Pacific Dance Festival: Open Rehearsal Demonstration

Pacific Dance Festival provides us with a sneak preview of an innovative new work from UNITEC School of Dance's Moana Showcase.

SUN 31 MAY, 12PM - 12.30PM
TE AO MĀRAMA SOUTH ATRIUM
FREE WITH MUSEUM ENTRY

Join us for a short open rehearsal demonstration of Nothing Leaves the Parade, a new work from two of UNITEC's talented third year Dance students. Providing insight into their creative process, hear from choreographers Tai’ulagi Paulalei Hogue and Wiseman Mataiti ahead of their premiere performance in Moana Showcase at Māngere Arts Centre.

Pacific Dance Festival is an annual festival based in Tāmaki Makaurau which celebrates the beauty and diversity of Pacific dance, from powerful heritage forms to bold contemporary works. To find out more head to the Pacific Dance Festival website.

Dancers: Wiseman Mataiti & Mitchell Rumbell, Photographer: Jinki Cambronero

About Nothing Leaves the Parade:

At what point does a parade stop being just a parade?

In Nothing Leaves the Parade, bodies pull up, shift, and take space inside a moving system where spectacle, Va and collective memory continuously remixes itself. Driven by live DJing, recurring siren calls, and a physical language rooted in South Auckland and Pasifika lived experience, the work unfolds as an environment rather than an event.

Here, humour cuts through tension and performance sits beside excess. This parade becomes something contagious: reshaping itself as it moves.

Nothing here settles. Nothing really dips out.

Because once that signal lands, the parade has already begun.

_{About the Artists}

Wiseman Zekaria Mataiti is a queer Pasifika contemporary dance artist from Tāmaki Makaurau working across contemporary, ballroom - vogue femme and hip hop/battling practices. His work explores Pasifika heritage, queer identity, and collective experience through experimental movement and performance systems grounded in lived realities.

Tai’ulagi Paulalei Hogue is a Pasifika, Māori creative artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau working across contemporary and street dance contexts. Her practice derives from her faith in Jesus Christ, her family and her passion in the creative world. She is blessed to work as a performer, teacher and collaborator within the Aotearoa dance community.

Both Wiseman and Ta’iulagi are Third Year ākonga at Unitec.