Te Kuititanga

Pelenakeke Brown, Rodney Bell, Katrina George and Owen McCarthy are working together to create a new multi-disciplinary work; Te Kuititanga (The Narrowing).

Everybody Cool Lives Here are supporting this Pasifika artist-led collaboration. NYC based artist Pelenakeke Brown has been selected by the Artists of Color Council at Movement Research - NYC's leading exploratory dance laboratory, to curate a series of dance works. She has selected Rodney Bell, a leader in NZ integrated dance to present a work around her theme, body sovereignty.

"Body sovereignty is being in charge of how we live in relationship with our body and in charge of how our body is in relationship with the world. I have curated queer and disabled bodies as I wanted to honor each different artist, sovereign body and the inherent indigeneity of each of them. The use of the word sovereignty is deliberate as it has many legal and historical connotations and is often used in reference to fanua (land) independence. It is fitting then that each of the artists, all from the Pacific will be using their voice and personal practice to explore their personal body sovereignty. This curatorial work traverses' borders, is across time zones and the moana (sea) to investigate the mana (power) and relationship between all the different sovereign bodies of the curated artists involved."

Rodney (Ngati Maniapoto), is an Isadora Duncan award winning artist who has extensively practiced in NZ and overseas. Following his contract with USA's leading integrated dance company AXIS (2007-2012) he didn't have the resource to return home, ending up living on the streets and overstaying. Rodney's feeling that he is unable to enter into the USA is an integral component to the work, calling to attention the current immigration crisis occurring in the US but also across the world.  In March the team will converge in Te K?iti, Rodney's whenua (land), to generate a new work honoring his sovereignty as well as the sovereign body of Te Kuiti itself.

Performer Katrina George and Designer Owen McCarthy will collaborate with Rodney, offering their perspectives and skills as Samoan artists. Te Kuititanga, or the narrowing, will be developed through prompts from Pelenakeke, conversations between the artists and through contact improvisation between Katrina and Rodney.

Together they will create a dance / video-based work that Katrina will then perform in New York come April 2019.

We see this piece as the beginning of a longer-form collaboration between all the artists and Everybody Cool Lives Here. We wish to support a multi-disciplinary and New Zealand dialogue between us all and our distinct practices.