'The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave' Aus / NZ Tour

After a critically acclaimed premiere season, the award-winning ‘The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave’ takes flight to Australia and the South Island for an audacious and bold 4-centre tour. With invitations to festivals, the show takes form in 4 exciting new formats as we take over a convent, a rail station, a royal theatre, and a library.

We now turn to our friends, whānau, community, and fellow ravers to help raise the remaining funds needed to achieve our tour. With full support from Performance Space’s Liveworks Festival and Nelson Arts Festival, any contributions go specifically toward the remount/redevelopment of the work, and Melbourne Fringe Festival and Tiny Fest expenses. Your donations will help cover:

• Melbourne and Christchurch airfares
• Melbourne accommodation
• Melbourne lighting and technical hire
• Remount and pre-production artists wages

After a hugely popular, critically and commercially successful premiere season which was achieved while heavily under-resourced, it is imperative that this time we can properly operate and employ our collaborating artists.

Creative New Zealand has generously funded us most of the way, but with our granted amount falling short of our full request, we are left with a funding gap we have to bridge.

If you loved our premiere seasons in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland or Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, or maybe you caught us performing excerpts at an event in Auckland or Berlin, we would be hugely grateful for any level of donation or support. An investment into our tour is an investment into our artists, kaupapa, and belief in creating innovative, radical, and genre redefining theatre.

We acknowledge that these are difficult times locally and globally and encourage any form of generosity to be equivalently matched to causes at home or around the world. Please continue your support and donations toward causes close to our hearts at this time; fighting for Māori and indigenous rights, and aid in Gaza as we cry for a free Palestine.

ABOUT THE SHOW & TOUR:

“An international sweaty hellhole and the cesspit I so desire to be trapped in for 48 hours. The likes of the Berlin and New York underground rave scene have always fascinated me. I believe another version of myself exists somewhere in a piss-covered club where I’ve chewed through my cheeks and some guy’s kids are spilled down my back. I am galvanized and roused by rave culture and everything it encompasses.

From Aotearoa New Zealand, Oli Mathiesen with Lucy Lynch and Sharvon Mortimer present the award-winning 'The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave', an endurance-based dance work to the booming techno album 'Nocturbulous Behaviour' by Suburban Knight. Exploring the movement vocabulary used in techno and rave culture, a contemporary nightclub between 3 bodies emerges. Relentless movement, seamless without pause, detailed down to every beat. The atmosphere and culture of a 3-day rave condensed into a high art, streamlined performance where you watch the destruction of 3 human beings commence in front of you. Indulge in the pain, the sweat; a display of pure endurance to achieve a goal. A spectacle of the human body as a victim to music, as a victim to passion, as a victim to our endless desire to achieve more. To win and win again.

Resuscitation on repeat. It is the come up and the come down all in one and highlights the beauty of feeling alive but all the consequences that come with it. It’s an ode to the past 3-year marathon of losing societal morals and political structure. Our communal loss of work, time, love, sex, eating, fighting, cleaning, holidaying, sleeping, pashing, drinking, throwing up, everything, physicalised as an artifact of what we as a people have endured. And just like listening to a love song that sings to that one breakup you had, 'The Butterfly Who Flew Into the Rave' is an acid house remix that screams f**k you to the pandemic.

Melbourne

Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne Fringe Festival | 11 - 12 October

Sydney

Carriageworks, Liveworks Festival | 23 - 27 October

Nelson

Theatre Royal, Nelson Arts Festival | 2 November

Christchurch

Tūranga Central Library, Tiny Fest | 23 November

Winner of the ‘PANNZ - Edinburgh Fringe Festival Summerhall Award’ at PANNZ Arts Market 2024

Winner of the ‘Melbourne Fringe Tour Ready Award’ at New Zealand Fringe Festival 2024

Winner of the ‘Sydney Fringe Tour Ready Award’ at New Zealand Fringe Festival 2024

Winner of the ‘Momentous Movement Award’ at New Zealand Fringe Festival 2024

“a powerhouse in all aspects.” - Theatreview

“an extraordinary dance work; a marvellous simulation of an intensely vigorous, volatile and transcendent rave. I am left feeling violently jealous not being able to join in under the infectious and lingering techno pulse.” - Theatreview

“Absolute fucking mental and physical stamina. The energy. The possession. The rave!” - Audience

“Had me gagging, sweating, gyrating, squirming in my seat. It is a total must see.” - Audience

'The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave’ is supported by Creative New Zealand, the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne Fringe, and the Playking Foundation. Presented by the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Performance Space, Nelson Arts Festival, and Tiny Fest. We acknowledge our performances are located on the unceded lands of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations, and Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

Thank you to all the collaborators, audiences, festivals, venues, studios, funders, and supporters for your love and generosity in getting us to where we are today. We are forever thankful! - Oli, Abbie, Lucy, Sharvon, and the BFR Team