Louise Pōtiki Bryant is a choreographer, dancer and video artist. She is an Arts Foundation Laureate, a founding member of Atamira Dance Company, and a recipient of the prestigious Harriet Friedlander Residency. Her works include Kiri, Te Taki o Ura, Te Kārohiroi: The Light Dances and the upcoming Te Hā o Papatūānuku.

What her practice is

I am a multi-disciplinary artist; I weave dance, performance, video art, animation, painting and drawing together. I combine these forms to create textured video artworks for gallery spaces, solo and group dance works for theatre spaces and films.

Why she decided to blend artforms

I have always loved dance, poetry, and music – all the art forms really! As a child, I would dance around in our house for hours. I also loved to draw and paint, and this love for art has stayed with me into adulthood.

I ended up going to dance school at Unitec School of Performing and Screen Arts, and at that time they encouraged us to work with video and to collaborate with artists from different disciplines. Dance is a very collaborative art form, so that’s when I started to work with video and started to weave it into my performance work.

After I finished dance school I had the opportunity to collaborate with Rachael Rakena, a renowned Ngāi Tahu video artist and a good friend. I was always looking over her shoulder watching her work with video. Then she gave me a lesson on Premiere Pro. I was in love with video editing from then on, and started working with it more and more. Everything I did from then on was to do with video and dance. It would always be those two elements together.

When I make a choreographic work with Atamira Dance Company, I create the video design for the work as well. For me, it’s about having the vision for the entire work.

I use intuitive drawing and painting as a tool for my spiritual and mental health. Then it evolved to where I began to weave my drawings and paintings into my video and dance practices. Over time my video works have become more textured, painterly, with more animated elements.

What her average work day looks like

A lot of the time, if I’m working on a commissioned artwork, my day involves creating paintings and drawings and taking high resolution photos of them. Then I begin animating the photos in the various software programs I use, and finally editing these layers together with filmed footage of myself dancing. I work with several software programs, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Ableton Live and Videosync on my computer, and ProCreate on my iPad. It’s a very layered and dense process with many different textures, so a lot of the time is spent at the computer weaving the different elements and trying various layers and textures together.

Other days could be more about capturing footage alongside my husband Paddy Free, who I work with a lot on different projects. If I’m at this stage of the process my day might begin by getting up early to capture footage of myself or other dancers here in Piha in the early morning light. Other times my day might involve travelling to different locations with Paddy to film for a particular video work.

If I’m working on a choreographic commission my day would involve going into the rehearsal studio or the theatre to work with dancers. If I’m developing a solo dance piece for myself I often rehearse at home or at the local community hall here in Piha.

What personal investment has she put into her career

Essentially, each day I might decide when is the best time to work on the video aspect of what I do. Sometimes it will be realising, “Actually, it’s better if I work on this at night-time” or getting up early to work. It is never a 9-to-5 thing. It can be all-consuming. It’s almost my entire life at the moment as I’m working on a commissioned art work, and reaching a deadline, so I’ve essentially been working on it every moment I have.

The investment as a dancer, as a performer, you do need to keep relatively fit. As I’ve become older, as I’ve aged, the body changes and I have to figure out, “Do I want to continue to do this?” It takes a lot of stamina and also long hours of preparation in creating and presenting a work. However one thing that keeps me going is that I feel it’s important to see women of all ages on stage.

I love art and dance so much and I wouldn’t want to do anything else. That’s also what keeps me going. It’s worth it. Even though at times it can be hard, for me, I just couldn’t imagine doing other things. Being an artist feels like what I’m meant to be.

What would make her life easier as an artist

Time is a big factor. What I do, and the way I create art, particularly the video works, takes a lot of time. Related to this is the ability to let go of your art, of deciding when you’re actually ready to let it go. One of my barriers is not being able to let go of something and trust that it will be OK.

Another thing about myself is that I have a condition called OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder / Māuiui whakaauau). OCD is a widely misunderstood condition and this has been a struggle at times. In a way, that’s been a part of why I make work, because it helps me to manage my condition. A lot of my work is about how I manage the anxiety that manifests from having this condition. I also want to contribute to bringing more awareness to what OCD is, and not how it’s often portrayed in the media.

Financially, a potential barrier as an artist is being able to afford a place where I can make the kind of work I want to make, because I need space to dance, space to paint, space to edit. There’s a housing crisis going on, and being able to afford a place that serves both my husband’s needs as a composer and mine as the type of artist I am can be a barrier, but we’ve been lucky enough to find places and landlords that are kind to us, and don’t charge us too much rent.

What still excites her about making art

I just love making art. It’s about the surprise of what I create. My process is surprising to me, because I take a lot of time in my process to see where it could go – “What if I did this?” – and I like to be surprised by the outcome.

The other thing that keeps me going is mātauraka Māori. I’m inspired by atua, particularly our atua wāhine, and by the natural world, by the shifts in nature. A video work I’m creating at the moment is called Te Hā o Papatūānuku, meaning the breath of Papatūānuku, a piece commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

The kaupapa emerged out of our experience during and after Cyclone Gabrielle. We live in Piha which was quite badly affected. It had a big effect on me watching the land move around us with the flow of water, so Te Hā o Papatūānuku is about whenua in relationship to wai and how whenua is never static.

Experiencing the whenua completely change shape around us made me reflect on how Papatūānuku moves, shifts and changes form, in her constant relationship with water. I’ve related this to my own experience of being a woman, how my body is never static, and how as I age, I’m shifting and changing, just as the whenua does.

Her relationship to audience

What I love about live performance is the response you can get. It’s so different from, say, having someone watch your film or watch your video work, because performance exists only in that moment and that moment will never exist in the same way again.

It’s such a powerful thing in live performance, that relationship you have with the audience and their response to it. You can’t control that response but I’ve had some very powerful interactions with audience members.

After a performance, to hear what they got from it, and how they were moved… there’s nothing to compare with this feeling.