Dancing in the Streets
Dancing in the Streets
Peter Black with Mark Scott
Pah Homestead
72 Hillsborough Road, Hillsborough, Auckland
20 April – 25 June, 2023
Peter Black, Megazoids, Competition Night, Hamilton, 1984
In the summer of 1984, Wellington photographer Peter Black toured the North Island with writer Mark Scott, photographing kids dancing on the streets of Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, and Wellington, to produce a photo essay for Scott’s book Street Action Aotearoa. Shot on a 35mm camera with a wide-angle lens, Black's black-and-white photos captured the Break Dancing craze of the period. His images show local dance teams—including the Megazoids, Te Puke United, and the Midtown Breakers—performing in malls and outside takeaway bars.
In the show from 1985 at Wellington City Art Gallery (now City Gallery), Black’s laminated photos were displayed alongside quotes from Scott. This exhibition at the Pah Homestead features many of these photographs, on loan from the Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira. Some images from this selection provide a local focus, taken in Onehunga, Mangere, and other suburbs in Auckland.
Mark Scott writes in the book’s introduction: ‘This book is about more than bop or break-dance, it’s about all the forgotten kids of Aotearoa and their fight for a place in the Polynesia of the 1980s.’ However, Dancing in the Streets commemorated bop just as it was disappearing from New Zealand’s streets. The irony was not lost on Evening Post critic Ian Wedde, who wrote: ‘So now that it’s all over … it ends up in an art gallery.’
As part of the show, exhibition coordinator George Hubbard commissioned graffiti murals by Kosmo and a performance by dancer-skater George Manakau. He also organised Friday-night break dancing competitions with prizes sponsored by local businesses. Hubbard wrote, ‘Break dancing and break music are intrinsically of urban black origin. However, with the mass-commercial interest in break dancing and the technological developments over the last seven years, break music has sustained more global attention than break dancing itself … As a result, the majority of hip-hop records are released on white owned and produced labels.’
Peter Black has been photographing Aotearoa’s social landscape since the 1980s. His work has been widely exhibited and published and is in many national collections, including Te Papa Tongarewa and the Auckland War Memorial Museum. His most recent publications include Motel Life (MMM Publications), The Shops (Luncheon Sausage Books) and i loved you the moment i saw you (Te Herenga Waka University Press). His work can be seen on www.peterblackphotos.com.
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