This was a generative review idea initiated by Sean Curham in 2011 in which people were forwarded responses to the work by email and asked to add their own written experience of it. It was performed in August in Auckland at Galatos Bar as part of The Live Series: Love Me and at Golden Dawn Bar for Millionaire PM in November 2011.
Sean Curham
"An 'in progress' review.
I would like to invite you to participate in a 'review in progress' of “Rainbow Warrior” by Alexa Wilson. The idea is to write in response to the work and in the process contribute to it and the wider community. Please approach this not as a form judgement or evaluation but as a participation in the ongoing generation of work and exchange. In other words the spirit of the review is to contribute positively to the event.
I’m interested in sharing incomplete or 'in progress' ideas. A dialogue more akin to conversational exchange than written responses. Its my hope that some of this casual intent can occur whereby our individual interests can be voiced and that this may take a messy and imprecise form.
The other idea was that only those who are likely to write will receive the review which might keep it alive?
So if you would like to participate please 'add on' to the review and then pass it on to someone else who attended the performance. Could you also please forward a version to Alexa and the other contributors as you go. Last thing - please do not publish this on a public review site. (It may be published but this will be considered at a later date).
Start.
The work starts and right away there is an increased intensity in the room. I’m watching the audience, the performers and the room, and all are alert. Its exciting, loud and uncertain. People look away.
From the outset there are numerous strands of implication/investigation. Its complex work and I think challenging to 'read.' There’s much to engage with including in no particular order ideas of history(genealogy), exhibit, politics, spectacle, goldfish, Perspex, protest, having a voice, activism, entertainment, craft, aesthetic refinement and on. Its a joyous mix.
In action is a dense repertoire of gesture, of references, devices, and strategies gleaned from familiar and not so familiar places. The invention with this vocabulary of things is playful and funny – and very precise. The components have a relevance and 'meaning' within the shape of the project and I find the investment in these strands of activity most fulfilling and challenging.
I look at these components as being a format for activity – something to do – as providing a familiarity albeit one that may be 'new' in its delivery – but familiar enough to engage the audience.
The joy unfolds through the lively enthusiasm of the work, through the determination to create an event and to fulfil a very particular range of demanding activities. Its generous work - in the ideas, but also as a form of participation with the community and most directly the 'Love Me' project.
In particular I am interested in the variations in intensity. Perhaps these are achieved through the making style and the strict parameters of the work. However they appear its these variations or the constant shifting of pressure that I’m most interested in. In one way I experience the work as human and hopeful. I also experience it as gatherings of non-human forces, a material energy that is actively rearranging and reshaping in ways that are difficult to convey. I don’t view the work as accumulating an experience or message – for me the affect is immediately re-immersed back into the process.
So – am I interested in the particular meaning of each component, and its relevance to my graspable experience or am I more interested in the passing situations that express intensity as regenerating (actualized) ideas/experience?
Next please. And feel free to correct my grammar/sentence structure etc. Sean."
Christina Houghton
"I can start writing from here funnily enough I try to choose a font and I end up with this red type which seems appropriate when writing about ‘The Rainbow Warrior’ by Alexa Wilson, which I also experienced at Galatos the dark grungy venue as part of LOVE ME on August the 30th and 31st 2011. As part of The Live Series curation production team I also experience the lead up to the work which creates a specific experience for me.
I see the spacing, the walk through, the addition of performers/friends at subsequent rehearsals. The holders of the large Perspex sheet, the interpreters and the layering of music red lights and the tech shambles for the dress rehearsal! Which I am partially responsible for, yet wonderfully immersed in as we see Alexa’s projected nude body appearing in a shimmery blue light on the Perspex and on the wall behind and above, projecting recorded memory as it occurs, yesss. I then experience the opening night along with the audience that reveals Alexa’s now rainbow body painted form and the scuba suited assistants who throw a collection of objects at the Perspex body shield in an aggressive or is it in a disinterested way. The work comes alive with the entrance of the solo performer and her entourage of bodily assistants, who not only attack her but feed her and dress her in red lacy knickers, yes these are good friends?
