NEW YORK DANCER

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 55, 29 November 1937, Page 5

NEW YORK DANCER

Impressed By Poi Dances

Of Maori Girls

An arrival at Auckland by the Monterey was Madame Nirska, a noted New York dancer, who is on her way to Australia to take part in the revue, “0 Kay for Sound,” which ran with such great success in London a short time ago. Madame Nirska is one of the stars who appears in the Radio City Music Hall in New York, a theatre which is considered the largest and the most magnificently appointed in the world.

Madame Nirska lost no time in driving about and seeing the principal beauty points of Auckland. One of her visits was to the Memorial Museum, her particular interest being the Maori section. ’

“I visited your Queen Victoria School for Maori Girls,” she said, “and the girls danced for me some of their poi dances. I think the poi movements are beautiful, and I have not seen anything to equal the innate sense of rhythm of the girls. I have seen folk dances and national dances in very many countries, but there is something absolutely unique and distinctive in these. They are so much the, natural expression of the girls, the movements are so natural and so expressive that they have absolutely thrilled me.” So enthusiastic was Madame Nirska about the poi dances that when she passes through Auckland again she is going to learn them and will introduce them to her ballet in the Radio City Music Hall. She has already secured records of the accompanying music. Madame Nirska was surprised that with such an innate sense of rhythm and such a feeling for expression in movement there had arisen from the Maoris no dancer of note on the stage. “Many dancers,” she said, “had to acquire a sense of rhythm. With these girls it is an instinct?’

Madame Nirska does her own choreography. “Dancing, like everything else, is more or less dominated by speed,” she said. “The Pavlova type does not seem to appeal so much to-c/ay to people, exquisitely beautiful though it was.” One of her dances, “The Butterfly,” took her eight months to work out. In the Radio City Music Hall it was performed on a chromium stage of 38 feet, and below it was another stage on which the supporting ballet, whom she trains, performed. In the dress which she wears for this performance, 360 yaifds of material have been used, and her butterfly wings arc 24 feet across. The iridescent colouring is given by light effects.