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Application Form 705b/12 Please enter full name here ___________________ and date of birth here _________________________________________________________________ Multiple Choice. Please circle appropriate answer.

1. How would you describe yourself? a. A force of nature or b. A cowering simp c. An effete intellectual or d. A primordial mammalian brained tempest of emotion 2. Do you..? a. Linger upon the touch of warm skin on a winters day or b. Spend time alone perpetually writing entries in an almanac of torment 3. Have you ever...? a. Gazed into a pair of eyes that gushed an unfettered wellspring of loveliness all over you or b. Stiffened into sullen convulsions of adolescent aversion when a promise turned away 4. In recent times have you...? a. Left no stone unturned or b. Left the rocks as they stand; in stonewall silence 5. Do you...? a. Breathe fire or b. Rasp through lungs that are now charred chambers of loss 6. Have you...? a. Let go of those moments together or b. Allowed yourself to cling to tenuous filaments of hope 7. Have you...? a. Pursued your vision relentlessly or b. Walked away from the crumbling fabric of the dream you thought you'd be living 8. Do you tend to...? a. Glimpse the vista of your own life through the eyes of a loved one or b. Play the part of a rubber necker at the crash sites of your mistakes 9. Have you...? a. Known timeless moments with another soul or b. Settled for squandered telephone affection during your nights off 10. Within the last ten days have you...? a. Unbuckled the armoured robe you wear over your vulnerability or b. Let the fibrous mathematics of past conflicts grow thick over your eyes

Please respond to the following questions by circling Yes (Y) or No (N)

1. Would you let someone place their head on your stomach if that was what they wanted?

Y/N

2a. Have you recently tuned into your favorite radio station only to find it broadcasting dead air?

Y/N

2b. If 'Yes' were you unsettled by that?

Y/N

3. When stepping onto a pedestrian crossing with speeding traffic approaching, do you feel a curious lack of fear?

Y/N

4. Do you agree with the following statement? : "I would rather breathe the toxic fumes of raised voices than spend another day resting in the icebox of your absence."

Y/N

5. Have you ever really actually noticed the sheer scale of the barrage?

Y/N

6. When encountering a void that seems incalculably vast, do you tend to look for a small place to curl up and go to sleep?

Y/N

7a. Have you ever heard the faint slaps of gold coins falling on skin?

Y/N

7b. If 'No" then could you imagine that sound?

Y/N

8. Has the following scenario ever happened to you or anyone that you know? A man is talking on the telephone "Hi mum, how're you doin'?...yeah...yeah thats great!...yeah I'm good...I'm ok....mmm, mm...well I think she's taking it pretty well actually" Cut to close up on a womans face snarling and clawing at the camera

Y/N

9. Do you like watching television?

Y/N

Thank you for completing this part of the application. Please bring this form with you when you attend the follow up interview.

Kristian Larsen 09/04/1999 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________