There is a lot going on that flows over me like a musical symphony of concepts and images, I see a shattered anatomy of intertwining identities moving through time. Complex and constantly changing. I love that now familiar experience of my brain trying to make connections from what I see with ideas of love, bodies, social codes, body memories, archetypes and yes also that unknown, did I imagine this? What is the essence of what Alexa is showing? And what we are experiencing? The structure of theatrics/non-theatrics, the screaming, the cultural references, the awkward arm raised in uncertainty like a drowning (Wow) man, are triggers for this essence. This essence being a result of a created community of this shared space (creative communities!), the fact that we are experiencing this woman and her friends in an intellectual and intimate way is thrilling and I am thankful for this generous offering. How can I return the favour?
I am sure this experience is attributed to a highly refined performance presence that recognises the relational activity of performance art of this kind which Alexa refers to in her own writing. The images we see are a real of representation that are totally embodied in the moment. This dualism finds us trying to decipher between the two long after the performance is over and we scramble for things to say to each other in the post show discussion. I love this! At the forum Mark Harvey asks ‘where to now?’ for the works shown this evening and for Alexa I think ‘France’ yet I don’t raise my hand in an awkward manner as I may need rescuing. Christina Houghton"
Sarah Campus
"Love changes
It has been a while since I saw Alexa’s piece ‘The Rainbow Warrior at Galatos’. My memory recalls in snapshot - segments, feelings, characters, vibrations.
As I say ‘we’, I speak for us as 'audience'. As I recall my own feelings and experience, I express these only as mine, claiming to not know what others may think and feel, but what I picked up at my attendance.
I remember in fragments. Funny bits, intense bits. It’s sort of counterintuitive for me to play with words to attempt to ‘try and make meaning' about what I saw. Alexa’s work touches me on a visceral, energetic and psychic level, and often this exchange is more distant from the intellectualising and analytical process that can be dominant when reviewing many contemporary dance performances in New Zealand. My intellect is perked though and never divorced from my experience of watching. I can find myself in the question processing part of my brain as I see the political themes addressed in performance. The relational art aspects of her work enable me to tune into the creative message that is communicated to me as participant and viewer. I am engaged in simultaneous and multiple levels of awareness, both with words and free of them.
I see…….a cascade of images surrounding the woman Alexa and her relationship to the world and to us, spoken to us through her body via the medium of love. Territory explored on experimental grounds, under her creative political thumb. I don't think she cares much about our feelings…..how can she? They are ours to possess. She seeks not to manipulate our own emotional journey and provides a canvas for us to view and write our own script and 'meaning' about what we see - about what we mean to HER and to the world. Alexa shares a platform for us to view, question and relate to our selves in all of our humanity. She IS feeding off us, she aspires to open up the lines of communication with us, and she wants us to join in! Sometimes we are so immersed and enjoying what she is sharing with us, we ‘forget’ ourselves and perhaps ‘forget’ (and miss the opportunity) to respond to her provocations. We are taking in the landscape of love, drinking in the emotional quantum soup, calculated, watery, bomb like love predicament she torpedoes at us. Sometimes it feels like a circus entertainment event - the little girl inside me is alive with glee at the wonder and colour of the spectacle and the mercurial changing speed which feeds my own lightning brain.
In other moments I am tangibly immersed, contemplative, witness and sponge like to the offering. Thoughtful and musing about my own relationship to love. And mostly, I just love watching her move, Goddess qualities hammering the stage.
I never feel annihilated, or excluded, or shocked. I feel included and involved. O yes, I was once, I was surprised. Surprised when fucking turned to birthing. I liked that a lot. The simulated sex on stage was beautifully and inscrutiably embodied. I liked that my male friend had the guts to scream with intensity and the same fever pitch as Alexa did. Brave NZ male. We need more of you here - to contribute to the overall components and relational exchange in Alexa’s work. I have seen many females accompany her on stage when invited and match the empowerment or vulnerability she exudes to gain personal and collective benefit. Men?...not so much ---- they HAVE participated, and I have seem them feel shy and 'defer’ (squander?) under the sunlight of individual and collective female power.
