ONEONE

Interactive Gallery-Museum Exhibitions/Expanded Cinema Transmissions/Giclée Art Prints/Projection Mapping/Media Facade Events/Immersive Digital and Live Dance/AV Liveset Performance Installations. Funded by Creative New Zealand toi Aotearoa, Otago Community Trust, associated international partners and commissioning festivals.

OneOne creates a sense of an ancient culture, an archetype being unearthed through real-world experience that is timeless and contemporary. Physics defines everything in existence as either matter or energy, matter being the tangible part that we can see, hear, touch, smell and taste - energy being the intangible part that ‘moves’ matter. Matter is made up of fields of electro-magnetic energy, vibrating at innumerable different frequencies. Einstein said that matter can be changed into energy and vice versa. In essence they are the same thing in a different form. The process of shifting energy to matter, and matter to energy is expressed in OneOne.

In te reo Māori the title denotes soil, sand or earth which is appropriate because the source of the inspiration for the work is New Zealand landscape. In particular this references the South Island’s Maerewhenua River, where extraordinary hollow rattle-stones can be found. They are rare, and have been formed over millions of years. Near to this site is a place called Anatini (many caves), and the Valley of the Whales - named because there are fossils of Cetaceans in the limestone, both whale and dolphin. These are ancient connections. Millenia ago, this place which is now very much inland from the sea, was once under the ocean.

"Like ripples and echoes on a time space continuum, this work is a beautifully fulfilled concept that is sophisticated and refined and yet utterly universal" Theatreview

"With its universal themes, like ‘everything is in motion’, this work dissolves boundaries, and can be appreciated by the scientist and artist within us all. OneOne gives a gentle call to our connection with the ancient past, a call to our connection to the imaginings of the future, a call into the simple purity and power of now. This piece is much more than a ‘must see’. OneOne is a brilliant collaborative work of art that exists as poetry between its various elements which ‘must be experienced’" DANZ Magazine

"Greater than the sum of its many parts, OneOne seems to be part of a greater work in progress, one organically budding forth from Belton’s devotion to exploring and representing technological mysticism, present, past and future, through the syntax of filmed dance. It all interconnects: electrons agitate, the embodied life-forces appear on screen as solid geometries, and then waves of energy pulsate, and wash them away" Art New Zealand

The music is the heartbeat of the piece - our creative process began with the aural. These sonic oscillations and rhythms became the foundation for the choreographic and visual design elements. They remind us we are part of a living, pulsing cosmos. OneOne is inspired by natural phenomena. This resonates with natural elements which for us seem timeless: stone, water, wind, and sunlight. The Maerewhenua River stones offer liminal spaces, deep recesses. As if with the lens of the astrophysicist, we look inside the hollow stones to examine expansion and contraction, memory and our relationship to the land. The intention is to convey a kind of penetration in this process, whereby layers of time can be opened and read in a way that we might measure earth movements and weather patterns. The holes in the stones can suggest a discreet stage, or theatre. In these spaces the dance, sonic, and visual elements are made to co-exist. The lattice of lines, geometry, geography and sound, merge and bring texture and timbre to form. The action of making sound animates these internal environments and we capture the movement of human presence. The stones can be seen as time capsules containing dance that has been found in a specific frequency of vibration. OneOne explores human existence as part of eternal cycles. It suggests ritual where echoes of the past resonate in a universal view of the present.

OneOne is Daniel Belton’s most widely travelled work with Good Company Arts engaging renowned artists Janessa Dufty (dance and choreographic lead), Jill Goh, Nancy Wijohn, Matua Nigel Jenkins, Jac Grenfell, Donnine Harrison, Peter Belton, Simon Kaan, Stuart Foster, Alistair Fraser and Dr Richard Nunns. It is an elegy for the planet.

PELAGIC NATURE OF ONEONE

OneOne has been described as a masterwork of beauty and power - radical in its combination of innovative new media and ancient cultural knowledge. The human figures in OneOne shift through geometric virtual stone-form containers and suggest the presence of breath in the soundscape. This creates a pictorial representation of air movement inside the river stones, which are blown and drummed to make sound. Human figures become holographic when processed through the digital, the binary. Their movement establishes a hieroglyphic language of dance that synchronises with the sounds of nature, Taonga pūoro and the hollow stone flutes of the Maerewhenua River.

