold and occasionally icy outside, so I was pretty careful when leaving. Nevertheless, the ice won. As I turned on to the road from the path beside my block, down I went. Fortunately I wasn’t going fast so I didn’t get hurt. Gert had walked ahead so didn’t even notice. I got back up on the bike and caught up with Gert. He had heard the noise of my bike padlock rattling in the basket when I fell, but figured I rode over a bump 😀
