Review: Gathering.2
Co3 Contemporary Dance
The Liberty Theatre
Thursday 18 June 2026
Picking up where last year’s tenth birthday celebrations left off, Co3 Contemporary Dance’s Gathering.2 leans back into the warehouse party vibe, with a season of four short new works from independent choreographers, curated by Co3 artistic director Raewyn Hill. Low lights and cool beats set the scene for an evening in which dancers slip in and out of the crowd, enticing you to join them in between works, if you wish.
Presenting dance in the midst of the audience can cause sight line issues, but there are plenty of elevated viewing options including a set of stepped rostra that doubles as performance space. Lighting designer Mark Haslam’s projections of the live performance provide another option for viewing the dancers whilst also creating texture on a vast wall, and his designs transform the Liberty Theatre from empty hall to urban night club.
In the spaces between those rostra six heads appear, signalling the start of On & On by local dance maker Laura Boynes. It’s a fitting opening to a work that has a dreamy quality, complemented by Callum O’Reilly’s sometimes trance-like composition (edited/arranged by Tristen Parr) and by the op-shop-chic of the costumes, cleverly chosen to suit all four works (co-designed by Emma Fishwick and Raewyn Hill).
While Boynes’ theme sounds serious – “the collapse and reconstruction of collective unity … unfolding in a cyclical loop” – its realisation is peppered with lightly comical touches; those first tilting heads, whimsical swinging hands.
Circularity permeates the work. Swirling duets echo the chaos of O’Reilly’s hysterical handfuls of piano as rounded mouths form rounded sounds. Gathering.2’s six dancers – Francesca Fenton, Storm Helmore, Luther Wilson (Ngati Kahu Ki Whangaroa), Zachary Wilson (Ngati Kahu Ki Whangaroa), Luci Young and Sophie Sibbons – embody the expansive quality of Boynes’s movement.
If Boynes hints at the surreal quality of dreams, UK/Europe/Australia-based choreographer Sam Coren leans right into it in Never Lonely Now, with the six dancers’ heads concealed by latex animal masks. Against the unhinged cacophony of saxophone, drums and electronica that is US duo Clown Core (also mask-wearers), movement is fast-paced, the dancers morphing seamlessly from club-style to folkloric to comedic.
There’s something unsettling about this work, most apparent in the slapstick yet sinister face-off between a rabbit (Luther Wilson) and death (Helmore). The filmic quality of the musical track adds to the sense that we’ve stumbled onto the set of a dark fantasy film.
The mood continues creepy with a sprinkle of comedy, in Danceagoge, by local dance artist May Greenberg. Framed around a narrative about witch-hunts with implications for our current context, the work opens with Greenberg’s own haunting vocals (by Greenberg and composer Felicity Groom), as Helmore (the witch, one assumes) glides towards a ball of light, four dancers creeping menacingly behind her.
Though based on a story, Danceagogue is more a series of vignettes; spidery sculptures give way to deep plies, expressive shoulders and vogue-style gestures. A shower of confetti signals another switch, one that warns, albeit light-heartedly, of the dangers of seduction.
In keeping with what now feels like a theme, the program’s final work, Make//Believe by local choreographer Shaun Johnston, is another foray into a fantasy world. With inspiration taken from films like Fantasia and The Princess Bride, however, this is a lighter-hearted romp.
The nursery rhyme-like cadences of composer Charles Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette provide a cheerful backdrop to Zachary Wilson’s puppet-like manipulations of the other four dancers. The mood turns absurd as the dancers get caught up in various slapstick battles in which hysteria reigns supreme. A favourite moment sees Fenton frantically miming blood pouring from an abdominal wound, her extravagant gestures causing much mirth in the audience.
It must be noted that each choreographer had just a week to create these works and the success of the evening is a credit to them, to the talented and charismatic dancers, and the creative team. In her farewell season as artistic director, Hill has curated a bill that’s engaging, entertaining, surprising and well worth seeing.
Gathering.2 continues at the Liberty Theatre until 4 July 2026.
- Nina Levy