OneOne reflects an ancient elemental energy - ancestral memory unfolds in a digital cloak of projected bending light and sound. The Maerewhenua River stones are 23-25 million years old. They have inspired the artistic research and creation of OneOne in its delivery as interactive museum installation, expanded cinema transmissions, architectural projection mapping and AV Liveset stage performances. Selected stones have been carefully scanned and 3D modelled to become spectral Waka, or vessels that transport the human figure in time and space. They evoke kinetic Polynesian navigation charts, Cetaceans and islands. OneOne explores the twin acts of voyaging and coming to land.

The Waka (traditional Māori canoe) is a monument, and the product of an entire community coming together with sacred rites. Ancestral knowledge is reborn again through the long corridors of time when song and chant connect past and present. The tree symbolises rootedness in culture. The Waka is a very female element. Male and female together journey forward. In OneOne the female figure is the navigator - the internal gaze. The female dancer is a messenger between worlds in this ocean oriented anthology/ontology. For the closing episode she is cradled inside a great geometric basket or ship that glides like a gigantic whale. We hear the call of Cetaceans. Membranes that convey the geometry of sound, constellations, tides and corals take form, with hollow stones like bones of the earth.

The word “pelagic” is derived from Greek (pélagos), meaning ‘open sea’. Traditional Māori instruments (Taonga pūoro experienced a revival in the late 20th century, with the haunting sounds of koauau (flutes) and purerehua (spinning discs) familiar to many New Zealanders. Taonga pūoro are used for both spiritual and physical purposes – for instance, a koauau can be used to summon spirits for healing. Traditionally music was played for reasons such as sending messages or marking the stages of life.