What does this say about NZ men's relationship to their own power and how they interface and co-exist (or not) with female power? It’s sure wonderful to be 'bedazzled' into a female performer's iconic or embodied experience and status, and so expanding when men move beyond being 'overwhelmed' or shy by bedazzlement to step into the space created to honour and experience their humanity. My gut says that the inclusion of sexuality, sensuality and the nude female renders their brain at times a little like liquid pancake batter unable to be cooked. While I recognise that this is an ancient genetic imprint of responding to the speechless qualities inherent in a woman's body, in a performance context I would love to see more men 'step up' and contribute, to, rather than dominate, or submit to, provocations of female artists, including those who work with sexual elements.
I am interested in the ways the satellite perfomers (Alexa’s enablers?) remain unflinching in their pursuit to throw objects at our rainbow warrior. They show almost a kind of disinterested satisfaction at her beingness. Perhaps they are a symbol of the tragedies and banalities that come to all of us on a daily basis, a symbol for the 'rubbish’ that gets hurled our way as we live. For some time I am aware of each breath Alexa takes as she navigates her beautiful body through the space. The colours which ripple down her form come into clarity and then obscurity through the perspex veneer and I enjoy the interplay with my eyes the skewed perspective this creates for me. I am waiting for the 'throwers' to exhibit some emotion - to up the ante towards their target. This never happens. They remain fastidious in their action, giving them a feeling of coldness and a link to forms of human detachment that care not about the object of their attention. It seems their function is only to antagonise.
Alexa's movements behind the perspex are seamless fusion between a type of tai chi, a play with energy as it moves her, and a kind of defence stance. This position not only guards her against what she does not want, but protects her energetically from the onslaught of shit that is hurled at her. The screen also provides a physical, energetic, psychic guard and space that allows her to maintain some positive space and distance and most importantly, to remain untouched by the objects and people that 'seek to destroy' her. Being a 'rainbow warrior', this kind of set up reminds me of the computer battleship game I played as a child, where I had the opportunity to bomb the target of my desire with as much gusto and misplaced ambition.
I am struck, when the perspex screen is dropped, the visceral relief I feel to see her free, undone. Her movements now have the opportunity to creep to all edges into the space, and her cells to commute more directly to us. I feel this is what she wants and as a performer. For me, this is one of her gifts. She wants to touch us, and she wants to feel us. And she wants us to feel her.
There is a peacefulness and a divine feminine grace inside that holds this naked body. She remains calm, centered and clear in the midst of these tyrannical objects. She accepts and deflects, and really, remains delightfully unaffected.
With the screen removed, I see her delicate fingers express their way into the space and am much keenly closer to these distal ends of her frame and aware of their power and vulnerability. I love when she speaks she can feel the roof holding us, with a contradiction to me of also oppressing us, keeping us contained, not letting 'our collective' feelings out. There is tension in the room, as there often is when Alexa performs - a "what will she do next, will she shock us" kind of wondering in the audience.
This is an interesting interplay for me, and I wonder just how much as audience and performer, we play off this dynamic and exploit it for our own egoic interests, or even the quest for spiritual attainment. She knows, as her work is promoted in NZ, that there is a shock, cathartic, edgey label applied to what she shares. How many people are attending so that they may experience such qualities, want to be shocked, are craving to see someone who makes them feel the depth of their guts, hearts and sexual organs. People from many disciplines are drawn to Alexa’s performances, each with their own secret wanting? Perhaps they seek to be titillated by feeling but not having to 'contribute' because after all it's performance and hey! I'm not obligated to! I can just be safe voyeur....or....maybe...please no....she will take 'me/audience' as someone she wants to highlight, invite or provoke. From where I’m sitting, Alexa wants us to support THROUGH contribution, to become another added component to the relational art experience.
