The Night has a Thousand Eyes: Borderline Arts Ensemble’s nocturnal magic

Photo credit: Supplied/Borderline Arts Ensemble

Saxophonist/composer Lucien Johnson was 22 when he left New Zealand for New York and then made Paris his home for many years. Paris, the "City of Lights", where Frédéric Chopin composed most of his 21 Nocturnes; where American dancer Loïe Fuller, described as "alchemist of light", entranced audiences at the turn of the century at the Folies Bergère with the billowing silken folds of her famous "Serpentine Dance"; where Claude Debussy’s encounter with a Javanese gamelan orchestra at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889 inspired him to use pentatonic and whole-tone scales in his music; where Olivier Messiaen invented his "modes of limited transposition", infusing his music with a kaleidoscope of harmonic colour.

Influenced by some of this Parisian artistic history, Johnson wrote his own set of piano Nocturnes in 2016. His lovely pieces were also inspired by his studies of Ethiopian music, particularly, he told me recently, the Ethiopian nun/composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, who wrote Chopin-esque music from the perspective of her Ethiopian background.

Composer Lucien Johnson

“…his lovely Nocturnes for piano were inspired by the artistic history of Paris and the pentatonic scales of Ethiopia.”

Johnson’s Nocturnes, using the mysterious harmonies of Ethiopian pentatonic scales, were premiered in Paris by expatriate New Zealand pianist Jeffrey Grice in 2017, at the Cinema de Balzac, for the Ravel Society's event marking the 80th anniversary of Ravel's death.

Grice, who has lived in Paris for most of his life, returned to New Zealand earlier this year for recitals, including playing Johnson's music live for Dunedin Arts Festival performances of The Night has a Thousand Eyes, the latest work from the company Borderline Arts Ensemble.

Dancers Michael Parmenter and Lucy Marinkovich

“The collaborative work, The Night has a Thousand Eyes, is like a gigantic web created in darkness…”

Photo credit: Borderline Arts Ensemble

Last week, The Night has a Thousand Eyes came to Wellington for performances during the NZ Fringe. It’s a stunningly beautiful hour-long show, created by artists in in music, dance, design and lighting to take us to a magical nocturnal world.

It could be described simply as a series of dance vignettes, choreographed to Johnson’s Nocturnes, with additional piano music composed especially for the show. But it is much more than this.

A profound collaborative art work, The Night has a Thousand Eyes is more like a gigantic web created in darkness, pulling together and weaving complex threads from different art forms, music, dance, light, design, film and theatre.

The two dancers are luminaries of New Zealand contemporary dance who have collaborated before. Dancer and choreographer Lucy Marinkovich is co-creative director of  Borderline Arts Ensemble with Johnson, her partner. Michael Parmenter, a much-awarded legend of our dance and choreographic worlds, has been a compelling stage presence in Aotearoa for many decades with his strong, graceful, expressive dancing and deeply thought-provoking choreography.  

The performance begins with the sound of Johnson’s piano music, as the house lights fade to darkness. Gentle harmonies circle, resonant and repetitive, a single repeated note continuing against chords as a little light creeps up inside the gauze tent that surrounds the stage area.

The repeated chord sequence is static and minimalist, with little high-pitched gestures, as a dancer becomes faintly visible through the gauze. Johnson’s music for this NZ Fringe performance is a recording of the composer’s playing. It has a lovely, calm simplicity, with short ascending scalic figures opening the 2nd section. Two figures now take the stage, Marinkovich an oversized shadow against a bright light shining from the back of the stage, Parmenter life-size.

Dancers Lucy Marinkovich and Michael Parmenter

Photo credit: Borderline Arts Ensemble

The dancing is nuanced, with exquisite flowing movements responding to the music. Their relationship is subtle, dancing sometimes together, sometimes separately, almost like shifting tableaux. Gradually, Martyn Robert’s evocative lighting takes a greater role.

As movement builds, the gauzy curtain is stirred by a breeze. Parmenter appears outside the stage area, clad in an overcoat, his back to the audience as little lights sprinkle the stage. When he turns to face the audience his expression is stern, and the music falls silent as darkness descends again.  

And so the work continues, sometimes puzzling, always compelling. The piano breaks into little jazzy oscillations, and the control of movement and lighting is virtuosic as Parmenter slowly draws back the four sides of the gauze curtain, revealing the dancing Marinkovich.

In one vignette invisible black-clad dancers become puppeteers, large white birds swirling and swooping above them. The lighting creates an atmospheric, mysterious scene while the music trills and deeper piano sonorities thicken the texture. In another, Marinkovich moves a symbolic moon across the stage, Parmenter watching, gently lit, the music and the scene thoughtful and dream-like.

In a delightful character sequence we find Parmenter in what could be a Parisian street, lit from above by several spots evoking street-lights, a gentleman out strolling, trying out a little soft-shoe tap-dancing as he moves from pool to pool of light. Here, as throughout the piece, lighting, design, costumes, music and dancing are held in perfect balance, responding to each other, each essential to an intimate evocation of the night.

Visually the most dramatic effects come at the end, as Marinkovich slides on to the dimly lit stage wearing a huge white silk dress. It gradually expands into whirling, spinning sculptural shapes that reference Fuller’s dance from over a century earlier. As the music also swirls and ripples, swathes of silk flow beyond her arms like huge wings, brilliantly lit, until the dancer’s body disappears into a costume which seems to twirl alone.

Lucy Marinkovich dances in a costume referencing the famous silk “whorl” dress of dancer Loïe Fuller in fin-de-siècle Paris

Photo credit: Borderline Arts Ensemble

In the darkness that follows, the music picks up tempo and as the two dancers face each other, the lighting takes on the pinkish tinge of dawn. Their duet is a conversation in movement, gestures finely tuned and expressive, music becoming stronger and deeper, moving harmonic shapes reflected in movement.

Marinkovich dances alone, before Parmenter returns to the stage, wearing the “whorl” costume, huge sleeves flowing off his arms as he dances and twirls. A million tiny lights are projected on to him and the dress, starlight on white wings, the colours gradually changing to pink, mauve, almost red and back to black and white, as the work ends.

It was a thrilling ending to a marvellous work and the audience, entranced and moved throughout, offered a long, excited and appreciative ovation. This dazzling creation is ideal Festival fare and deserves a longer life and a wider audience.

Borderline Arts Ensemble The Night has a Thousand Eyes, dancers Lucy Marinkovich and Michael Parmenter, original music Lucien Johnson, lighting Martyn Roberts  

NZ Fringe Festival, Wellington, March 8, 2025