‘Requiem’ for a ‘Requiem’

Samoan choreographer Lemi Ponifasio calls his “Requiem” a ceremony. “It’s an act of preparation,” he said recently, on the phone from New Zealand. “It honors those who came before us and those who will join us. Mozart considered his ‘Requiem’ a conversation with God. I think of mine the same way.” A highlight of the Mostly Mozart Festival, the evening-length work, which will be performed at the Rose Theater on August 8 and 9, deals with themes similar to Mozart’s masterpiece: transformation, hope, and respect for life.From the moment the piece begins, with chanting voices and a spotlight playing across a man’s muscled back, Mr. Ponifasio creates an ethereal atmosphere, the set an evocation of an austere Samoan house, with twin pillars and no walls. As it progresses, with figures emerging and melting back into darkness, alternately violent and peaceful, its ritualistic spirit draws one into a world of unembellished emotion. The score, a combination of traditional chants sung by the Kiribati and Maori people and sounds of crickets, stones, birds, and water, pulls one in further.But for all work’s mood of timelessness, Mr. Ponifasio choreographed it with great urgency. “I’m reacting to what’s happening around us, such as the continuing war in Iraq and our huge ecological problems,” he said. “In the South Pacific, we have already lost many islands to global warming. I feel we are on the borderline of something terrible, and that there is a pressing need to change direction.”Originally commissioned by Peter Sellars as part of the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna in 2006, which celebrated the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, “Requiem” has toured European and Australian festivals since then, winning over those who might have assumed that a Samoan creation would be too foreign for their taste. It helps that Mr. Ponifasio, who is 45, displays a theatrical sense and a genius for inventing striking imagery, perhaps a consequence of a childhood spent in a Samoan village where elaborate rituals were a part of everyday life.Lincoln Center’s vice president of programming, Jane Moss, came upon Mr. Poniface’s “Requiem” by chance when she attended the festival in Vienna. “I had never experienced anything like it before,” she said, “I had no frame of reference. Lemi creates a contemplative universe — such a welcome contrast to our ADD, hyperactive, cell phone, Blackberry, iPod-addled society. He uses time, space, light, and darkness in remarkable ways.”Mr. Ponifasio brings to choreographing a very different perspective than most of his Western colleagues. “We don’t separate dance, music, theater, and art,” he said. “They are all part of ceremonies that regularly take place around births, deaths, and weddings. My pieces resemble those more than separate artistic works. They grow out of community and are for the community. I keep my feet on the ground. If my mother doesn’t understand my pieces, I’d feel that I failed.”Now a High Chief of Samoa, a title bestowed on him for his artistic contributions and service to the community, Mr. Ponifasio formed his 24-member company MAU in 1995, after studying philosophy and politics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He named it for the Samoan independence movement called Mau; the word Mau means revolution. A diverse group that includes architects, fishermen, weavers, and lawyers, the troupe does far more than perform, traveling throughout the Pacific to work with local people to establish a community that reflects Oceanic cosmologies and 21stcentury Oceania.“It’s important to me that my members have other jobs and experience regular life,” he said. “I don’t believe in a special class of dancer or performer. I want them to bring the complexity of their outside lives to the stage. They are skilled in rituals, oratory, song, and languages. They can build houses, weave mats, make costumes, and conduct ceremonies.” Just as Mr. Ponifasio does not engage professional dancers; he does not practice a particular movement style. “I ask people to do the dance of their own bodies,” he said. “I can’t impose steps on them. I organize patterns and certain moments. They take them to another dimension. I want them to be silent in their bodies, not busy, to find a quiet way of being in the world, so that they can more keenly develop their senses and awareness. It all comes back to returning to nature.”

‘Requiem’ for a ‘Requiem’

‘Requiem’ for a ‘Requiem’

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