Black Grace Presents Paradise Rumour

Black Grace
Paradise Rumour
By Neil Ieremia

Direct from a tour of the USA, Black Grace returns to Wellington 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)


“Black Grace is now one of our foremost cultural exports, and its founder Ieremia, leads the current arts vanguard. But Paradise Rumour is another spectacle that has distinguished itself in the field contemporary dance scene, by marrying our best performers with the boldest, nose-thumbing narratives that giddily uproot all misconceptions about Aotearoa” – Stuff

“Every so often I feel extraordinarily privileged to see something that stuns me to silence and ultimately exhaustion. That’s what happened when I saw Neil Ieremia’s latest work Paradise Rumour” – NZ Arts Review