the hitch-hiker

I said,
"Where would you like to go?",
and he said,
"SheepWorld."

He asked
if we were going
"to the Dargaville burn-out comp"
and we
avoided the question.

I watched the
rear-view mirror
closely
in case of knives appearing suddenly
and lifted my back slightly forward
of the chair.

bitchin'

I’ve seen several hybrid-dance works from mature choreographers recently and I am noticing a recurring (slightly depressing) theme: Dancers get to this age where no-one wants to (or can't bring themselves to?) dance any more. Non-dancing dance works are the new 'cool'. Everyone is abandoning their art form in favour of minimalist movement, irony and satire.  


Kind of makes you feel a bit ripped-off when you’re paying eight grand a year to learn to ‘dance’. 


I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not even Miss Super Technical, like-to-kick-my-leg-above-my-head, shebam-bam dancer girl; I can fully appreciate "post-modernity" and its merits. But is anyone who is in the industry and over 35 actually making full-out dance works anymore? Maybe Douglas Wright. Awesome. One person. Probably Shona's new company she's about to establish, after years of no funding. THANK GOODNESS.  


I'm just slightly worried because this non-dancing dance trend is beginning to leak into the younger part of the industry. E.g. me. I am guilty. I think it's because we're all afraid of being shit at dancing. I am afraid of being shit at dancing. So we just don't dance or choreograph "dancey"-dance. Can't go wrong then, right? No-one can criticize your dancing if you're not actually dancing. It's easier to just be intelligent than to dance intelligently as well.


Also (getting real fired up here eh?), there seems to be this trendy elitism where you make super-abstracted work (dancer-specific, homosexual or self-deprecating themes = bonus points) and then get pissed off when people go, "Ohhh so you do contemporary dance... [blank stare, maybe a thoughtful nod] ...what's that??" Again -- I am very much a fan of the abstract. I really am. This is how I found contemporary dance. But even abstracted work can be interpretable (however the hell you want to define that word). News flash: strange beautiful madness can in fact also be intricately crafted, well-considered, physical choreography. Yes, I just used the C-word. Naughty.


If you want people to come and watch your shows -- perhaps even pay for them -- you do actually have to give them something in return(!)  Yes, there is a happy medium between roses and tutus and heterosexual love stories, and five almost-naked girls walking slowly across the stage with neutral expressions screaming sporadically. No wonder people don't want to watch dance (yes yes yes I know there are other factors e.g. the internet/global financial crisis/people are lazy/rah rah rah; I'm trying to construct an argument, ok). Perhaps this is not why you are making dance work, perhaps you don't care if it's 'watchable' or not. But if so, then please don't complain about being poor and that the public "don't get it". 


Maybe this is just how I am interpreting it, you know, freaking out a little about job prospects because I graduate next year. Actually this is probably it. But I can't help feeling there's some exclusiveness going on, and this exclusiveness is a stripey burglar in the night (probably named Hamburglar) stealthily thieving our art form from us. Like, there's this huge divide between conceptual dance and form-oriented dance. Honestly, I'm a fan of both. I wanna see both. In the SAME WORK. We are both very talented. Can we please please please marry these two stubborn-headed bodies together? It's dancing. There's no need to be exclusive. You do not have corporate ladders to climb. Seriously.


Anyway. That's about it. Oh lordy this is going to offend everyone. Also, I am a hypocrite. But I don't even care. Hate mail accepted. I've said what I wanted to say. You can too if you like. Honest, I don't even mind if you want to. I'm into angry.




(Hit publish, close laptop, run awaaayyyyy...) 

fifteen or maybe sixteen

Once I showed my friend a story and said, "look, this is the first story I've ever really written."
(Up until then everything was more like poems or thoughts.)

And she said, "It's not a story. Nothing happens in it."

That is how she defined a story: There must be an event. Something must 'happen'.

why don't you do something useful with these hands

Sometimes I feel guilty because almost everything I write begins with "I".

It makes me feel selfish. 

But I ("I") take a lot of pleasure in writing in first person.

And if I try to change it up a bit the sentence doesn't sound how I'd like it to. It loses its immediacy.



You know what?

"I" is all I've got.

I am all I've got.

There is nothing else in this world that I actually really know except for what is me, and what I know of the world from being me.

I am the one telling the story. Why pretend it's someone else? I don't want to be "she" or "her" or any sort of pseudonym. There is enough confusion about what is real and what I am, or not, without adding further ambiguity.