OneOne project history | whakapapa

(Official invitations as Interactive Installations, Expanded Cinema Transmissions, Projection Mapping, AV Liveset Performances) Toitū Museum, Arts Festival Dunedin 2014, New Zealand: Interactive Multi-Media Immersive Installation/Exhibition.
ArtBox Gallery, Body Festival 2014, Christchurch, New Zealand): Interactive Multi-Media Immersive Installation/Exhibition.
Southland Museum and Art Gallery, Invercargill, New Zealand 2014: Film Installation.
Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision 2014, Wellington, New Zealand Film Archive: Film Screenings.
Festival Escuchar [sonidos visuales] 2014, Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Daniel Belton AV Liveset taoka pūoro performance.
CINEDANS Festival 2015, The Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam, Holland: Interior Mapped Film Installation.
Dunedin Public Art Gallery for Matariki 2015, New Zealand: Film Screenings.
Attakkalari India Biennial 2015 (Ranga Shankara Theatre), Bangalore, India: AV Liveset Performances by Daniel Belton.
Oceanic Performance Biennial OPB15, Rarotonga, Cook Islands: AV Liveset taonga pūoro feat. Dr Richard Nunns (virtual), Matua Nigel Jenkins and Daniel Belton (live).
Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space as part of the NZPQ15 National Exhibit including screen installation for Auckland Arts Festival 2015, Czech Republic/NZ: Multi-Media Immersive Installation/Exhibition and Liveset taonga pūoro with Daniel Belton (NZPQ15 Performance Series).
Soundislands Festival SI15, The Arts House Singapore: AV Liveset Performance/Lecture with Daniel Belton.
Aarhus Festival 2015, DOKK1 New Media Centre, Aarhus, Denmark: Interactive Multi-Media Immersive Installation/Exhibition supported by Matua Nigel Jenkins.
The Arts Foundation of New Zealand 2015 Laureate Awards Ceremony (Daniel Belton), Mercury Theatre Auckland, New Zealand: Film Installations print and online.
Aesthetica Short Film Festival - ASFF BAFTA Qualifying Festival, York, United Kingdom: Film Screenings.
Immaginare La Danza International Conference 2015 hosted by Sapienza University, Rome, Italy: Liveset Performance/Lecture (Daniel Belton).
Light Nelson Festival 2016, Nelson, New Zealand: Film Installation (Supported by Bradon McCaughey).
Ignite Festival 2016, New Dehli, India: Film Screenings.
Festival Internacional de la Imagen and ISEA 2017, Manizales, Colombia: AV Liveset taoka pūoro performance (Daniel Belton) and multi-media film Installations.
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki at Tempo Festival 2017: Film screenings paired with EMAKI project.
World Stage Design 2017, Taipei, Taiwan: Multi-modal Installation Exhibition including Daniel Belton Liveset Performances supported by Stuart Foster. Multimedia Projection-Design Bronze Award Winner. Gallery OUT of PLACE Nara Liveset Performance and print installations with taonga pūoro feat. Dr Richard Nunns (virtual) and Daniel Belton (live), Japan 2017.
Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting 2018 (TPAM) The Cave Liveset Performances with taonga pūoro feat. Dr Richard Nunns (virtual) and Daniel Belton (live), Yokohama, Japan. AV Liveset Performances/Film Installation Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand Matariki 2018: Multi-Media Immersive Projection Mapping and Waterstage Performance Installations for Ahi Kā Festival (Daniel Belton supported by Stuart Foster with waterstage, premixed taonga pūoro with live dance feat. Jill Goh).
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki Artweek and Tempo Festival 2018: Projection Mapped Heritage Facade Installation as “Theatre of Light” (Daniel Belton supported by Bradon McCaughey and Josef Belton).
SINO x NIIO Inaugural Illumination Art Prize “Artistic Blessing” Winner, Hong Kong: screening at Hong Kong Harbour facades December 2018 to January 2019.
Chinese New Year Festival Wellington, New Zealand (Asia Events Trust edition in association with the Asia New Zealand Foundation) 2019.
XINTIANDI FESTIVAL 2019 Programme, Shanghai, China: co-commissioned site-specific performance season with live dance (Jill Goh), live music and projections (Belton).
Arts Foundation of New Zealand 2020 presentations for He Waka Tuia Art + Museum, Waihopai Invercargill and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, Taranaki (Belton). OneOne - Raranga 2021 Matariki performance activation and immersive installation with live dance feat. Nancy Wijohn, with live taonga pūoro feat. Alistair Fraser supported by Belton with harakeke weaving (Kahu Collective), film projections and VR supported by Stuart Foster for The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, Great Hall, Ōtautahi, Christchurch. SINO GROUP “Feel the Motion” arts education campaign showcase of the SINO x NIIO Illumination Art Prizes, Hong Kong: OneOne screening at Hong Kong Harbour LED facades September to October 2023 (Belton and Donnine Harrison). Festival After Cage, Pamplona, Spain, taonga pūoro feat. Dr Richard Nunns (virtual) and Belton supported by Donnine Harrison, performance AV livesets 2023 at Museo de Navarra. Official Selections Vienna Film Stories Festival, International Symbolic Art Film Festival Batumi, Toronto Indie Filmmakers Festival and Palma Film Festival 2024; Semi-Finalist Hawaii International Film Awards 2024; Semi-Finalist Hong Kong Indie Film Festival 2024; Semi-Finalist Tokyo Shorts 2024; Semi-Finalist Istanbul Movie Awards 2024; Semi-Finalist Rome International Short Festival 2024; Honorable Mention Swiss Screenwriting and Cinematic Summit Zürich 2024; Winner Best Dance Video Puente Cinematográfico International Film Festival Barcelona 2024; Winner Best Experimental Film Dubai Independent Film Festival 2024; Winner Best Visual Effects Palma Film Festival Spain; Winner Best Dance Video Palma Film Festival Spain; (Festival After Cage Liveset Edition).

Artistic Blessing Award First Place at the Sino x Niio Illumination Art Prizes Hong Kong* Multimedia Projection-Design Bronze Award World Stage Design Taipei* Best Dance Video Puente Cinematográfico International Film Festival Barcelona* Best Experimental Film Dubai Independent Film Festival* Honorable Mention Swiss Screenwriting and Cinematic Summit Zürich* Best Visual Effects Palma Film Festival* Best Dance Video Palma Film Festival*

Film Excerpts:

https://vimeo.com/dbel/oneone-hari
https://vimeo.com/dbel/oneone-whakatere

Follow this link to see the OneOne - Raranga 2021 VR journey:

Reviews

AN ALCHEMY OF SCIENCE AND ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE

OneOne - Matariki 2021 | Led by Good Company Arts’ director, Daniel Belton, in collaboration with:
Nancy Wijohn, Alistair Fraser, Stuart Foster, Donnine Harrison, Jac Grenfell
Korean musicians DUOBUD, dancers from Australia, China and Singapore (long-distance).
Kahu Collective weavers Lisa Harding, Corabelle Summerton and Cathy Payne

at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora | 2 Worcester Boulevard, Christchurch
9 Jul 2021 [60 mins] | Reviewed by Julia Harvie | 13 Aug 2021

“Daniel Belton, although somewhat geographically isolated in the NZ dance scene, is an artist internationally recognised and at the height of his career, working with incredible integrity” (Julia Harvie review of OneOne, 2014).

