Review: GLORIA – A Triple Bill at His Majesty’s Theatre

GLORIA – A Triple Bill at His Majesty’s Theatre
Tuesday, March 31, 2026

In collaboration, Co3 Contemporary Dance Australia and The New Zealand Dance Company presented a magnificent triple bill at His Majesty’s Theatre last week. In three performances over two days, the two dance troupes separately performed Moss Patterson’s Lament and Raewyn Hill’s A Moving Portrait and then, with music provided by WA Symphony and St George’s Cathedral Consort, combined to present Douglas Wright’s epic GLORIA. 

The night had a distinctive New Zealand aura to it. Not only are all three choreographers nationals (Patterson is CEO and AD of NZ Dance, while Co3’s Hill was born and raised in the North Island), but Douglas Wright (1956-2018) holds a pre-eminent place in the history of New Zealand contemporary dance. GLORIA (1990) is a seminal work in the national canon.

Last week’s program traced Wright’s influence on the two younger choreographers, though, with GLORIA positioned last, this was revealed in reverse. The first half of the evening was given over to Patterson and Hill and their relatively shorter works, each eighteen minutes long.

Moss Patterson’s Lament was inspired by E Pā Tō Hau, a traditional chant (mōteatea) composed during the 1860s land wars. The Perth season was its world premiere. A deeply spiritual work, it reflected “memory, resilience and the enduring spirit of Aotearoa” (New Zealand).

Energetic, ritualistic and sinuous, in white ‘peasants’ costumes, designed by Chantelle Gerrard, the six dancers were continually fracturing apart and reforming. Energetic solos would morph into reflective trios and sextets, by turns symmetrical and asymmetrical, aggressive, agitated and fiery. With elements of the haka, the connection to the land wars was made manifest.

This powerful work was riveting in its intensity and spiritual devotion, the mōteatea rendered in an electronic score. As Patterson notes in the programme, Lament “…acknowledges the legacy of the late Douglas Wright, whose fearless and poetic approach to dance has profoundly influenced Aotearoa’s contemporary dance landscape.”

Raewyn Hill’s A Moving Portrait is an excerpt from her full-length work, In The Shadow of Time, which premiered last year.

Sensual and meditative, the five dancers emerged slow-mo from a shaft of light to swarm the stage in tight complexity. In their white, diaphanous gowns and fluffy cloaks, designed by Japanese Australian Akira Isogawa, they looked like a bank of boho angels. But then, as the work slowly unfolded and refolded, they took on a more world-weary, distinctly human form. Jack Kerouac’s phrase “the quivering meat conception turning in the void” came to mind. Spiritual fragmentation, quivering, haunting and beautiful. The dancers pulled together as an integrated unit then pulled each other apart, ascending and falling, like a slowly rotating Bellini sculpture.

Aptly set to Arvo Pärt’s haunting Tabula Rasa (in a recording by the Australian Chamber Orchestra), this magnificent and mesmerising work, as Hill herself put it, “explores what it means to be human”.

After the interval, the audience returned to find the WA Symphony and St George’s Cathedral Consort turning up. The second part of the evening was given over to Wright’s GLORIA.

Based on Antonio Vivaldi’s famous work from 1715, itself a setting of the hymn Gloria in excelsis Deo (‘glory to God in the highest’), which arguably dates back to the fourth century, this stunning work is broken into twelve short movements. Ten dancers from both companies combined to perform it. Crucially, no more than seven appeared on stage at any one time.

It began in silence with a slow-mo prayer, the dancers kneeling, then sprang into vibrant life. The solemnity of the earlier pieces was immediately broken in a chaotic and comic dash across the stage. The range of emotion was set, and for the next thirty-five minutes moments of thoughtful reflection and solemnity were juxtaposed with dashes of comedy and joy.

It quickly became apparent why Wright is an influential artist: he had the confidence and strength to mix the light and the dark together in a cohesive whole, thus extending the texture and range of his vision.

Mark Haslam’s lighting, as on the previous two works, was extraordinary. Focused mainly from the side of the stage at human height, he managed to emphasise both the ethereal and sculptural qualities of the dancers and their white folding costumes. A yellow gel gave them a bas-relief quality, as though they were an animated Roman frieze. It was breathtaking in its enhancement of the work.

Over the twelve movements, the dancers depicted a wide range of human experience. Moments of joy, sex and devotion were set against acts of aggression and power. The geometric dancing of the spheres morphed into a single dancer moving slowly across the stage on the raised hands and shoulders of the troupe, then onto a gathering of wood nymphs flouncing and leaping in a Renaissance romp. This broke into two male dancers caught in an ambivalent battle before they reformed with the others in a joyous act of devotion. The piece ended with a single ambiguous nude figure hovering at the back of the stage.

Under the baton of Joseph Nolan, the orchestra and consort rendered Vivaldi’s magnificent score superbly. The power of the music emanating from the pit motivated the images on stage. Together the movement and music were mesmerising, a true work of choreographic and interpretive genius.

Hill’s Co3 and Patterson’s New Zealand Dance Co are to be congratulated on their sensitive remounting of this exemplary work.

At the reception following the opening night performance, it was announced that Raewyn Hill would be standing down as Co3’s artistic director at the end of this year. After eleven years at the helm, it is time for her to branch out. Her final performed work for the company will premiere in 2027.

GLORIA – A Triple Bill, Hill’s homage to her homeland, was a testament to the power of her work as both a choreographer and collaborator, as well as her important contribution to contemporary dance in Western Australia.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by John McDermott