In a powerful collaboration, Tempo: Te Rerenga o Tere teamed up with the influential force in Hip Hop Dance, culture, and arts innovation in Aotearoa, Freshmans Dance Crew, to present:
Melting Pot 2023
Throughout November, Tempo and Freshmans extended Melting Pot to various communities and schools in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at our free community day events. Your participation and support made these events vibrant celebrations of dance and community.
Let's keep spreading the joy to whānau and friends.
Melting Pot @ Te Manawa
Snapshots from an awesome day created by Freshmans Dance Crew
Meet Hads
Director of Melting Pot and Freshmans Dance Crew sharing a word or two about what’s in store for the fifth season of Melting Pot.
Meet Bailey and Josh
Choreographers from this season’s Melting Pot discuss themes explored in their work.
MELTING POT
Melting Pot is a special project for Freshmans Crew. With their demanding schedule of performances year round keeping them busy, Melting Pot is an opportunity to switch their focus inward and feed their community creativity and re-Fresh. In its fifth season, Melting Pot provides the opportunity for rangatahi to dance and express their stories through a mentored choreographic development process and presentation of a short works show.
Melting Pot is an ever evolving project that continues to innovate and develop a new show every year. This year, 2023, they are jumping into new water partnering with us at Tempo to tour and take the action to the community and schools around Tāmaki Makaurau!
Melting Pot fuses hip hop dance, contemporary movement and flavours from the Pacific to tell stories of life through a youth lens. It's stripped back, it's raw, it's authentic….it's the melting pot.
freshmans crew
Freshmans are a hip hop based dance group that have been creating magic since 2012.
Freshmans have a unique flare and fuse Pacific movements and flavours with hip hop energy to create pieces that are unique, engaging and entertaining.
Freshmans are known for their ability to tell stories through movement and have built a name in the theatre industry with their dance shows. They have created full length shows that have sold out the ASB Waterfront Theatre, The Civic Theatre and The Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre and in 2024 they will take their show Māui to the Sydney Opera House.
With over 70 young artists in their database, they are able to cater for events of all sizes and have created corporate entertainment pieces for organisations like the NRL, the WNBA, ASB, Skycity as well as some of the biggest Festivals in New Zealand.
Freshmans also run a dance academy based at Corbans Arts Estate in West Auckland giving free access to dance classes for aspiring young dancers to train in hip hop dance and learn about themselves through dance while gaining professional development, experience and insight to the dance industry and a career in dance.
All of this is driven by founder and director Hadleigh Pouesi along with his core team of dancers and supporters. A continual pioneer, advocate and inspiration to his West Auckland community and to the hip hop community and performing arts across Aotearoa, Hadleigh is committed to keeping dance accessible for all young people and maintains delivering free classes to rangatahi weekly through Freshmans Academy. A hard man to pin down due to all the exciting kaupapa he and Freshmans are busy with, we at Tempo are in admiration and are grateful to partner with and support Hadleigh and Freshmans to keep doing what they do so marvellously bringing the goodness of dance to ALL the people.
Freshmans are a great addition to any event to bring your audience to life and to add a splash of energy that is unlike any other.
To get in touch with them:
Tempo: Te Rerenga o Tere are excited to support Melting Pot in November 2023.