Reviewing this work again is a trip through space and time. Above, is a quote from my original review of OneOne in 2014, and it still stands as a statement I would make today. Back in 2014, when I first reviewed OneOne as part of The Body Festival, I held my newborn baby daughter in my arms and sat alone in the work as it was then, a multi-media installation, with no live performance aspect, other than my own interaction with the objects in the space. This evening, I see the work as a multi-disciplinary live performance activation for Te Matatiki Toi Ora’s (The Christchurch Art Centre) Great Hall during Matariki, amidst an excited and keen Ōtautahi audience. Tonight I am joined by my nine-year old son and my daughter is now seven. Time. Time and again. One Time and time on(e)going.

Belton has been working in this space, with these modes and movement languages for many years. This makes the work in such a dialogue with itself over time and indeed with time itself. The work has not dated, but it has evolved and Belton and his collaborators have carved out a space for this distinct work that dances with time, culture, tradition, science and technology. It is an honour and a privilege to be invited to write again about his work. I first encountered Belton as a third-year dance student at UNITEC in 2003 and here we are, still in conversation, nearly twenty years later. I am able to reflect on my own life, and relationship to time and my own body as Belton embeds me and the rest of the audience in his work. We feel enveloped in the work and trust we are in good hands. We know we are in Good Company.

Lately, I have been reading the work of André Lepecki and Ramsay Burt who both describe a movement of dance artists engaged in a practice of critique of the role choreography itself as a symbol of, and tool, to further enforce the late-capitalist subject. To my mind, this work positions Belton in this space as an artist resisting, in a world where everything is fast-paced and constantly changing, OneOne slows us down, asks us to look back, forwards, inside and around time and question our relationship with time itself.

In te reo Māori the title, Oneone, denotes soil, sand or earth and the inspiration for the work is Te Wai Pounamu’s landscape. In particular this references the Maerewhenua River. Near to this site is a place called Anatini (many caves), and the Valley of the Whales, places which are now very much inland from the sea, but were once under the ocean and named because there are fossils of Cetaceans in the limestone of whale and dolphin.

We enter the Great Hall, and the cave-like sense the presence this work creates immediately takes hold of us. We take our seats at the back of the room where chairs are laid out in a series of arcs. We hear the sound of a babbling brook - water moving through space. From the centre of the arched seating, the space thrusts outwards, a channel for taonga placed on the ground, small kete sit like stones in a riverbed, vessels holding unknown treasure. At the centre of this channel a pūtātara conch shell, rests on a small black reflective plinth. Our eyes are drawn to a large, woven, circular harakeke mat created by Kahu Collective, positioned at an angle, as though it is falling down to earth from the stars. As we cast our eyes skyward we see constellations moving through the sky and then back to the architecture of this room, the ceiling, like an upturned waka. To our right, a table with a veritable feast of sound objects, instruments and taonga pūoro wait for breath and bone to give them life. Pūpūharakeke kōauau (flax snail shell flute) is played by Alistair Fraser, and highlights the aural link to weaving and dialogues with taonga pūoro recordings from Dr Richard Nunns with the last professional studio recordings of his practice made by Ngāi Tahu sound designer Nigel Jenkins with Daniel Belton specifically for OneOne. These references give the space a sense of the sacred and mystical. It feels as though we may be floating into outer space.

Nancy Wijohn enters, a ghost in the machine, and she takes a moment to be amongst us and soaks up her space as she begins. Her body is cloaked, with a full length pleated skirt and cape of linen, reminiscent of both victorian and ngā taonga tutu iho, traditional Māori clothing. Her head appears to be floating, bodiless until a hand is revealed and she becomes anchored, immanent. She is an embodiment of the stellar but also utterly rooted to the ground. There is a tension of push and pull between Ranginui and Papatūānuku in her body.

Electronic waves crash against the shore and the constellations are reflected onto the woven mat, we see bodies dancing through space and time, atua weaving the constellations together. An alchemy of science and ancient knowledge, embedded in the stars and our bodily immanence. This work is both highly technical and futuristic yet captures a sense of timelessness and the ancient. We are the stars.

