The Status of Being - Choreography with Footnote NZ Dance, New Zealand Tour 2014

Tempo Festival, Auckland, 2014 Photographs by Jose G Cano

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

New Zealand Tour :
http://www.footnote.org.nz/the-status-of-being-tour/

New Zealand Tour Reviews:
http://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=7508
http://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=7513
http://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=7536
http://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=7546
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152380276696927&set=a.10152201314286927.1073741836.668466926&type=3&theater


News Coverage, Magazine and Radio and Interviews:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/stage-and-theatre/62569426/the-world-at-her-feet
http://metromag.co.nz/culture/stage/alexa-wilson-dancing-star/
http://www.footnote.org.nz/radio-nz-interview-with-alexa-wilson/
http://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/programmes/upbeat/audio/20153198/alexa-wilson-footnote-nz
 http://bsidestories.org/2014/10/16/alexa-wilson-the-status-of-being/

A challenging new full length work from Footnote New Zealand Dance, The Status of Being by Berlin-based New Zealand choreographer Alexa Wilson creates three possibilities for our world in a dance piece presented in three shorter versions. In an effort to question our overall evolution, the pieces are each created to represent the state of our world based upon important events in history, the world today and possibilities for the future. The audience is directed to choose from the three performances which they think is past, present or future, as well as their favourite. In a provocative, satirical and layered approach to the fluctuation of our species, The Status of Being aims to find freedom and compassion in the questioning of power and the value of understanding. 

Through confrontation and humour, attention is focussed on the power of choice within ourselves over to how we respond to the world, an awakening of decision-making inherent within our own views, and empowering a sense of responsibility for ourselves and our planet. Ultimately, The Status of Being questions an engineered sense of control: how much choice do we really have in our given systemic choices? 

New Zealand Tour ;
Tempo Auckland Dance Festival, Tauranga, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Wellington October 2014, International tour 2015

Video intro https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152194655046927

Contemporary Performance Almanac 2013/Published in Performance Book NYC

http://contemporaryperformance.com/2014/02/19/feature-contemporary-performance-almanac-2013-launches/

Star/Oracle: Berlin, Brussels, Poland, New Zealand 2014

Tempo Festival, Auckland 2014

 Artspace, Auckland NZ

Volksroom, Brussels

Plac wolnosci, Poznan Poland, Place of Freedom

Poznan Design Days, Poland, 2014

The first part of this work explores satirical and embodied notions of the Star (card), which is about inspiration and guidance, mutated into a range of psychopathic and schizophrenic modern identities. Utilising an idiosyncratic movement style, props and actions it satirises aspects of current media culture's warped relationship to the environment and paves the way for the next section or piece which is also Oracle based. 

This work invites the audience to ask questions for the ‘Oracle’ to answer in radical (healing) symbolic actions, administered to the audience or performed by the soloist using objects, actions 
and words. The focus is upon encouraging the audience to ask QUESTIONS of themselves, their environment, culture/s and together co-creating a meaning as to what is happening around them in today's world through responses collectively constructed and administered within the work by the performer.

The work/s are satirical and earnest, embodying a range of physical weathers, televised and archetypal identities historically and currently, deconstructing notions of collective power and a panic trying to keep itself under control through superficial means – presented in formal strategies, which are completely fraying.

This work has been performed internationally at; Leonhardhi Kulturprojekte, Frankfurt (2012); Ada Studio, Berlin (2012); Center for Performance Research, NYC (2013); G30 Gallery & Reh Kunst Gallery, Berlin (2013); Sophiensaele for 100 Grad Festival Berlin, Brussels Volksroom, Poznan Design Festival, Poland, to be performed Art Space Gallery Auckland, Tempo Dance Festival, Auckland, Body Festival and Physics Room, Christchurch NZ, 2014.

Reviews:

Artspace Auckland  http://artspace.org.nz/doclibrary/public/publications/File5_Artspace_Crtiicaltext.pdf

Auckland and Christchurch

http://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/production.php?id=4108

https://www.facebook.com/events/294995640683873/?ref=br_tf
http://thebody.co.nz/events/details/515-qaq-with-aaa
http://www.tempo.co.nz/index.php/events/icalrepeat.detail/2014/10/10/24/-/q-q-with-a-a
http://www.sophiensaele.com/produktionen.php?IDstueck=1198&hl=en
https://www.facebook.com/100GradBerlin
http://www.ivodimchev.com/volksroom.htm
http://poznandesigndays.pl/program/
http://www.artspace.org.nz
https://www.facebook.com/ThePhysicsRoom
https://www.facebook.com/Q305QueenSt

Extraordinary Aliens: Full length Video Performance

This video work is the film version and was largely used as part of the live version of Extraordinary Aliens, performed in Month of Performance Art Berlin and Ausufern Festival 2013.

The title refers to the O1 artist visa for America called "Extraordinary Ability" and the title for a foreign resident as an 'Alien'. This work explores cultural, physical and emotional 'outsiderness' and cultural belonging in a cross-disciplinary performance art, dance and video piece spanning Germany, America, New Zealand and China. It questions the elitism of power structures deeply embedded within our global and communal society in relation to the identity and economic exchanges between bodies and cultures.

Influenced by Zizek's cultural theories and Wolfgang Suetlz's Transart Institute lecture on Cultural Translation, as well as personal cross-cultural friendships and relationships, moving between borders, it is a reflection upon relationship to community, self, body, the Earth, institutions and cultural identities. It questions the current economic investments within a 'globalised' milieu in allowing the other in and keeping the other out.

The film version layers a series of interviews with people across the globe who have migrated between countries and how this process was for them, over video footage shot in various parts of the world using a series of activist gestures, exchanges and transformations. Footage continues to be filmed, including in Beijing as part of the Red Gate Residency in 2014, where more interviews and film will be shot. It explores questions of belonging, cultural outsiderness, inclusivity and connection, what it means to belong and why as stories interweaved - as all Extraordinary Aliens on this planet.

The film will be completed during the Red Gate Residency in Beijing, China 2014.

A short version so far without interviews https://vimeo.com/77577956

Share, via Urban Arts Berlin Festival Death Rituals

https://www.facebook.com/events/522206167856791/

This performance ritual aims to work with the shedding of layers of experiences in history and media continually placed upon the female body, a sexuality often owned but not claimed, and if so then mutated again into owned not by women themselves, and if so then marginalised, in an attempt to transform what is real and what is constructed, fabricated, twisted and mutated into a burning pool of ideas - generated by the performer and by the audience alike - and burnt for our consumption in a birthday cake celebration. 

AUSUFERN Festival 2013

This work presented a segment of “Extraordinary Aliens” at Uferstudios during the festival AUSUFERN, in Berlin.

The Porn Project; Pornography in the Public Eye, Exhibition/Performance/Installation, Auckland, NZ

short version https://vimeo.com/58512386
long version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrMcSqdUQjU

https://www.facebook.com/events/292455890899491/?notif_t=plan_user_invited

Using and abusing cliches around the idea of the 'dangerous woman' (femme fatale) and paralleling this satirically with images of 'endangered animals'- esp predators- this work was poking fun at the way psychonanalysis castrates women's power. Creative Communities (CNZ) Funded and currently part of the NZ Film Archive collection. This film was screened in various locations in New Zealand;  The Porn Project, Auckland 2013, Woodenhead Opening Event 2003, Ladyfest Auckland 03, Moving Image Centre Auckland 2003, Arcadia Event, Film Section Auckland 2003 and live performances - Shut Up and Dance, Late Night Choreographers 2003, N/A Epoch, Soliton 2003.