Artist statement from the rehearsal process of Le Dernier Appel/The Last Call, a new dance work co-created in New Caledonia and Australia in response to questions arising from the New Caledonian 2018 referendum on independence from France and Australia’s ongoing debates over constitutional recognition and treaty.

How can we embody the possibilities/impossibilities of decolonisation through dance?

Colonisation has defined us. To undo the past is impossible, Decolonisation is at once both a necessary goal and at the same time a false one. Instead we embrace ways of knowing that emerge from instability, unexpected reconfigurations, disruption, and the revaluing of old and new knowledges.

Inspired by the questions arising out of the New Caledonian referendum on independence from France and Australia’s debates over treaty and constitutional recognition, we ask ourselves how we, as artists and citizens, can recuperate in the aftermaths of colonisation and move forward.

Behind us are histories of invasion, migration, war, displacement, and also adaptation, transformation, and transmission. In front of us governments replicate new systems of control. While they debate the conditions for us to vote on independence or treaty, we wait… We wait in states of instability, confusion, tolerance, and frustration.

Ahead of us are living continuities, new realities that are multiple, complex, at once local and global. We face the deconstruction or collapse of old systems that define us and bind us, we gain new vulnerabilities and the possibility to lose and re-define our way.

Le Dernier Appel asks how these possibilities/impossibilities of decolonisation can disturb and regenerate dance in the Asia Pacific region, embracing reconfigurations of power and the transmission of old and new knowledges.