The work finishes with Al Fraser in profile in near darkness. We see the action of his body as it generates the force and momentum required to make the sound of the Pūrerehua and we can hear the sound, only we can’t see the instrument itself which creates a powerful effect, again, a feeling we are catching glimmers of light and sound and time immemorial.

THE HEART OF IT IS LIGHT

ONEONE | Theatreview | Auckland Art Gallery Auditorium | 15 Oct 2015 | Review by Jennifer Nikolai
Daniel Belton, Donnine Harrison, Good Company Arts, Richard Nunns, Nigel Jenkins, Janessa Dufty, WJS Grenfell

The format of this Tempo Dance Festival event was inviting, accessible and as warm and invigorating as Daniel Belton is as a presence; humble yet articulate of the scale and impact of his work. For Daniel Belton (Good Company Arts) fans and new audiences, having Belton facilitate a screening/lecture dem/question and answer style format - gave the audience insight into the retrospective impact of this New Zealand artist. Although he began by screening pieces previously curated in this and other national and international festivals, he concluded with an introduction to the process and selected sequences in his recent work OneOne.

OneOne has made its debut in New Zealand and was taken to the Cook Islands where, as Belton articulates – this is the home of the work. The point of origin is the river stones of the Maerewhenua River. They are a source of conceptual and graphic design in a striking visualisation between nature, dance and navigation. The river stones that Belton and his Father collected a few years ago have been 3D modelled, and become a binding source for sound and image driving the tone of this extraordinary discussion between analogue and digital forms. A central, graphic effect in this work is the modelled river stone - expanded, rotated. We hear its resonance and in this moving image sequence, the river stone also becomes a bed, a pod, or as Belton suggests, a Waka or a spaceship; ambiguous still - returning the dancer, or turning the dancer home and afar.

An illuminated dancer larger than her geometric surroundings, in a glowing white costume, occupies the frame with undulations and extensions, with a momentum that resembles a river moving rapidly. The dancer, Janessa Dufty is a central feature in Daniel Belton's most recent work. A structured improvisation process between Belton and Dufty resulted in what was captured in moving image as fresh and immediate. Yet her sequences are repetitive enough in the editorial choices to provide a calming or meditative quality with the stunningly captured movement of this gorgeous dancer, in tactile, hypnotic and appropriately scaled movement phrases. The flesh, the face, the limbs exposed, the skin of the dancer and her rhythm, create a complimentary superimposed somatic navigation of this dancing body and the light she sources. She is light, and glowing. The light sourced from her movement, is perceived as a metaphor for the navigation charts used in the Waka, to guide ocean travellers.

The themes of the digital and live in this work as well as retrospective works, carry similar or signature characteristics of Belton’s. The range of works and the venues they are viewed in are expansive and adaptable. As Belton showed us pieces originally performed with live musicians in proscenium theatrical venues, he also introduced us to a more recent optical experience he was commissioned to create on an upper façade, a new library in Denmark. His interrogation of space and scale, geometrics and light respectfully reference moving image experiments and historical discovery between light and space. They are adaptable to large-scale public installations, gallery exhibitions, traditional theatrical spaces and as in his recent collaboration; of planetariums, expanding the peripheral optical experience. To his audience he did refer to himself as a choreographer and a filmmaker, and he is so much more. His play with sound, with composition and light, with space and possibilities between analogue and digital mediums allows for his works to be re-considered, re-curated and re-choreographed with varied purpose. Characteristics of the trace and the trail, the blur and archetypal figures alongside geometric forms in real and manipulated time, remind us of the capacities between collaborative forms of moving image and live dance.

We ask when these elements are all so succinctly in dialogue: “where did you start, what came first?” When asked these questions of his compositional process, Belton replies: “I collect ideas, I write some things down, I have my books with images and fragments. I dip back into my library in quiet moments; a fusion sometimes of very different elements.” His work is overwhelmingly layered, a fusion of moving image history, inquiry and experimentation. Belton is a choreographer working with bodies in space as much as captured bodies, re-considered in a range of dimensionalities. Of his inspiration for this extraordinary process of making, he states: “old cinema, literature and music inspires me.” Even more satisfactory as we listen to him speak about his compositional process, is his response to OneOne. He says, “the heart of it is light.” Yes, it is.