Time in this context holds some interest and meaning here for me. The images that rapidly fire have a kaleidoscopic and slightly perspective altering hue to them. I am always fascinated by the parade and juxtaposition of changing media - changing emotions, changing worlds. Alexa is becoming for me more astutely and deliberately aware of creating time space that supports the human need to adjust to new energy, change of focus and state. She gives us a breath to recalibrate in all of our cells, just a moment. Like the pancake batter men who have been invited by her to contribute are all glue with their words, or child-like boyish at best (spare Mike Holland who showed all of his empowered self), I have become so emeshed at times that I would not know what to say - like THINKING it won’t work. Just being in the gut and visceral experience of whatever is coming up in that moment is the perfect response. And, being a sensitive ‘feeler’ myself, I am keenly aware of the audience ‘freeze’ time for such moments occur in the performance. I have also felt the contrast in other countries where this kind of fluidity to participate feels more easeful and I feel seamless with my desire to contribute whatever is happening in the moment.
NZ has much to embrace in terms of ACCEPTANCE.
I remember next a sequence where Alexa appears to be giving birth, pushing out what was the outflow of her improvised presence in the moment. Favourite part!! I relate in all ways to this experience as this is one of my focuses and interest in my own dance and performance practice. I know what it is like come performance time to feel the tension present and the upping of intensity this creates in the body. It's yummy and exhilarating and freeing and scary all at the same time. It is the experience of motion that honours performance sacred space and distributes our humanity towards others.
I am sitting next to Mike as Alexa approaches him to invite him to join her for a round of screaming in multiplying rivulets of emotional movement flow, halt, jerk, and pulsation. I am surprised how loud the both of them are, and how the intensity of the pitch provokes discord within me. It feels cathartic, and at the same time soothing, like a balm to ease over the wounds of what was a battlefield for the Rainbow Warrior.
Other favourite moment. The blah blah blah nonsensical verbal stuff. Perfect accompaniment to what cannot be described in words but is alive in this room and in all of our bodies, all the time. Please, let us not try to make sense of EVERYTHING continuously in performance and in life - who ever said love was sensible!! Sensate, but 'sensible'? Those of us who have had a broken heart know this may have been washed from our idealised consciousness after the first painful breakup, divorce, death of a child, distance from land and/or family, plain ol' disappointment and loss. Speak nonsensical cause it fits with being human. I'm glad the other performers did not speak, barren faced (to my recollection) as the silent predators of self we encounter every day.
In her birthday Rainbow Warrior suit, behind the perspex screen, Alexa mirrored for me the necessity to align with clarity and calm in a 2011 world with ever-changing dynamics and stimulus of personal and global discord amongst people, environment, relationships and self. Elemental and synthetic forces of war, peace, destruction, aggravation, celebration, injustice and humour alluded to aspects of power and self imposed revolution that we all have the opportunity to participate and navigate every day as we live on this wonderful planet.
And we surely, and must continually LOVE.
Baci ed abbracci,
Arohanui
Sarah Gavina Campus"
Mike Holland
"OK, I have written something (or tried too). Please excuse my spelling, grammar, punctuation, and any words i have made up thinking they are real words.
So its been awhile since I beheld Alexa's piece. But there are still some memorable imprints etched into my databank, from her piece. An eclectic showcase of acts were presented in "Love Me" at Galatos.
All pieces shown in the conventional lineal standard format of one act at a time. Giving the audience the leisure of taking in one thing at a time. Giving the performers/choreographers their own time marked slot in which to have their pieces shine in the sun. And a sunny affair it was as I recall.
Life is not always sunny though. In fact it can be very dark and very shitty at times. As an off the cuff overall statement-Alexa's piece highlighted for me the hope of sunshine by not particularly espousing it in any grand display.
From the start, when Alexa and crew entered the space. There was great cacophony of noise. Propeller driven aircraft dive bombing my aural senses.
