UNCOVER THE BOY TO RECOVER THE MAN
”We are the sons of concrete giants, finding ourselves within each other.
There are no rites of passage, so we name new ones.
This is a challenge to grow [not up, but] inwardly. Uncover the boy to recover the man.”
- ooshcon
HYPAMASS is a ground-breaking Krump Theatre work directed by ooshcon, focused on ‘uncovering the boy to recover the man’ .
Working with the Street-Born Art Form of Krump, Character-Building, Graffiti Art and sound as the languages, HYPAMASS investigates and questions the landscape that creates our current perception of intimacy and inter-personal relationships between Tagata Moana men, their desires, their trauma and their boyhoods.
With a cast of globally-ranked NZ-born Krump Dance artists collaborating and sharing their stories within the work, HYPAMASS explores the complexities of our coded environments and the ways in which we can transform the way we relate to each other. HYPAMASS is powerful statement. It is a group of Tagata Moana men forging a rite of passage for themselves and each other, uncovering their body-memory of their boy-selves to recover themselves as men.
HYPAMASS premiered in 2021 at the Pacific Dance Festival in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Dramaturg: Jahra Wasasala
Sound Design: Kamauu and Oliva ‘Spewer’ Luki
Filmed by Joshua Faleatua
Hero Image: REO Design
Director: ooshcon
Dancers/Collaborators:
Byrin ‘XIII’ Mita
Trenten ‘12AF’ Baskcomb-Omeri
Jay ‘Plainsundaee’ Mita
Producer: CONJAH
Set Design: Elliot ‘Askew One’ O’Donnell
Mentor: Ramon Nayaran
Photography: Jinki Cambernero
2018 PERFORMANCE SEASON
WELLINGTON FRINGE FESTIVAL
20 March to 24 March, Te Auaha, Tapere Iti Theatre, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (NZ)
PACIFIC DANCE FESTIVAL
14 June, Mangere Arts Centre, Tamaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (NZ)
SAN DIEGO FRINGE FESTIVAL
Five shows including workshops throughout June, San Diego
MEXICO FRINGE FESTIVAL
27 June, Mexico
BLUEPRINT
BLUEPRINT is an award-winning Street Styles Theatre work between movement artists Ooshcon and Toa Paranihi. BLUEPRINT looks at the web within people’s relationships to their art and to each other as it explores the bonds, the breakages, the tension, the complexity and the joy when we intertwine with another person’s artistry and humanity.
Adapting to any space including traditional theatres, outside theatres, schools and streets, BLUEPRINT culminated in a an ever-changing, wildly entertaining and experimental movement style between two young men as they discovered their own artistry through each others’.
AWARDS
PANNZ AWARD - Wellington Fringe Festival
International San Diego Fringe Arts Exchange Award - Wellington Fringe Festival
Outstanding Dance Award - San Diego Fringe Festival
PRESS & MEDIA:
DANZ Review:
https://danz.org.nz/blueprint%20review
Theatreview Review: https://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=10983
531pi Radio Station:
ttps://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1785964324780581&ref=watch_permalink
GLITCH
GLITCH is an Animation-style, character-based solo theatre work by Ooshcon.
GLITCH follows the solo dancer’s narrative as the programmed protagonist. The protagonist, in direct communication with the audience, shape-shifts and warps themselves through multiple characters, bodies, and faces, as they struggle to communicate their deepest desires, desires that go against their
external programming.
GLITCH is a character in conflict, a character in search for the emotion and humanity within the conditioning and social-software we are subject to. Using Ooshcon’s Street Styles specialisation of Animation technique, GLITCH is a striking, physically impressive and emotive solo work, revealing an (in)human-being remoulding themselves until they can communicate who they truly are.
2016 PERFORMANCE SEASON
4TH INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF DANCE
31 March, Annie Fayn's Dance Academy, Main Theater of the House of Culture - Te Fare Tauhiti Nui
(Tahiti)
ROYAL NEW ZEALAND BALLET TRIBUTE SHOW
July, St James Theatre, Te Whanganui-a-Tara
2017 PERFORMANCE SEASON
NZ SCHOOL OF DANCE GRADUATION SEASON
6 November, St James Theatre, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (NZ)
S.U.B
S.U.B is a full-length Street Style and Contemporary Dance Theatre work from Ooshcon and Toa Paranihi.
A heavily experimental-based movement work, S.U.B looks at the dancer’s body as a site loaded with multiple textures, tensions, experiences, reactions, emotions and information. Like a human-chemical reaction,
S.U.B explores the ways these body elements tangle, collide, react, and work together to create unpredictable languages and characters.
As the two of these language-loaded bodies collide, provoke and connect through S.U.B, the edges of the dancers’ Street Styles and Contemporary movement are pushed until what remains on stage is unrecognisable.