BOG RAMPING

In a new wave of Anti-Sport creationism, the tenuous Amsterdam based collective 'Het Deeg Van de Voet' this week unleashed a dynamic new urbane activity - BOG RAMPING!!!!!!!! This group of de-activists are fast gaining a reputation for developing non intuitive innovationals for todays proactive dehydrater. Famous for previous brands of Anti-Sport such as 'Under Hill Snorkeling' and 'Non Invasive North American Crack Ball' and of course don't forget their unforgettable debut hit '43 Man Squamish" these cheese hounds have really hit the big time this time. Their proclivity knows no bounds and this week they have unleashed or shall we say "de-hinged"....BOG RAMPING!!!!!!!! Not for the sullen or the unimpaired this new Anti-Sport is sure to burst your bubble and antagonize your sleep debt as you morbidly work yourself into a downlather of disgust. ARE WE MAKING SENSE YET!!?! Ok then lets kick off with a bilateral undersumnmation of how it works but before we do that lets first fornicate with our corporate sponsors: "Knike - Just Fuck it!" anyway blah blah BOG RAMPING sold separately everything sold separately save your money now ____________________________________________________________________________ Self Portrait Draft 2 I could start with when I was born. If that were really the beginning. But it’s not a beginning. It’s a decision. A singularity. No event is ever isolated. I was born an unisolated event and found myself in a box, quite alone. My existence was a kind of blasphemy, something that need never be spoken of again. When I was eleven they gave me a typed copy of the family tree. My name had been added in blue biro at the bottom of the last page. I met him when I was eleven. We sat next to each other on the couch exchanging no noise. It was painless and puzzling. What do you say in a situation like that? “ “Hey Dad, it’s been eleven years. How’ve you been?” So we spoke in gaps and silences with moving jaws and parted company without caring. That wasn’t a beginning. It was a decision. I’d recognise her face in an instant. It’s like my face. It looks back at me from the bathroom mirror, a butoh avalanche of skin with the nose of a clown. I used to like that face. Our faces had a conversation thirty years after the unisolated event took place. I watched the exchange from behind my bloodshot eyes, unmoved and unmoving. She was attempting to ratify a version of the past using commas, pained looks, and uncomplicated shuffling. It was a plan that could never work. They keep calling me. And texting. They insist on valuing and including me. And they were the ones who had sought me out from the beginning. The long lost sibling meets two other words written on a different page by the same hand: “brother” and “sister”. It was that same hand I refused to shake when I saw him again at the wedding. . As a boy I knew I was loved. And shunned. Popularity and shame. An unfalteringly precocious failure with a will to live and a lot of promise And that young mind…it resembled a jazz score written in ironsand – problematic, weighted, easily disturbed, but light enough to be played anyway one cared to. When is not where. I grew up in Hobsonville. They had an airbase there. And there were houses that all the married ones lived in. In Whenuapai. In Bulls. In Blenheim. In civilised ways best not spoken of. One day it hit me. A car that is. A dirty great hulk of a car drove its number plate into my hip. It was as if I was a product marked ‘To Be Discontinued’. I had walked in front of it. That wasn’t a decision. It was a beginning. ____________________________________________________________________________ VENT "You docile, indolent, naive, thorny, emaciated, unattainable, destructive, divisive, dangerous, distorted, slovenly, lazy, fat, obsessive, disconcerting, unsuccessful, objectionable, hypercritical, impatient, reprehensible, inconsiderate, unclean, duplicitous, evil, derivative, mute,obsessive, insubordinate, fragmented, maladaptive, truncated, infertile, derisory, mundane, orthodox, suppressive, illogical, facile, infantile, passive, overaggressive, undependable, frail, negative, vomitous, arbitrary, undisciplined, patriarchal, nostalgic, inconsequential, presumptuous, undemocratic, unstable, transient, distant, obstructive, forgetful, imperfect, exclusionary, obscure, privileged, unresponsive, tainted, poisonous, disruptive, hypocritical, dichotomous, deceptive, blocked, scornful, unattractive, transparent, sad, impenetrable, empty, saggy, hesitant, awkward, vacuous, parasitic, inarticulate, vapid, shambolic, withdrawn, unworthy, tiresome, manic, irritable, anemic, futile, fraudulent, irremediable, portentous, immobile, flaccid, incongruous, pompous, silent, reptilian, bombastic, elitist, misogynistic, decripet, childish, nervous, cheerless, sadistic, useless, juvenile, fatuous, unmotivated, racist, murderous, bloodless, drunken, crippled, torpid, unctuous, nihilistic, cretinous, spineless, lecherous, robotic, miasmic, stiff, unwelcoming, unpromising, solipsistic, intolerable, filthy, dull, vengeful, despotic, idiotic, corrosive, volatile, grotesque, formulaic, gormless, bilious, toxic, frigid, noncommittal, plastic, wooden, stereotypical, lackluster, disposable, indecent, uninformed, dribbling, leaden, stony, acrid, unkempt, imposing, interloping, unapproachable, haughty, sexless, devious, dwarfish, insectoid, pestilent, bossy, flowery, flimsy, coarse, obtuse, stubborn, acidic, narcissistic, beaten, soulless, lifeless, fragile, inconsequential, diffident, effete, didactic, unflattering, diseased, monochromatic, illiterate, brutish, plagiaristic, voyeuristic, fatuous, ambiguous, foolish, domesticated, barbaric, tasteless, ambitious, scarred, scared, boorish, morbid, unyielding, awkward, inconsolable, wretched, asinine, beastly, ungrateful, cynical, witless AND argumentative, bullish, churlish, peevish, cantankerous, swollen, servile, syrupy, cocky, waspish, flabby, vain, misshapen, undesirable, fornicating, frozen, crapulent, populist, decaying, parasitic, stinking, opportunistic, wheezing, paranoid, nepotistic, inelegant, forlorn, damaged, masturbatory, inflated, traitorous, treacherous, fucking asshole!" _____________________________________________________________________________

