Q&A: Shirley Horrocks
New Zealand Director/Producer Shirley Horrocks answers questions from The Big Idea community about her documentary Dance of the Instant.
See the comment box below.
The film won Best NZ Short Documentary, Best NZ Research and Best NZ Educational Documentary in the New Zealand competition at the Documentary Edge Awards, held on March 3 2010.
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Dance of the Instant
The New Dance Group pioneered modern dance in the period 1945-1947. The Group was controversial, years ahead of its time but a forgotten chapter in New Zealand dance history.
Filmmaker Horrocks and dance historian, Marianne Schultz evoke New Zealand’s post-war mood – a time of optimism and excitement, with a new sophistication emerging in a previously old-fashioned and provincial society. They capture how a young group, without money or institutional support, succeeded in creating something new in the arts, by sheer determination and innovative thinking.
Members included: Czech refugee Edith Lennart who learnt modern dance in Europe, Philip Smithells then head of the Physical Education programme in schools and considered a visionary, His wife Olive together with Rona Bailey, a Physical Education instructor who studied modern dance in the USA with dance pioneers such as Martha Graham were the other members. They collaborated with other prominent artists including dramatist Bruce Mason and Brian Brake, a brilliant photographer.
Shirley Horrocks
Shirley Horrocks (born in Auckland, New Zealand) has specialised in documentaries about artists. She has run her own production company, Point of View Productions, successfully for 25 years. Her work has won a number of awards and receives festival screenings around the world, in addition to television screenings in New Zealand and Australia. Many of her films (including Marti) have been shot by Leon Narbey (the DOP of the feature film Whale Rider).
Horrocks has made documentaries about the leading artists of New Zealand including poets (such as Allen Curnow), novelists (such as Albert Wendt), painters (such as John Reynolds) and photographers (such as Marti Friedlander). She concentrates on artists that, in her opinion, deserve to be much better known internationally – their work has been obscured by New Zealand’s marginal position in the world.
She aims at immersion within the artist’s world and mind, so that her subjects tell their own stories in their own particular style. This involves a process of quiet observation and dialogue over several years. At the same time, Horrocks focuses closely on the artist’s social contexts. And an extensive search for archival material – from news footage to home movies – adds a rich texture to her reconstructions of the artists’ early lives.
Comments
25 February 2010 - 18:07 PM
Thank you for your questions for Shirley Horrocks about the making of her documentary Dance of the Instant. Maricia and Marise have won a double-pass to see the film.
What is it, that drives and intrigues Shirley most about the dancers with forming this documentary?
Have some of the artists moved onto drama or continued with modern dance?
Shirley Horrocks
While I love dance, and was interested in those dancers in the group, what intrigued me most about this story was that modern dance appeared in New Zealand in 1945. Another point of interest was that a group with no money and no resources could get together to make dance in this way. It is an often recurring story in the arts in New Zealand. "Hardly any money but let's try and do it anyway."
As she says in the film, Joy Parkin went on to choreograph for the rest of her life. At 80 she still takes dance classes.
Did the archival footage help to drive your interst in this topic, or were you already exploring the topic when you found the footage?
Shirley Horrocks
I had no idea that The New Dance Group existed until Marianne Schultz (choreographer of the recreated dance in Dance of the Instant) told me about it. She had just found the footage as part of her research on NZ dance history. We were both wowed by the fact that a group in 1940s New Zealand were doing modern dance in the style of Martha Graham in New York, and decided to make a documentary about them.
What was the most challenging production you have worked on? Why?
Shirley Horrocks
The most challenging production I've worked on was the last one which is also in the Documentary Edge festival. He Wawata Whaea: the dream of an elder, is about Merimeri Penfold, an astonishing 89 year-old whaea who has championed te reo Maori all her life. I was amazed at how much involvement she had had in Maori culture and arts, and in the arts generally.She was the first teacher of Maori language at Auckland University. She has written waita and haka, been a consultant for the Williams Maori dictionary and countless other projects, co-written a book about women in New Zealand Art, and translated nine Shakespeare sonnets into Maori, to mention just a few of her achievements. The documentary was made for Maori Television and it was approriate that it should be mainly in te reo. I have studied, and continue to study Maori, but it was a challenge to make the documentary this way. It was certainly a huge learning curve and I absolutely loved it! We have made sure that there are also very good English sub-titles so that everyone can have access to this wonderful woman.