Blood of Trees

Abstract

‘The visible is prepared by the invisible.’ Julia Kristen. Part of The University of Auckland’s Thematic Research Initiative, Transforming Cities, BLOOD OF TREES was the culmination of a two week research process for 15 professional and student dancers, a choreographer, sound artist, designer and dramaturg. As a site sensitive event focused on water issues for Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, the work drew on the stories that emerged throughout the research, the embodied memories and knowledge from the performers and the changing scape and use of the Auckland Waterfront. The catalyst for the performance was the idea of young tuna (eels or elvers) swimming up Tuna Mau, a stream that once flowed through Western Park to Waiatarau (Freemans Bay). In this telling eels signal a crisis. Eel-Men and Eel-Women are caught on a strip of damaged ground unable to find their stream. They encounter a series of historical and ancestral figures whose stories tell them different things about this strange land. Hine searches for Tuna, her eel-lover; a blind bride gestures mutely her melancholic longings and her wish to be taken home; the ‘mapwoman’ remembers a lost shoreline through markings on her skin; three furies stutter against the concrete silos. These fleeting appearances mix the present with the past altering our sense of place and inviting a questioning of what lies beneath, hidden by our industrial past, seeping into the sea. The title, BLOOD OF TREES speaks to the pan Pacific story of Hine and Tuna in which the mutilated body of the latter, cut-up by an avenging Maui after he learns of Hine’s seduction, forms different species of fish, eel, grass and the blood red stain of the rimu.