Beyond the Edge Beyond the Bar: 13.19 Hamilton: Dreams & Means

19.A Māori War Canoe (‘Waka’) at the Waikato Museum

Last Sunday Jean and I trekked to the Founders Theatre in Hamilton to attend a production of the Nutcracker Suite put on by the Moscow Ballet 'La Classique' on tour. The theatre was packed with grandparents and kids, as you might expect at a matinee performance. A Russian ballet company is as good a draw in Hamilton as it’s likely to be almost anywhere. Indeed, a company called the Imperial Russian Ballet is slated to come to Hamilton this coming November to stage a ‘Festival of Russian Ballet’. The Russian companies produce enticing performances. But what entices the Russians to come to Hamilton, aside from paying customers?

Any performing company hitting the road has to endure shortcomings. In Hamilton, in my opinion, the Founders’ stage is too small. This ‘stage-frame’, if you will, constrained the exuberance of the Moscow Ballet dancers. Or perhaps my own exuberance had been muffled before the onset of the performance. Despite its imagery on the website, the Founders Theatre auditorium has no more charm than could be found inside a brown sack. The exterior is even less attractive. Warehouses usually have the merit of clean lines but the exterior of the Founders is a clutter of junk heaped at the corner of Tristam Street and Norton Road in Hamilton. The Founders isn’t an attractive performance venue.

Was I—am I—being hypercritical? Perhaps. In life there is always a gulf between that to which we aspire and that which we achieve, between dreams and means. What governs our dreams individually or collectively is in the realm of the spiritual. And the spiritual can be divided into two realms, the religious and the ideological, the difference between the two being that the religious acknowledges a transcendence—Almighty God, a Ground of Being, higher spirits, etc.—while the ideological acknowledges nothing higher than human ideas to be made real—the will to power, the triumph of the masses, untrammeled nature unbound, 'have it your way', and so forth. Whether our aspirations are religious or ideological we inevitably fall short. If there is a role for humane criticism, it should be to suggest where or how shortfalls can or should be overcome within available means and far short of utopia.

Hamilton is a long way from being either a utopia or dystopia. Unlike so may other cities and towns in New Zealand or elsewhere that middle or muddle along and yet manage to be at least somewhat attractive, Hamilton remains—seemingly—a place shunned by those not residing there or nearby, as we are in Te Awamutu (TA). Why is that? The city’s botanical gardens are worthy of a visit, even by international travelers. I said as much in an earlier post. The gardens aside, does the city merit a visit?

Hamiltonians are no less friendly than Kiwis elsewhere. Presumably most Hamiltonians are reasonably satisfied with their city. Homes are cheaper in Hamilton than in, say, Auckland, Hamilton’s urban and urbane neighbor to the north. There’s a broad selection of public and private schools to choose from. Community volunteerism, which seems so strong in Te Awamutu and the Waikato, is presumably no less strong in Hamilton, chief city of the Waikato. The town fields strong sporting teams (the Chiefs tops among them), hosts a major university (University of Waikato) and other tertiary institutions, hosts New Zealand's largest hospital, and so forth.

But Hamilton has an image problem and the ‘image’ may mask a deeper issue. What is the issue? I’m not sure. But Hamiltonians must recognize the image problem, if I’m to credit what I’ve read in Jesse Mulligan’s How to Speak New Zenglish, a tongue-in-cheek guide to Kiwiese. Mr Mulligan is a Kiwi TV personality and comedian who was born and raised in Hamilton. In the ‘Insults’ section of his 'how-to' book, he provides the following definition for ‘Hamilton’: ‘the only place people from Auckland and people from outside Auckland agree on’. That’s a self-deprecating jab of humor whose purchasing power—if it has any—must be its legitimate currency among Kiwis. There’s something about Hamilton that doesn’t set well with Kiwis (outside Hamilton).

