Black Grace: 30th anniversary show

When the full moon sunk onto the stage, and the dancers appeared, there was the beginning of a poem tugging at me. I had to write it in the dark, on my theatre tickets (I didn’t want to annoy people with the light my phone would produce and I couldn’t find my notebook, usually in the bottom of my bag). I got home and tried to figure out the scrawl, which travelled in all directions, over top of the printing on my 3 tickets.

Sitting in the theatre, I told myself I could try to remember it when I got home, but I knew this would be useless. I’ve really got to write a poem when it hits me, particularly when it’s a poem in response to a work of art that is happening in the moment. There is something really special about writing while it’s happening. It stops your brain from getting too involved.

What I came up with is a little different from the poems I usually post here, which tend to more narrative or character based. This one is quite stripped down. The language and imagery is quite simple.

Listening to Neil Ieremia describe his new piece, ‘If Ever There Was A Time’, in the Q and A afterwards, as his ‘protest’ piece, made absolute sense to me. Neil’s show is also a whakapapa: his teacher was the famous New Zealand dancer and choreographer, Douglas Wright, whose teacher was the iconic Paul Taylor, creator of Esplanade (the second piece in the show).

Chen See, student of Paul Taylor and director of the Paul Taylor Dance Studio in New York, was at the Q and A as part of that whakapapa. Chen See talked about dance as a wordless art form and the room that gives us, the audience, to experience it in our own way.

Different of course from poetry, which uses words, but the same, in that there is still plenty of room to experience it in your own way. Who cares if the teachers of poetry told you it means this or that. Once you read it, it’s yours - to experience in your own way.

If you’re in Otautahi, catch tonight’s final show. Details here: https://premier.ticketek.co.nz/Shows/Show.aspx?sh=BGRACE25

After If Ever There Was a Time by Neil Ieremia
This is what happens when the full moon falls into my panties/ monsters that look like my look a like/ look like me leaping like ballet/ a long time ago/ look like my daughter crump/ing/ like my daughter taualuga/ing/ I’ve never been able to dance or drink/ or smoke like a monster/ a
golden lady
crosses the
fighting ring
with a sign
Round 1096/ if you add up the numbers they come to 7/ which is the number of the beast/ there is blood here/ in the numbers/ in the red ropes around our necks
Who is the dancer now?/ when all our throats are cut?/ (there is still blood/ left inside me)/ can the dancer see through the blindness?/ (did I say the dancer is blind?)/ like the leaders who lead us to our own bloody deaths?/ a
blind girl
with a rope
with a skipping rope
the kind you can
hang yourself with
I could count her jumps/ I could add them all up for you and tell you what they mean/ but who will tell us when we are the fight?/
lift me
throw me
taupou me
I am the village virgin/ here is the blood that falls from the moon/ wipe the bowl of moon this way/ wipe the bowl of the moon that way/ until it looks just like the bowl of the moon
How do I find you with monsters at my back?/ How do I find you at the end?/ In the end they will wrap our love up in bandages and our wounds will bleed/ red as the moon/
we slap ourselves
and we slap ourselves
we are virgins
we are monsters
We are all our teachers’ teachers/ all our students’ students/ we run and run towards ourselves in circles/ we jump over ourselves to get to our selves/ danger is all around
1096
1096
1096
1096
We are married to the number/ and the moon/ and the teacher/ and the fight/ and the lady/ and the girl/ and the rope/ which is
the invasion
and the beast
and the monster
and the dance.

Note: The first line is from a line in the novel, Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel