I’ve had no internet the last few days, which is a bit like having my kidney removed, leaves me weak and bleeding in a bath full of ice kinda feeling. Also I’m heading back to Hong Kong and Guangzhou on Friday night and things are gonna get really uncomfortable-pain-threshold busy between now and then. On top of all my work, important things like shopping, getting a haircut (by the little ball of green joy, Frank at Fur), and shopping… mmm … shopping …

But back to fucking art, which is why we’re here. In 2001, I made a fairly crap work, which had one small four minute part made to Black Sabbath’s Supernaut, which got performed alot, like all over town for about a year. We also made a film, shot in the Collingwood Housing Commission underground carpark, which was boarded up coz of too many car torchings, rapes, murders and stuff.

We spent a freezing July winter’s day in there, dresses in almost nothing, bare foot on concrete flooded with the water dozens of fire extinguishers we found stored in the low, whale-ribbed architectural monolith of public housing. 12 hours of Paul and Marcus shooting, four dancers, and barely enough 16mm film to get the job done.

The film came from the work shadetreemechanic, which was always one of my less favourite works, like a sickly runt of the litter, a bearer of inadequate genes. Yet within that was always something, a potential, a delineation between what I’d done before, which was pure, highly formalised choreography, and the mad headlong rush into the pits of the grotesque which grows stronger in every work since.

So I found out today, the film shadetreemechanic will be part of The Body Global Dance film festival in Christchurch in July this year, screening at the Christchurch Art Gallery on July 24th. Like you need an excuse to buy your tickets now? For those who the thought of travelling to New Zealand fills them with trepidation, you can always watch it on zeroballet, where it’s been for a couple of years.