NZ YouTube star explores reality through contemporary dance

NZ YouTube star explores status, choice and reality through contemporary dance

Footnote New Zealand Dance proudly presents the world premiere of The Status of Being, an exciting new work by award-winning multi-disciplinary choreographer, Alexa Wilson, tonight, Thursday 16 October.

The Berlin-based New Zealander’s full-length contemporary dance piece whirls through Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, New Plymouth and Wellington this October, investigating how the media, political players and social networks affect the choices we see and the decisions we make.

The Status of Being commands attention. Through this work, Wilson directly asks us how much freedom really exists in our choices. Intense choreography, carefully curated multimedia, spoken word and brilliantly self-referential humour combine to create a vision of three possible futures. For Footnote New Zealand Dance General Manager Richard Aindow, the work is indicative of the artistic risks required to push contemporary dance in New Zealand forward.

“Alexa is one shining example of the talent we have scattered around the globe,” says Aindow. “Footnote has big ideas, big dreams and big goals for the future. The next twelve months will be particularly significant for Footnote, so it is right that we take a moment to consider our own status of being.”

When you meet Alexa Wilson, there’s an overwhelming sense that you’re in the presence of a body possessed by perpetual momentum. An extraordinary performer, who has danced for NZ choreographic luminaries Douglas Wright, Lisa Densem and Malia Johnston, Wilson is also qualified in Film Studies, Women’s Studies and scriptwriting. A true cross-disciplinary talent, Wilson has impressed academic institutions, won overseas secondments and firmly cemented herself as one of this country’s great contemporary dance choreographers.

After Magic Box (2004) and Toxic White Elephant Shock (2009) won prestigious awards in New Zealand (Best Emerging Choreographer and the Creative New Zealand/Tup Lang award, respectively), Wilson’s talent took her to Europe in 2009, thanks to a Goethe Institute scholarship to Berlin and Turbo residency in Vienna. In 2011, Wilson returned to New Zealand, where Weg: A-Way wowed Auckland Fringe audiences, winning four of the festival’s awards, including the kingpin Auckland Arts Festival Award.

The accolades, scholastic achievements and prestigious collaborations speak volumes about Wilson’s talent and drive, explaining her status in the contemporary dance world. So if American TV had come knocking in the middle of all that, who’d be surprised?

For one, Wilson was.

In 2010, out of the blue, a YouTube clip Wilson had uploaded four years earlier somehow came across the desk of America’s ABC/Disney TV. A mere 4 minutes long, the video shows her furiously dancing in a small, humbly furnished rented room in Berlin.

The station invited Wilson to dance on American television. Though happy to explore the opportunities that the brush with YouTube sensationalism created, something about the strangeness of the experience has stayed with her.

“It’s hard not to find narcissism and distraction,” she says. “[this kind of] media is an inherent part of our world and shapes our reality acutely, through a self-consciousness, reflecting us as characters in our own lives.”

She believes modern media creates a loop, reinforcing and amplifying our sense of selves and status, for better or for worse.

“I’d like to see [modern media] used to reach mass consciousness, to change the world for the better. That is its greatest potential but also its greatest ill, as we have seen it so often used for propaganda and political manipulation.”

Richard Aindow says that The Status of Being signals the direction of travel for Footnote New Zealand Dance. The company, a registered charity which celebrates it’s thirtieth anniversary next year, is strongly committed to bringing talented New Zealanders working overseas back home to create new work, and to creating sustainable career pathways for dancers and choreographers.

Equal parts satire and play, The Status of Being is triumphantly self-conscious; a response to the struggles and euphoria of creating, refining and presenting creative work. Wilson’s genius is in revealing how the personal is political, and how an individual’s experience can reveal universal truths.

Footnote New Zealand Dance presents Alexa Wilson’s The Status of Being, at:
• Q Theatre, Auckland, on 16 October (as part of Tempo);
• Baycourt Theatre, Tauranga, on 18 October;
• The Meteor, Hamilton, on 20 October;
• 4th Wall Theatre, New Plymouth, on 22 October;
• Hannah Playhouse, Wellington, on 24 October and 25 October.

As well as the performances, Footnote dancers will hold masterclasses with local dance students and freelance dancers at each of the cities.

Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=55MR_Ct7tVY

NORTH ISLAND TOUR: ‘THE STATUS OF BEING’ (6 performances in 5 cities, 5 masterclasses in 5 cities) CHOREOGRAPHY: ALEXA WILSON
NOTE: The Status of Being contains nudity and strong language

ENDS

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