Container Series
Not Forever, Just For Now
HELENA MAY
About the work
not forever, just for now is a contemplative lingering in the present moment.
This durational performance installation questions our experience of time, and our relationship to duration. How do we sustain our attention, as we continue to fight towards a world of collective liberation?
This performance sees time endured, deconstructed, lost and completed, as one body moves through a slow and sustained collapsing and rebuilding of the present moment. Accompanied by an intimate sound design and visual arts installation, the collective body moves through a meditative movement score, intricately experiencing itself and its relationship to time, presence and immediacy.
An embodied visual meditation unfolds; slowly and then all at once. Leading us towards collective rest as a protest against our disconnect.
As we suffer from a weakness of attention, a poverty of depth, and this paralysis of our humanness, not forever, just for now challenges us to slow down and reclaim our awareness in a fast-paced world, increasingly devoid of care.
As we are suspended in constant motion, how do we render time habitable? How do we endure our capacity to remain present in our own lives, bodies, and communities? How do we create, experience, lose and reclaim meaning within the experience of duration?
This work is fleeting, and designed to be experienced in moments or at length, for as little or as long as you so desire. Sit and wait a while, let time pass.
About the artist
Helena May
(Te Āti Awa)
Pōneke, Aotearoa
Helena May is a dancer originally from Aotearoa, of both Māori (Te Atiawa) and Pākehā descent.
As an emerging choreographer Helena is crafting a practice of atmospheric world building, creating spaces at the intersection of various artforms to be viscerally experienced.
Helena is curious about the intersection of improvisation and freestyle, dance-theatre, visual arts, design and film elements to explore world building, community building and story-telling. Helena’s practice centres people and the present moment, challenging our connection to each other and our depth of care in the digital age.
Helena has collaborated with choreographers such as Tino Sehgal (Germany), Alyx Duncan, and Sacha Copeland, and collaborated and performed with companies including Threading Frames, Atamira Dance Company, Inplay Projects (Aus), Creeping Cat (Aus), Java Dance and Black Grace Dance Company. She has featured in projects for Warner Bros, Armageddon, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Te Wiki o Āhua, and at various music festivals and club nights across the motu.
Helena has undertaken residencies at Wellesley Studios, Pōneke Festival of Contemporary Dance, Movement Art Practice in Ōtautahi and Toi Pōneke Studios in Pōneke.