Anyone can look at me from the outside but I am the only person who can tell you what I am, inside out.

Without me, there would be nothing to tell you.

Without me there is no story.




("I" count:18).

day ten

I want to sprawl out in a large, open lump and have someone lie on my body and roll around over me for a bit, quite rigorously, until my flesh starts to undo and sift into the ground through the floor so that I am all separated from myself in a thin, scattered shape with lots and lots of empty space between the pieces of me.

This will feel very nice, I think.

opposite ends of the room

The other day I bought a cheap Asian wireless FM transmitter off TradeMe to play my iPod in my new car because it doesn't have a tape deck or AUX port. It's really cheap and crap. Makes all my music sound like real underground, home-recorded adolescent tears. Cool.

Today I was waiting at a red light playing some angsty, crackly music pretty loud with my window down and a very frail-looking elderly couple walked past. I felt really guilty all of a sudden -- I don't know why -- so I turned it down. They didn't even seem to hear it. Probably were deaf. I still felt guilty though. Got moody really fast and turned it off completely.

Then I felt too quiet, so I plugged the iPod back in. But I couldn't find the right connection and my iPod was angrily going kCHHHHHHHkkkkCHHHHkkkkssshhhkkkkkkktttfffffggggvvvkkk at me. Like fifty thousand primary school kids ripping open their plastic chip packets in quick succession. Irritating but in that "whatever/used to it/can't be bothered anyway" way.

Last week our choreographer Sarah said, "I'm going to play some really irritating music now." Then she played, in reverse, one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard.

bdk

$4 sushi and a latte, thank you

Hair out -- I feel like a manic creature -- semi-human -- of human, but not as in, homo sapien -- faceless. A bizarre reduction of identity.

Have lost something.

Like, a hundred thousand people can sign a petition but they're not going to do actually do anything about it.

This is a conflict.

And a bit faster, now.

Today my knee was bad. Very bad. Bad knee day. Bad knee. Bad Natalie. Awful squeaking noises, of the knee and mouth variety. I hate not being able to breathe. Beginning to create a track record.

Shit.

Twice coincidence. Three times will be a habit. Mustn't happen.

My body is NOT a small incompetent child that I have to watch over and actually my body is me, it is me it is all me. I am me, we are the same. I forget this quite a lot.

There is conflict. There is a love-hate. Things are collapsing in on themselves.

More watery eyes and it's not the wasabi.

But it's not dark, either -- it's just an acknowledgment.


(Really love -- eh).

do you wanna run with my pack

It was nice to see you today. (Amongst two others.) Opening and closing with a hug. It was nice. Because the last time we hugged I said, "I don't think I've hugged you before," which maybe was an accidental lie but was at least next to the truth. So it was nice to hug you. In a strange sense.

And then later I said to them, "It is like a hug. Like your shoulder is hugging your ear. Make it like that."

You look good in pink. Or maybe it was purple. I am red. Thank you.

I get nostalgic over small and sometimes imagined things very easily. A minor and tortuously enjoyable flaw.

Some strange sort of affection for you, as usual. Like Sunday morning teapots and loading washing machines and leaving the door unlocked all night and never using the last few metres of the hallway and self-saucing chocolate pudding.

And living by myself but with others.
Yes, it is good, and I am happy for you.

sorry

Talking
to a computer
is weird.

It makes something I usually enjoy very much
cause me to be very angry.
And frustrated.
And resentful.
And tired.
And emotional.

Then I wake up with
strange and different eyes.

You say, "sweet dreams"
and I think,
I can't remember the last time I remembered a dream.
There is no time and no vacancies.
My head is a full hotel with a polite sign up.
No-one can stay here.

so I shoved it into my bra

Remember to RICE your injuries.. (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.)

And please don't swing on the barres, you WILL break them.

More to come later (and by 'more' I mean a better/professional version) .. accompanied by performance.

Dancers: Rose Philpott, Taofia Pelesasa, Rosa Provost and Caleb Wright.
Concept, direction and edit: Natalie Clark.

sixteen revisited

I keep
meeting the
same people
again and again
but
in different bodies

and I
have not been able to hold onto any of them
and

maybe
this is a
"good thing".

you be mosston and I'll be ashworth

Let's steal horses together.

eels

quite a few minutes later I could still feel your
scratchy
red
skin
on my left forearm
and it made me want my piece of
garlic bread
back outside of me
I don't like it