Review of Yellingmouth review website

Hey I can see some movement in the dark. Is it people fumbling around searching for a voice, a community, freedom, discussion, alternatives, each other, a life, SUPPORT? In Auckland contemporary dance march 09 its starting to happen. Thanks the internet.

For something so 'ephemeral' and misunderstood, especially in a stage of metamorphosis between old skool and new skool ways, NZ dance needs real support. New voices need space to grow and bounce off each other. AWAY from formalised institutions. Its called progression.

It has nothing to do with rebellion or frowning upon the establishment as some may accuse but rather to do with creating ACTS, which stir authentic responses into a literary next level practice of call and response communication from current dance ACTIVISTS. I call them activists because they are pushing way for new and diverse spaces, ideas, ways, processes and presentations to emerge.

It has been happening this entire decade and prior to this with the likes of Sean Curham, Charles Koroneho and Mau. I call it a MOVEMENT. A gesture if you will, performance art ACTS, happenings, postmodern introversions... extroverted. I have been at the heart of this ongoing emergence and struggle for new ways to come out of new people this decade and its been tough but FUCKEN EXCITING.

Things seem to take time to really gestate in the rhizome way but they have POWER because no one or no thing is making them grow, they are just growing. Alone together. These practitioners are responding to the world, to their own call to be alive in the world in these uniquely embodied and highly intelligent ways. Just as any plant or animal does. And they deserve our attention and love. Not to be ignored and marginalised. That is an old skool paradigm.

For years, dancers have struggled to have a voice and be honoured in NZ within the realm of writing in a public space. This maverick vs institutionalised organism has created some fascinating tensions and debates, to which I have also contributed. I consider myself a forunner in this MOVEMENT. People doing stuff, together, anywhere, everywhere, with or without money and support. Really LOOKING. Really SEEING and FEELING. Creating because they want to, in/outside an increasingly commercialised, capitalist world market. Dance thinkers are on the go. And there's nothing that can stop them.

Late Night Choreographers stopped breathing when it got funded and institutionalised itself. Riddled with internal and bad blood politics we learnt that the cut throat way is not the way of activists. Or 'revolutionary'. It died a natural death because of the fight for money.

So we now have a website (how cohesively anarchic) linking minds, bodies, ideas, gestures, acts, etc etc together. I say jump in. Don't be shy, but have respect. Anything that doesn't come from respect is not the new skool way. You can examine and criticise and tease if you want but if you do it because you LOVE it your intention is clean.

Thanks to Cat Gwynne we now have a reviewing website for practitioners and dance thinkers to have a legitimate and musing space to move and be interpreted through a genuine lens and understanding which comes from other practitioners looking at their actions and somatically transmuting them in 'phenomenological' (thanks michael) written texts. Ha. Ie. reviews. Dance can't evolve without thought processes and ideas evolving before, after and during movement. Discussion, articulation, communication, reflection helps SUPPORT this action.

Chur Cat.

And just to contradict myself because I can't and will about rebellion I have a quote to end with from The ABC of Enlightment by Osho:

“The birth of the rebel is the death of the old. To me, rebelliousness is the essential quality of a spiritual person. It is spirituality in its absolute purity.”