Direct from a tour of the USA, Black Grace returns to Christchurch to present Paradise Rumour, Founding Artistic Director Neil Ieremia’s latest full-length work. Paradise Rumour bounces back and forth through time and space, starting with the arrival of the missionaries to the Pacific, and collecting memories, visions, experiences both personal and collective.
Here come the skybreakers, god traders
renovating my culture to fit in an apartment box
with a flat screen and a flat nose
dressed in white with black book measles,
muskets and blankets
Flavour said ‘fight the power’
hand vs. knife,
knife vs. gun,
gun vs. bigger gun vs. bigger bomb, vs. bigger budget vs.
bigger dick, vs. nothing left to touch, feel, eat, see, or love
I who am
Must assimilate, replicate, dislocate,
shut the gate so the sheep don’t relocate
to Australia, where the tax rate is lower,
human rights is slower
I will return to her someday
Samoa
I owe her
— Neil Ieremia (ONZM)