The Banality of Death

It’s not that I should’ve known better. It’s more that I should’ve acted in accordance with the obvious. The water around Lions Rock at Piha Beach is unpredictable, indiscriminate, dangerous, and indifferent. I know this well enough but it didn’t stop me setting out to pester the surf like an over sized puppy. At waist level water I began to dive into the waves, not noticing how quickly I was being dragged sideways, and not caring about the sudden watery abscess beneath my feet – no sand to push off of. After gliding along with the second wave the water abruptly shifted temperament and began to boil. An acquaintance in the water near me became visibly distressed. And that was when I forgot that I know how to deal with a situation like that when I’m on my own - relax, go with it, float, and breathe. So I tried to swim to her to somehow help, not that I could. Then against all prior experience I began to fight to get out of there, mostly in an attempt to stay with my friend - it seemed important. As the waves churned, repeatedly cycling me under I struggled to breathe choking on seawater instead. I became exhausted almost immediately, barely able to swim let alone get enough air. I saw my companion now some way ahead of me signaling to the surf lifesavers. As I floundered, totally out of rhythm with the sea I refused to signal for help – it seemed absurd, as if it shouldn’t be happening and I was going to bloody well get back myself. I couldn’t though. Then everything came into focus. I felt like giving in, or giving up, or letting go, or surrendering although none of those phrases quite describe the moment. There was just me in the moment of death right there in the water. There was nothing else. Not even exhaustion. The lifeguards were alerted by a TVNZ camera man from a reality TV show. (Later my gratitude towards him would be tainted by disgust as he did my friend the indignity of filming her vomiting seawater into a bucket). The lifesavers little rubber boat sped out and collected my companion. Then they came over to where I was still kind of swimming. One of the young guards asked if I needed help. Ridiculously I told him no, that I was ok. I must've looked ok because they instantly sped off to shore with the person who was no longer my companion. She was now a spluttering slumped shape in a boat choking on her drama oblivious to my precarious position. My feet had found sand. I 'stood' in a peculiar mixture of exhaustion, irate disbelief at the unspectacular circumstances surrounding this near fatal incident, and the realization that I wasn't going to able to stand for much longer. The water began to suck backwards I knew I didn’t have the strength to fight again so I raised my arms to signal the lifeguards and was assisted back to shore. Looking back on that moment of being in direct relationship with death it seems so very ordinary, so matter of fact. Barely worthy of scrutiny. Death seems over hyped, given far too much press. It’s not that I don’t understand the impact of death on the people you leave behind. But that’s a different thing. That’s grief. I recall the moment itself didn’t have any sense of profundity. I felt no fear, no life flashing before my eyes’. Just reality. Just a clear simple experience of Now. I’m left with an inability to comprehend that moment. But I feel no need to give meaning to it or create a philosophical perspective to compensate for this state of not knowing. And I don't feel compelled to make choreography about the experience. There’s no point. It just happened. I nearly died. It happens all the time. Waitangi Day 2008 ("It happens all the time" Yikes!! Maybe I should be more careful what I say.. two weeks later a large truck clipped me whilst I was riding my bike. It forced me into the gutter where I flew over the handlebar & rolled onto a concrete verge..luckily... as opposed to going underneath the truck and getting turned into sauce) ____________________________________________________________________

Follow Your Heart and Suffer the Consequences ;

The Ghost of S

The second time I saw her I didn’t so much remember her name, I understood it.

S the Beautiful

S the Harsh

S the Devoted

S the Generous

S the Destructively Honest

S who Waited.

and waited

How to begin when the moments tell themselves

How to begin when her distrust

retensions all bindings

forewalls the truth

How to end it?

I never tell it the same the way.

never have,and I never can.

This’d be easier to talk about if I’d ever recanted the story.

Ever poured it through the air

Ever admitted I was out of my depth

Arrogance and self doubt are not a workable combination in a man

Innumerable Psychological misfirings & & & & misteppings

interspersed with sweetness

wholeness that was difficult to measure up to

with A Full Heart.

You are still in my body I have never recovered Never measured up No one has has made as deep a mark on my life

I love you

I surrender you.

Be happy

2008____________________________________________________________________

Fan Mail

My friend, My experience of you is like a non recurring number Ceaselessly subdividing beyond any arid geometry I cannot gauge the bandwidth of your resonances nor the impact of the shockwaves as you scythe space with a sensitivity that is almost brutal The light you throw out is as brief and piercing as the glint of an hourglass during an electrical storm I am Blinded gladly and again Those moments of grief they swell and flinch Pain of beauty so exquisite as you pour measure upon measure into a thirsty cup. I see your serpentine magic uncurling and recoiling slow imploding devastation gravity so immense power so fragile I wish you would stop dying And I wish I could know how you do what you do How you inscribe life and death on each other with a subtle ripple of spine But maybe thats none of my business Theres more I could write descriptions endless but such graphic indulgence in wordspeak never yielded more than a moment lost in phrase So I'll finish perhaps on this thought; The gifts I receive from your dance of life are too abrupt in their departure too long in their lingering Like musical notes that leave an infinite expanse of feeling long after their vibration has left the air I am deeply honoured to have had the opportunity to have listened so intently to what you say when you move Kristian Larsen 05/08/1999 Thank you Douglas for your choreography, your writing, & your art. I wish you well in your retirement from dance. __________________________________________________________________________________________________

