Born and raised in the heart of Tāmaki Makaurau, Oli Mathiesen (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Manu, Ngāpuhi) is an award-winning queer choreographer and dancer whose cv reads like a roll call of contemporary dance companies in Aotearoa, plus a few abroad. He has performed with Atamira Dance Company, The New Zealand Dance Company, Black Grace, The Farm, STRUT Dance, and renowned Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite. Oli won the international call for a new choreographic creation at the Venice Biennale Danza, so his new work, Just Between Me and Jesus, will premiere in Venice in July.
Drawing from his queer and Māori communities, Mathiesen’s choreography is innovative and precise while never losing sight of the inherent joy of dance. He thrives on challenging conventions of presentation – his work takes established dance formats and leads them into experimental and avant-garde realms.
Today Oli shares his hottest take on his medium, his best career hack, and guiltiest pleasure in a Shameless Plug – a series where we turn things over to creatives. In exchange for plugging their project, they have to spill a few secrets. Here is Oli’s:
An artwork everyone should experience at least once in their life is anything by Christopher Bauder! I recently saw his work in Berlin, and it is simply mind-boggling. He creates large-scale light, sound, and kinetic installations that simply defy all means of physics and reality. Think Tron Legacy, meets Venom’s symbiote, meets a rave. His detail in programming these technological sculptures is the same precision I aim for in my choreography. His latest work, SKALAR, made me drool thinking about all the ways dance could interact with it.
My guilty pleasure has to be furniture collecting. Or more so, the amount of hours I spend scrolling on Facebook marketplace and auction houses, dreaming of where I can fit these pieces into my house. I love love love furniture design, and have a taste for collecting eclectic vintage pieces, especially anything in chrome and leather. Yum.
My personal motto is less of a motto and more of a way of thinking. It is loosely based on “shoot for the stars” – but I haven’t quite thought of the way I would like to word it. Anyway, I always aim for the big, unrealistic, ambitious dream, something well beyond what my current resources can support. Resources will always fall short, so if you aim only for what you can afford, you limit how far you can go. If you aim beyond your means, even falling short takes you further. Don’t aim for the ceiling of your resources. Aim beyond it.
I have a few hot career hacks, but one has recently proved its worth. When I see applications pop up, whether for grants, residencies, or opportunities, that are aimed at more established practitioners or people at a certain career status or with a larger portfolio or work, I often still apply for them. I do this to a) practice application writing and articulate my idea, b) receive feedback on my writing early to refine it, and c) introduce my name and my practice to the organisation years before it is my time to apply. You also never know, sometimes it actually is appropriate to apply for these opportunities, and we let tall poppy syndrome get the better of us.
The best advice I’ve received was “they need you more than you need them”. When applying for opportunities, or huddled over my computer at 3am writing a CNZ grant, or firing out invitation letters for my show to organisations, I always remind myself of this . It's a golden piece of advice I was given that really helps ground me when the artist lifestyle feels tough, and you catch yourself in a loop of begging people and crawling on the floor picking up breadcrumbs. It is a nice reminder that many of these organisations that hold the resources or power are much in need of us to give their organisation purpose and reason.
The place I feel most creative is my childhood backyard. Every time I visit my childhood home, I get a shot of creativity that feels like a cool, minty wave of fresh air that passes over my brain. I think it’s the place that fostered my imagination, spending countless hours dreaming up worlds and characters to keep myself entertained through hot summer days. As I get older, and more practiced, and more trained, I am always chasing naivety. There is something so pure about the combination of naivety, curiosity, and creativity; I think they lead to the best artistic work. Those qualities still live in that backyard of mine.
My friends and my collaborators keep me accountable! My gosh, they are simply the best, and I am forever grateful for my artistic friends, because they get it! Being an artist can get messy, and when taking risks and swinging big, you are also creating a lot of room to fail and make mistakes. The past two years have seen an exponential amount of growing and learning, and with that, tripping and fumbling. It has been my friends who have picked me up, said the hard truths to my face, and then continued walking alongside me as we venture into the unknown together. Accountability doesn’t mean cancelling, it means hard conversations, acknowledging, and a whole lot of aroha.
My hot take on contemporary dance is that yeah, it is confusing and weird as heck, and many times I also walk out of a theatre not understanding what it ‘meant’. But at the same time, we as audiences are so used to other abstract forms of art. Think of house or orchestral music, where there aren’t any lyrics to guide you through themes, narratives, or characters. You listen to it because it evokes a tone or mood, or just because it sounds beautiful. I think we need to watch contemporary dance with that same lens, and know that it is an abstract form, and that it doesn’t have to make sense. Sometimes dance can also just evoke a tone or mood, or just look beautiful.
My most embarrassing career moment was at the holy grail of dance theatres in New York City. I cannot believe I am about to share this story! We were on tour with Atamira Dance Company in the US, and we were about to open our week-long season at the prestigious Joyce Theatre in New York City. The Joyce is the holy grail of dance theatres, with the likes of Graham, Cunningham, and Ailey all performing there. It is opening night of the show, and I am feeling slightly more nervous than usual. The show begins, and the first thing I do is flit across the stage performing a pīwakawaka solo. As I hit my centre stage mark, I quickly spin to face the back, and drop down into a low plié, and… toot. Wow, the first thing I do, within the first two minutes of the show, is let rip in front of the whole Joyce Theatre. That solo is now renamed “the farty faintail”.
My shameless plug is The Butterfly Who Flew Into the Rave, an endurance-based dance work presented by me (Oli Mathiesen) with Lucy Lynch and Sharvon Mortimer, 12–14 March at Q Theatre.
We are beyond thrilled, after two years of touring, to bring it back to Tāmaki Makaurau to Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival 2026! The award-winning dance work, to the booming techno album 'Nocturbulous Behaviour' by Suburban Knight, condenses a 3-day rave into an hour. Relentless movement, seamless without pause, detailed down to every beat. Exploring the movement used in techno and rave culture, witness the destruction of three humans. Indulge in the pain, the sweat; a display of pure endurance to achieve a goal. A spectacle of the human body as a victim to music, to passion, to our endless desire to achieve more. To win and win again.
Voyeur and Balcony seats are available to purchase if you wish to stand and dance along with us all evening. On the 14th we will host an all night rave directly after the show with local DJ’s and talent. Cannot wait to see you there, let’s rave!