Into a darkened space shadowy bodies moved. I state this because, there was a light directly opposite me blinding me for the first few moments. A light screaming into my eyes and dive bombers filling my ears.
I'm under attack. Those poor brown folk in the Middle East are getting this dropped on top of them every day (for real and for keeps). Thanks to our brave, heroic soldiers, the rest of us white folk can rest easy at night knowing our nepitistic, croneyistic, sycophantic Western leaders are looking after our freedoms. Eventually I get myself together, it takes me a we while. Making me realize how easily I am thrown making me feel vulnerable.
I start to delineate the ensemble in the performance space, and I see two performers holding a large piece of perspex between them. which is reflecting light that bounces into my vision.
Facing the perspex is Alexa, who has forgotten her costume. but has had a relevant rainbow painted
down her poku.
Ahh, there is the sunshine reference. Light refracting off water droplets, creating the magnificent archway in the sky. which we will all walk through one day, to live on the other side.
The perspex is moved around, with periodic pauses. Alexa follows it around always facing it. Is it a window or her mirror? Neither actually its a barrier. A force field protecting nudey girl from the two other performers, that had been waiting in the space, prior to the start of the piece. They start throwing trash at rainbow/sunshine girl. But the perspex force field repels all attempts, no matter how vigorous.
There is so much trash in the world today. It's on the telly, on the radio, newspapers, magazines...Information overload of the most banal content. Trash talk is what I'm referring too. A form of critical communication between people who have minimal conductivity between their brain and vocal chords.
A trend that has long been in practice in the hallowed halls of parliament. Granted that the administrators, judicators, and executors, speak a slightly more waxed version of trash than the general masses.
Its not the perspex alone that is hindering the vaccination of the trash into our heroines veins. Trying to contaminate her into becoming an establishment compliant, consumer zombie.
For the perspex is being held by the two performers who brought the hero prop in from the beginning. They both show very little emotion...Just going about their job description, not emotionally invested in the political conflict going on around them. I wondered can they withstand the onslaught, will they sell out...As long as they get paid will they hold on. Problem is whose got the bigger cheque book? Whose got the dinky investment portfolio/ Who owns the biggest share in the planets assets. Not artists that for sure.
Does every human being have a price tag on which they will trade their morals, ethics, their integrity? Is their a reserve price to empathy, self responsibility?
Shit I'm rambling a bit, sorry.
Anyhow the trash throwers give up and find Alexa's missing costume. Then proceed to dress her. At one point Alexa starts talking in tongues...I then get the notion, that she is not just playing rainbow/sunshine/nudey/warrior girl.
She is evoking a Jesusetta symbol. Conceived immaculately by some fey faeries off the north western coast of Ireland. The system tried to crucify her on the trash heap for our sins, but she was recycled three days later.
And she ascended onto the stage looking down on us as retreated backwards leaving us while waving hello.
The end.
P.S.
I can tell you one thing,. Screaming has health benefits. there is some dark and shadowy stuff that gets stuck in bends and curves of our internals, and need letting out.
As an audience member-being invited to enter through the invisible wall that delineates the performance space from the rest of the space, is quite terrifying. As an audience member I construct a subconscious protective membrane of anonymity. Not having to worry about being seen, judged, critiqued. How to go from that state, into a full on performance mode. I don't know actually-it just happens, you pass a threshold and you live up to your end of the unstated contract. Boy did i scream some demons outer my pelvic floor. how refreshing did i feel, how empowered did i feel. Hey thanks for the healing Session Alexa.
Mike. H."
