Choreographer Pivots Amidst Changing Alert Levels

Developing a career as a choreographer has no clear pathway, perhaps especially in a country as small as New Zealand. One of Waikato’s leading contemporary choreographers, Mikey Sorensen, has had a unique journey so far, and as the arts scene emerges into a new normal, he has found the need to pivot and be flexible no longer just applies to his dance moves.

Sorensen followed a fairly typical path for dancers in New Zealand through his teens, training through regular classes and sitting a variety of exams. What stands him out in his late teens, is his achievement of the top qualification across a range of dance genres – contemporary, tap and jazz. He began teaching at Drury Lane Studio in Hamilton city and quickly found a passion for choreography. At that stage in the Waikato, the main choreography opportunities lay in school and community theatre musical productions. Sorensen began to be snapped up by both, and he has choreographed a range of musicals from Disney Jr shows through to cabaret style and Broadway musicals like Little Shop of Horrors and Addams Family. Sorensen enjoys the musical theatre genre but his real passion is contemporary dance. Not being the type to sit around waiting for others to provide opportunities, Sorensen decided to create his own.

Founding contemporary dance company, Moving Parts, Sorensen committed to creating an annual programme of contemporary dance, focusing initially on the Waikato, and then expanding, taking his acclaimed production of Enough to Bats Theatre in Wellington as part of the New Zealand Fringe Festival this year. The last of the four-performance season in Wellington was a matter of days before the country began shutting down due to Covid-19.

Dr Debbie Bright, in her review Enough in 2019, describes his choreographic journey like this, “It has been interesting and intriguing to witness the development of Mikey Sorensen’s work over the past 3 years. In Bodies Entwined (2017) we saw dancing bodies moving (often very fast), interacting and making shapes and pathways in space. In The Machine (2018) we saw images of how the world can drive and mould us into forms that are incongruent with who we really are. Now, in Enough we see the internal world of one person expressed in danced images; as Sorensen maintains, this work is based on his own struggles with depression.

After his season of ‘The Machine’, in 2019 Sorensen was selected for funding and mentoring through the Creative NZ regional arts fund New Works Incubator. While the focus is on creating a performing arts work, the process is much like a new business incubator. Local and international experts mentored and challenged Sorensen through the process of idea development of Enough, and refinement, through to the finished performance.

In previous work, Sorensen has taken the usual approach of choreographing to existing music and sound. Enough was very different in that the choreography came first, with renowned composer Dr Jeremy Mayall, creating the music to fit the choreography and acclaimed word poet Michael Moore doing the same – in the first performances this happened live. Sorensen has previously said that “It was a unique way to develop work and was a complete reversal of how I have approached the creative process in the past. The choreography was led by rhythm and emotion, but it was incredibly special to see how the band translated the dance into sound without any prior knowledge of the tempos I was hearing in my head.”

Wellington dance reviewer, Caitlin Halmarick, said of the performance at Bats Theatre, “Enough truly is a relatable exploration of New Zealanders’ experience of depression. All artists involved in this production trained and currently live in New Zealand, so this is a show for New Zealanders, made by New Zealanders, about a topic that is currently plaguing the people of New Zealand. Enough is an interesting dive into New Zealand culture and how we as a community hold each other through the journey that is depression. I applaud the production company Moving Parts for tackling such a sensitive and personal subject.”

The lock-down and subsequent restrictions has had a massive impact on the arts sector. Reliant to a large extent on live events, artists found themselves with a calendar of cancellations and little income. Sorensen chose to spend the time creating. Not just dance though, but he set to creating visual art as well. “I just needed to do something to express how I was feeling. Like most people I imagine, I suddenly had minimal live contact witho others, when that had been my previous life. I was always with lots of people, and suddenly that had gone.” He also live-streamed performances of ‘The Machine’, asking for donations to support The Meteor theatre, a black box performance space where Moving Parts has held inaugural seasons of each programme.

So where to next on his choreographic journey? Coming out of the surreal circumstances Covid-19 placed the country in, by July Sorensen was looking forward to getting to work again. He is keen to explore more aspects of our hearts and minds - how we think and feel and perceive our world. He is currently exploring a collaboration with some established NZ composers and believes this will be a fresh and interesting project, working in a collaborative way, resulting in two compositions to form a one hour performance. Their intention is to develop this work specifically for touring, and they are hoping to get underway later this year. However the August resurgence of Covid-19 and increased Alert Levels has Sorensen on his toes and watching developments acutely. “We have had to build a heap of flexibility into the project in terms of ways of working, and possible dates, in case the Alert Levels keep changing.”

The Government has recognised the need for an injection of funds into the arts sector and creators like Sorensen are keen to see how this will be distributed and how it will support their work over the next year. The first round results are due in mid September. Regardless of this, and any changes in Alert Levels, this talented creator gives the clear impression he will find a way to get new work to his loyal audiences, and many new ones, very soon.

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