Working Text for 'An Aversion to Light'

Choreographed on Touch Compass for Aquisitions 03 A man makes movements in a place he has no memory of. He struggles to learn the rules here. It is a place of forgetting, of loss, of denial. It is a waiting room a long corridor. A satellite beyond emmision range. He feels both dapper and absurd. He is alone to himself. A woman has hallucinations of home. Within this dream she can ask questions of him. In her own dimension she speaks in binary code. No one listens there She is comfortable but she is aware something is missing... something in her possesion that does not belong to her This something can be taken from her because she lacks the ability to own it She wants him to investigate to locate to Help. But she cannot feel the crime. He suspects that Time, Knowledge, and Memory have played a part in the perpetration of this act. He understands that these three things have the power to kill any child of the imagination. And as he tries to look for what caused the sense of loss he realizes that it is possible for a world to be created by taking things away. That a sense of who you are can be eroded by naming a thing, a place, a feeling. All these lost things inside an atrophied imagination. How can a detectice solve a mystery when everyone is laughing? How can you see whats around you when you have an aversion to light? _________________________________________________________

I am a (Good) Dancer

One year I was invited to conduct some research with a group of dancers through the Choreographic Platform. In the course of this workshop questions came up about the challenges intrinsic to the work being undertaken. At one point I asked the dancers to come up with movement they were good at. The workshop rapidly ground to a halt. After a little enquiry it became apparent that the reason no one felt they could achieve the task was because they felt that there was in fact nothing they could do well. As the choreographer and key observer in the room I felt that this was patently absurd. I had been repeatedly amazed at the individual skills and generosity of the participants. So I steered the task towards contemplating an 'I statement" then discussing responses. What ensued was a discussion that took up the rest of the afternoon. The dancers felt this statement was too challenging to say out loud. It was simply this: "I AM A GOOD DANCER" Every dancer in the room felt that it was impossible to or even a little dangerous to say that statement with any real conviction or justification. The reasons behind these objections were a familiar variation on a theme for anyone who is or has ever been a dancer. Examples were "wrong body shape/overweight" "not flexible / strong / fast / dynamic / musical / experienced enough" "am never offered any work so I mustn’t be good enough" "not very fast at learning movement" "I ask too many questions / am not obedient enough" etc. What it seemed to come back to again and again was a feeling of low self worth as a dancer. This begs the question - WHY? As stated earlier in this essay we work in relatively impoverished conditions and this can and does have a debilitating effect on morale. The primary emotional response under current conditions to the success of a peer is usually jealousy. But there are other factors at work here. The negative ideas and attitudes become evident when listening to the conversations that dancers have when they get together, & by observing how they behave towards one another in class and in work. There are astronomical expectations and demands that they themselves place on their own abilities to deliver. There is a kind of callousness that is common place amongst choreographers and teachers towards the dancers and towards their own peers. There is a lack of generosity when appraising each others work. I have not met a dancer who does not have an overdeveloped ability to be critical of themselves & others. There are dancers who attempt to compensate for this by inflating their own sense of stature and self importance (an absurd and redundant behavior in a culture that barely even recognizes contemporary dance) There is an abundance of tertiary dance students who act as if they genuinely believe their knowledge and abilities surpass those of current working practitioners. There are extraordinarily talented freelancers who cannot accept a compliment about their abilities to save themselves. How has this happened? I was having a conversation with a colleague recently, a choreographer. This colleague had been teaching at Unitec and had come across a student who was unable to perform handstands because of arthritis in her wrists. Disbelief at this students even considering a career in dance let alone being accepted on a dance course was expressed along with the comment "... y’,know there are dancers and then there are dancers" If that were true then Catherine Chappell’s 'Touch Compass' would be discredited as a dance company. Statements like this are dangerously false. It is more of a graphic indication of the mentality that underpins the disillusionment experienced all too often by the dancer in New Zealand. I believe that there is an insidious elitism at the heart of this unhealthy psychology. and I believe that it's roots lie deep in the womb of modern dance - ballet. Not in the technical aspect of ballet but in a preposterous and over simplistic point of view that needs to be thought about more sensibly. That point of view is a belief that in order to be a good dancer one must have extraordinary technique and that this, and this alone is the yard stick for measuring ones self worth as a dancer. I am not disqualifying technique nor the work that needs to be done to become a dancer. I believe that form and clarity are critical aspects of quality communication. What I am saying is there is no celebration or even validation of the extraordinary diversity that exists in the community. There is a mentality of "put up or shut up" in class and rehearsal. What does it take to feel good about oneself as a dancer? Isn’t it about time we did?