Inserted - reviews written in online publications
Carrie Rae, The Live Series, LOVE ME, dancestuff.co.nz
"And just when I think I’ve seen it all… enter Alexa Wilson, the ‘Rainbow Warrior’. She’s naked (duh) and painted with a black face and multi-coloured stripes down the front of her. She’s like some exotic sea creature from space floating through the flotsam and jetsam of a hard-wired wasteland. The perspex barrier protecting her is under attack from a pair of flying track suit pants, a balled-up newspaper, a shoe (?) and all manner of people-rubbish. Alexa the warrior seems to be keeping the evil at bay through a combination of witchcraft and alien kung-fu. Then suddenly she’s putting her panties on and ranting around the space in a sparkledy top, rapping about something over crazy dub music. Then she’s rolling around on the floor giving birth (or at least that’s what it sounds like). Then she breaks into a prayer (a mantra?) of sorts that is translated into both Japanese and German. Her co-horts in art, Georgia Goater, Lydia Zanetti, Natalie Clark, Megan Smith and Karin Hofko, are kind of like her team of midwives, helping things along. It’s way out there. It’s Alexa Wilson. Hell yeah."
Matthew Moore- www.theatreview.org.nz (Millionaire PM version/context)
"Alexa Wilson opens the show up with a mesmerising performance, naked and painted from her knees up to her face. The paint on her face covers her mouth and nose resembling a mask concealing her identity. Two of her fellow performers, wearing protective glasses, look controlling while holding up for her a piece of transparent plastic like a riot shield. Alexa is performing calm tai chi like movements behind the plastic as two other performers proceeded to throw junk at her. She breaks out from her realm of safety to be infected by the restraints of the society attacking her from the other side of the plastic. The movement soon becomes more erratic and vocals are used to ignite the pressure inflicted on her individuality. Some of the audience are at Golden Dawn just having a casual drink after work. Judging by their reactions they are not ready for the sharp edginess of the performance, which I think works well with the nature of the piece".
Rachel Ruckstuhl-mann
A slow turning goddess exposes her naked painted body to the voracity of human's nature – or culture – whatever these urges are to hold dominion over that which is too awesome to behold as a whole, so must be reigned in and made subjugate to our small hands. She will not be broken. Although the perspex shield held by corporate amazonian bodyguards fails from the violent attempts of two French divers to lay waste to her (bombarding her with the detritus of our plastic times), they are subsequently converted by her all encompassing love into attendants, ladies in waiting in wetsuit attire.
A theme is recurring through many performances I have seen lately, love as a healing force, love that is not confined to sexual or familial boundaries, an accepting love that seeks to move us beyond the rhetoric of nations and politics to a space of glorious and messy feeling that we are capable of holding and sharing. Alexa's works ask us to enter into this space with her as she presents performances that make us uncomfortable, bringing to the surface carnal and hidded desires, unacknowledged frustrations. I was told a while ago that I should go and walk beside the ocean and scream. It would be good for me to let go of those pent-up held-in locked-up tears and rages, making sure they don't manifest as physical maladies. Rainbow Warrior Alexa demonstrates this often in the middle section of the work, nonsensical utterances, shouts, screams, practiced (un)controlled spasms of limbs and torso, cathartic releases of tension. We share in her out-rageous expulsions.
There was a t.v. or two. Making love to each other with Alexa in the middle. Blank screens kiss, hump fleshy legs. Has someone already mentioned the revolution will not happen between these thighs, not be televised? No. Now it is streamed live from phones and pads, the technology we consume helping to slow down, show up our consumption...? Here, I feel as though we are being called back to ourselves through and as “technologies of feeling”. This, a term I don't remember hearing before using it in my own research, but through a bit of digging finding it being used in reference to stimulants, caffeine and guarana-based drinks sold in Indonesia as sexual enhancing aids! For me though, the technologies of feeling here are our sensory and perceptive capabilities in conjunction with the space of the performance itself.
As opposed to thinking about technology through an object-based lens, we could think of it as the systems we use and create in order to communicate and manifest our world as we know and experience it. The systems we are asked to engage with in this performance are ourselves, our physical and emotional systems that are capable of experiencing and speaking so much, yet are often taken for granted, silenced or drowned out. Alexa's beautiful hysteria (not a wandering womb, but a vibrating metamorphic woman), articulates this technology perfectly for me. Particularly feminine, this is a frustration of a body with no-where to express its validity of experience in a 'main-stream' of a paternal world. We search instead for those outlets for which the internal organs of desire and joy can be present and celebrated, not othered, not hidden.
