Gloria – A Triple Bill contains works by New Zealanders Douglas Wright and Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, and New Zealand-born Raewyn Hill. Hill has recently become an Aussie, as she pointed out after the performance, apologising rather ruefully to the assembled New Zealand Dance Company.

The three pieces are an apt mix – all, in some way, connected to death. Patterson’s Lament was born out of the traditional Māori chant E Pa To Hau, composed during the 1860s land wars. It’s a hymn to ancestors, many of whom died in those wars, and praises the resistant spirit of its peoples and their connection to the land.

Hill’s A Moving Portrait touches on themes of fragility, grace and ageing – an indisputable precursor to death (well, maybe not always grace). Wright’s Gloria is one long, effusive fight against it. He claims we move because there is something larger than us; “we’re dancing,” he said, “holding our death in our bodies like a sleeping child – careful as we move not to wake it.”