SOLID GEOMETRIES

The Dance Films of Daniel Belton and Good Company Arts | Art New Zealand | Autumn 2015 | Number 153 | By David Eggleton (Review Excerpts)

OneOne is a binary or digital term referring to the medium in which the film is encoded, and its possibilities; it is also te reo Maori for ‘soil, sand, earth’. This is a work acknowledging both the land and the tangata whenua. Danced by Janessa Duffy, and also by Daniel Belton, the mise-en-scène draws upon a favourite Belton landscape (it also helped inspire Soma Songs): the limestone country inland from Oamaru.

Once again the production weaves together many associations. Richard Nunns helps produce a soundscape by tapping hollow Maerewhenua River stones using his mouth as an echo chamber. Liquid calls of birds are coaxed from traditional instruments to augment the otherworldly mood. Seen in a darkened space, set around with stooks of river reeds, clusters of stones and puddle-like mirrors, OneOne, nearly an hour long and uncoiling like a river or rock strata, has a calm, soothing effect. OneOne is ritualistic, still concerned with dance as a kind of worship, or meditative practice, the performers luminous within a cave of darkness. Janessa Dufty has a dynamic vocabulary of gestures, swivelling and torqueing her torso, the curving and arcing of her body expressive of a thrumming energy that seems connected to the natural world of wind and light and stone and the river running.

Computer-generated wave forms and lattices diagrammatically map out a gigantic boulder that morphs into a whale shape, a cloud, and then into a transportation pod―or even a spaceship―evoking biotechnology, and perhaps interstellar travel....you are drawn in and held mesmerised by the way all the elements are synthesised so as to suggest weather patterns, ocean patterns, galaxies.

Greater than the sum of its many parts, OneOne seems to be part of a greater work in progress, one organically budding forth from Belton’s devotion to exploring and representing technological mysticism, present, past and future, through the syntax of filmed dance. It all interconnects: electrons agitate, the embodied life-forces appear on screen as solid geometries, and then waves of energy pulsate, and wash them away.

ONEONE - Daniel Belton and Good Company

OneOne is an engaging film and art installation of enchanting visual and audio expressions. Artistic Director Daniel Belton, Good Company Arts, numerous collaborators and contributors offer a piece with high production value and creative depth. This union results in a stunning work where art, science, and spirituality converge.

In response to a trip to see the rare ancient hollow stones of the Maerewhenua River in New Zealand, Belton was inspired to create OneOne. The sound score was created first and is an integral part of the piece. Like an ancient whispered calling it gently beckons the viewer to be present. A casual viewer will feel thoroughly satisfied with a stroll through the installation.The insightful viewer will relish spending a good deal of time with this work, discovering and exploring its many layers.

A membrane of digital images dance across the screen in a film that appears both futuristically technical and anciently organic.A moving geometrical lattice work of dots and connecting lines illustrate navigational pathways to both terrestrial and celestial worlds.They emerge, rotate, evolve, and retreat in relation to each other.Topographical images fluctuate, representing the ocean floor or the undulating earth.

Exquisite flowing movements of the dancers are duplicated, mirrored, sped up and slowed down. Images of dancers slur and blur creating beautiful tracings of their movements. Janessa Dufty dances in absolute perfection for this work. Her movements are subtle, strong, and sublime. Artistically, the film is fascinating and can stand on its own. United with the other elements, it is inspired. Images from the screen reflect in rectangular pools of water and shaped pieces of mirror on the floor. The installation contains black boxes with uplit bundles of reeds which are also symbolically utilised in the film.

Once I take the first step towards being a participant, a whole new vista of relationships with the piece emerge. Several hollow river stones in the pools can be rearranged and played as a rattle or flute. I put my fingers softly in the water and make little ripples, then waves. I soon realise how playing with the possibilities of water impact the reflection of the film, resulting in new dimensions of the work. Mesmerised, I am now part of the creation.

It is a precious privilege becoming a co-creator with the gifts the collaborators have provided in the film and soundscape. With its universal themes, like ‘everything is in motion’, this work dissolves boundaries, and can be appreciated by the scientist and artist within us all. OneOne gives a gentle call to our connection with the ancient past, a call to our connection to the imaginings of the future, a call into the simple purity and power of now. This piece is much more than a ‘must see’. OneOne is a brilliant collaborative work of art that exists as poetry between its various elements which ‘must be experienced’. Should the opportunity arise, let yourself play and maybe even dance.