The women in this performance are temporarily joined by a male audience member, continuing Alexa's provocation of us as spectators to think as participants. How does this man respond to her request to speak into a mic she hands him? I don't remember much about what he did other than he was nervous, unsure of how to talk to Alexa's presence and the space she was creating. At least we are given a chance to imagine what we might have done in his place, or what we had hoped he had done.
What would I have done? In Dunedin, at another Alexa performance, her requests for participation were more numerous, explicit and challenging, at one point asking us to do something provocative ourselves, put our selves on the line, in the light. My response was to act in an almost violent manner, pulling her 'power' over us as a dictator away (her voice/mic)... Why was it that violence was my instinctual response? Maybe an urge, one of those pent-up rages that should have been expelled into the sea. At the same time, through her provocation to become a part of her work, she allowed a sense of our action as a voice, a question to ourselves and each other. The invitation to participate was a loosening of the controls that we normally feel in the contract of a performance, us, the audience versus them, the performer. Maybe the lack of verbosity from this man was less a reflection of his capacity to speak and more to do with the hierarchy of this specific performance space, contained as it was in a collective show with most other works still operating behind the 'fourth wall'?
Possibly a favourite moment of Rainbow Warrior was the last section of meditated, translated, transformed expression of Alexa's phenomenological experience of the world. Different languages overlaying each other speak to a universality of life as understood and made present through these things we call bodies and mouths. These bodied lives carry and make history, express and know emotions, engage with, extend towards and intertwine with other bodies and lives/energies.
The point for me though is that we acknowledge this aspect of ourselves. We feel. There is no escaping or denying. No running from our bodies to a realm of pure conceptual and numbing bliss. Although a nirvana and enlightened state asks that we leave behind the bodies we exist as in search for a higher truth, for the moment, our reality is otherwise. For me and maybe for Alexa, a life that denies it's own sensation is akin to a death. The bravery of Alexa is not only in her physical nakedness, her hysteria, her exposure to audience whims, but also in the form of an insistent and repeated acknowledgement of ourselves as feeling beings, capable of feeling the world and all it has to throw at you.
My only worry is that we don't make martyrs of ourselves in accepting this onslaught of feeling. A recent conversation with a friend reinforced this danger of feeling too much, becoming overwhelmed in the face of constant negative energy. Even just the constancy of being aware of the ways in which we are affected by our surroundings on subtle levels can be very draining. For those not in the profession of consciously noting and articulating these bodily relations, the questions of feeling are relevant and challenging within an everyday experience of life. For myself and others who are, these questions are both reminders that we are not alone in our understanding and experience of the world, and that the joy as well as the burden of these skills of sensitivity can be shared, through performing them...speaking and acknowledging them. They become gifts of small and wondrous expression.
Chur."
"Hey Alexa, great to keep all the conversations, both about the work and the way in which they have been formed, within the eventual documentation. The pieces weren't written for any specific site, or review kind of deal, but more that conversation style of thing, people responding to others writings... Just wanting this idea of a generative and informal process to become something that people are aware of as another way of creating discussion rather than the review styles..."
Rachel Ruckstuhl-mann
I'd like to thank all the people who contributed to this discussion so generously or wrote a review, including the ones not published. I feel grateful to have had a lot written about my works, particularly in the past year but also in previous years. I feel lucky for the engagement made in writing with my performance work and ideas, particularly this work, as well as last year's 'Weg: A-Way' and also 'Toxic White Elephant Shock' each of which has lengthy, well written reviews and public thoughts. Thanks to Sean for facilitating this particular response to 'Rainbow Warrior', I feel it has been done in a generous spirit in which the work was intended. I hope more discussion of works in NZ comes out of the dance sector in understanding and critique of other experimental performance/dance artists. It is not always a tidy affair and I am not afraid of criticism, though I value support when it comes. This reflects my commitment to activating performance. Many thanks to the writers and readers of this discussion.
Alexa Wilson
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