If I could put my finger on the ‘insult’ that is Hamilton, it’s the almost complete absence of any sense of aesthetics that one finds about public places in town. Not complete, to be sure. There are beautiful parks—the Hamilton Lake Domain is my favorite. There are flowerbeds in the roundabouts. The rugby stadium and cricket stadium are not Olympic class, but they’re certainly humane enough. They do no harm. They’re not ugly.

On the other hand, the Hamilton CBD or downtown is a veritable disaster zone of banality and dowdiness sometimes masked at the pedestrian level by clever or even warm packaging. Hamilton's numerous restaurants give the CBD almost all the warmth or pizzaz that it has. The CBD is packed with buildings whose vintage appears to be the 1960s and 1970s and whose flavor is mere functionality. With some exception (mostly restaurants), one building after another, bereft of décor and decorum, is devoted to human function minimally defined: to work, to purchase, to indulge, to administer, etc. Buildings erected under the ‘form follows function’ creed are reduced to the status of machines or tools. Should we be surprised that the Hamilton central library (Photo 19.D) resorts to hysterical decorative measures to provide some distance from its pallid surroundings? I suspect visitors with no ties to Hamilton often come away from the CBD with a sense that there’s no ‘there’ there.

While the form-follows-function ideology has worked its damage world-wide, often enough there have been older structures that by chance or design have survived, providing some sense of higher aspirations available and necessary to inform otherwise merely busy lives. Jean and I have seen this in the likes of Napier and Rotorua, Christchurch and Queenstown. We’ve heard that Wellington is quite attractive. We see and appreciate the attractions of so many New Zealand small towns, not least Te Awamutu, where we live. But attractive non-residential buildings are hard to find in Hamilton.

When we visited Hamilton this Sunday, we paid another visit, albeit brief on this occasion, to the Waikato Museum. Outwardly the museum’s appearance is at least OK, if not compellingly beautiful. The museum has a fine collection, among other things, of Māori artifacts and contemporary Māori art and craft. I once again appreciated the display of an old Māori war canoe (or ‘waka’), oriented towards a large window overlooking the Waikato River, which runs along one side of Hamilton’s CBD. As if taking cues from the Founders Theatre, the war canoe despite its prominence is hedged in (like the dancers). I would have preferred that the waka had been given more space on each side, so that I could look up at it as well as down into it.

Was ‘looking up’ to an instrument of war—however beautiful—regarded as morally and aesthetically suspect? Or was this simply a case of not having enough funds to create ample space for this beautiful, old canoe? I don’t know. In Te Awamutu the local iwi (or tribe) runs a school upon whose grounds a war canoe is stored out in the open but under cover. Check out photos 19.I, 19.J, and19.K, below. Apparently this canoe is still put afloat on special occasions. I rather think it’s given a better space for anyone's appreciation because its not so hedged in. The waka is to be looked up to. It's to be admired.

The function of a museum is not mere spectacle or inspection. A museum should be devoted to elevating instruction. That would require an admiration for beauty and truth in an age in which too often our cultural elites believe ‘beauty’ and ‘truth’ are mere human contrivances, determined by those who are in power. Humble beauty is a testament (not the only one) against the view that beauty is a 'power construct'. Look at the photos of the Hamilton central library (Photo 19.D), the Te Awamutu Library (Photos 19.E&F), and the Te Awamutu Little Theatre (Photos 19.G&H). The Little Theatre was TA’s first school. Of the three buildings which is most attractive, the most engaging, the most beautiful? I suspect most readers will elect the Little Theatre. I may be accused of stacking the deck. But the deep issue remains: What makes for an attractive or beautiful building? And more practically, How do we get more of them?

That last question is an important one for Hamilton, which lacks the beautiful settings of so many other New Zealand cities and towns, set as they are along the sea or amidst mountains. Beauty isn’t an easy thing, but we know it when we see it. Just ask the folks who produce, dance for, or see the Moscow Ballet.

Warm regards,

Tim (& Jean)