DANCE NOTATION OF THE UNIVERSE

Excerpts from review of ONEONE by Jennifer Shennan | Nov 11, 2014 | Nga Taonga Sound & Vision Wellington | Theatreview

OneOne is Daniel Belton's latest film, a study of the time before and the time now. The title is multilayered – soil, in te reo and three in binary. There is an astonishing 50 minute sound track with Richard Nunns playing nga taonga puoro – koauau, purerehua, and the ancient hollow river stones of a North Otago landscape that was once under the ocean but is now in middle earth. The sounds of river rushes, water and breath are a part of the soundscape. We are in Cetacean era, with fossils of whales and dolphins ... and yet also in the front wave of today's sophisticated techniques to capture the look and the sound of this ancient time. Belton is a visionary artist. Janessa Dufty from Sydney Dance Company is filmed from close and far, in sequences that are then doctored, mirrored, echoed, reflected and time-lapsed to stand for many things and people. There's an impression of a time belt, like a horizontal stave of cosmic dance notation, which has the dancer(s) always moving from east to west ... well, there are three established dance notation systems but since nobody in New Zealand employs them to any useful end of literacy in movement, so why shouldn't Belton devise his own? The dancer moves through and around charted territory which has co-ordinates of physics, astrophysics, geometry, trigonometry, in a word, order in space, that is so evocative of his recent and beautiful work Satellites, for RNZB's Allegro programme. Nigel Jenkins, Jac Grenfell, Donnine Harrison and Simon Kaan are part of the creative team who all bring impeccable skills to the work. It's a knockout.

A RICHLY ENGAGING VISUAL WORLD

Daniel Belton, Donnine Harrison, Good Company Arts, Richard Nunns, Simon Kaan, Nigel Jenkins, Janessa Dufty, Jac Grenfell at Art Box | Christchurch | The Body Festival | Reviewed for Theatreview by Julia Harvie | 9 Oct 2014

Daniel Belton, although somewhat geographically isolated in the NZ dance scene, is an artist internationally recognised and at the height of his career, working with incredible integrity. He is an artist who has dedicated himself to his practice, a practice that exists across disciplines. This practice has evolved and yet in essence, he has stood his ground in terms of movement language and concepts.

For OneOne, a multimedia installation at the Body Festival 2014, he has collaborated with a stellar list of artists including Richard Nunns, Simon Kaan, Jac Grenfell, Janessa Dufty and Nigel Jenkins.

I arrive at the Art Box and enter a cavelike space. This sense is all encompassing from the river stones, the sound, three water trays, mirrors carved to form puddles that reflect the film projected on the wall and the sculptural presence of black glass cubed speakers that provide a pedestal for faggots of thin branches. I have brought my new baby with me and sit and feed her. I feel timeless, as though I have found a quiet sanctuary on the time/space continuum. I could step outside and find I have been transported backwards or forwards thousands of years.

I read the meticulous, articulate and poetic programme notes. They are substantial but very clear. I do not feel that they state empty promises. Everything I read provides further openings without overstating what I am experiencing in the work. This is true for the work itself as well. A rich visual world that engages with me emotionally, physically and intellectually.

There is clearly a great deal of technology employed to create this wonderfully natural sense of space and time, and although in many ways one could argue the work is entirely abstracted, it is filled with universal symbols that I can make sense of.

Installations provide the viewer with the opportunity to take a quick glance, get the gist and move on but this work is definitely worth sitting in and with for the hour long loop. Time passes quickly and yet peacefully, the viewer is given a full sensory experience. I can move the rocks, I can create ripples in the water trays and reposition myself to view the work surrounding me.

The work begins with a small male figure, seemingly standing at the opening to a cave, or perhaps the edge of the universe. He beckons to the opening. I see reference to William Forsythe's movement technologies with lines denoting form and energy as two figures arrive on something of a waka, web, whale or spacecraft.The figures employ weaving like motions to navigate through a timeless universe.

The outline of a mountain range comes into view, four figures now occupy the space like hieroglyphics, rock drawings, waves, currents or the bones of a ribcage. I see generations upon generations of one body, a body of the land – a body that expresses the form of the land, sky and water.There is a sense that it is always moving and yet never changing in essence.

Like ripples and echoes on a time space continuum, this work is a beautifully fulfilled concept that is sophisticated and refined and yet utterly universal.