MANIFESTA is the sixth edition of The Community Choreographic Project by Movement Art Practice.
An innovative platform that brings together community dancers and artists to collaborate on professionally choreographed pieces in unique, site-specific locations around our city.
Tiny Fest was proud to be commissioned to deliver Community Choreographic Project 2025 — MANIFESTA.
This performance was created with the knowledges of the crossroads, with all the respect and ode to its enchanted power: From the ancestral knowledges of African diaspora and Amerindian peoples in/from Brazil, to the tangata whenua of the land we now stand.
Photography by Owen Spargo
a party
a protest
a performance
a collective body
raving, raging, reveling.
fresh,
rebellious,
magical-and-political-potentiality
Re-inscribing memories of past and present,
we acknowledge that ancient knowledge
is always crossing with newly acquired ones.
In the dialogue between
time and space,
south and even further south,
Atlantic and Pacific,
traditions, languages, and hemispheres,
we manifest.
Inspired by the carnaval traditions in South America, in dialogue with the vibrant energy of Ōtautahi’s rave scene, MANIFESTA is bringing a party-protest performance to the Climate Action Campus uniting diverse communities through movement, performance, and activism.
Choreographed by Brazilian-born, New Zealand-based artist, Janaína Moraes, MANIFESTA is an invitation to experience how the collective body manifests its forces, thinking about the collective “party-body” as a political one: a body in potential, a body in protest. This show is designed as an experience to reflect on parties as acts of resistance. While bodies move, together, dancing, drumming, singing, we manifest our dreams of change.
Performers:
Matt Lang
Josiah Morgan
Torfrida Orme
Harriet Waldron
Lottie Borra
Shannon Gilmore
Sarah Jones
Felipe Franco
Mads Paget
Sarah Elsworth
Jenny Postle
Fox Bennetts
Shere Khan Silver
Isaac Tait
Catherine Butchard
Nat Abances
Guest Performances:
Creative Team:
Artistic Director & Choreographer - Janaína Moraes
Event Producer - Rosaria Ferguson
Sound Designer - Bea Gladding a.k.a Mr. Meaty Boy
Costumes - Michele Cotten
Business Manager - Sarah Aspinwall
Stage Manager - Caitlin Gresham
Assistant Choreographer - Josiah Morgan
Front of House - Sarah Jones
Design & Marketing - Kat Stefanova
MANIFESTA workshop series
In the lead-up to MANIFESTA, we partnered with The White Room and Stitch-O-Mat to run free community workshops. Toghether we crafted masks, crowns and estandartes (textile banners) that helo bring our party-prorest performance to life.
… weaving discussions on social action through the joy of co-creating together, and widening the conversation about climate crisis and other global/local issues.
May - June 2025