The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave will be hosted at Buxton Contemporary from 12 – 14 June as part of RISING.
I never thought I’d hear the words children’s book and rave in the same sentence. It doesn’t sound right. One is pure innocence, the other is sweaty chaos. Turns out, neither had New Zealand–Aotearoa’s nimble club fiend, Oli Mathieson.
“It was during lockdown in 2021 when the idea came to me,” Mathieson explains. “I was listening to the national radio. They were talking about this kids’ book that captured how children were feeling in lockdown. They said the title, and I thought it was The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave.”
The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave
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He was instantly hooked. “I just thought it was so cool that they were making a children’s book about raving,” he laughs. After a bit of frantic Googling, he realised he’d misheard it. The actual title? The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rain.
By then, the idea had already landed. That happy mishearing became the spark for what might be RISING’s most ambitious performance piece: a full-on three-day rave, condensed into 60 minutes.
“I just thought it was an interesting juxtaposition,” Mathieson says. “The innocence of a children’s book with the intensity of a rave. It made me think about the light and shade in those tones and in the actual work itself.”
Once the seed was planted, the ideas then rushed in. Mathieson, a self-proclaimed raver, dove headfirst into the scene to get even closer to the culture he was about to turn inside out.
“I feel like my career — and the constant grind of being an artist — doesn’t always lend itself to partying as much as I’d like. But I was interested in that world again at the end of 2020, especially the musical relationship to movement.”
From the beginning, he had particular non-negotiables. “It needed to feel radical. Bold. Physically brutal. The opposite of everything else out there.”
Coming out of lockdown, Mathieson noticed something had shifted. “There was a kind of safety in the work being made. A lack of danger and it wasn’t stimulating anyone.”
Post-lockdown risk-aversion made sense. Art needs backing, and no one wanted to gamble when no one had money. “But I needed to make something that challenged that,” he says.
And challenge that, he did.
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He always saw the piece as a “pandemic work”—something that captured that suffocating, housebound feeling. “It’s a hellscape for us three performers,” Mathieson admits. “Non-stop dancing. Constant endurance. It reflects what we’d all been through.”
Set against themes of queerness, culture, movement, partying, and post-lockdown freedom, The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave evolved into something more layered than he’d imagined. It couldn’t be landing at a better time either given the impact of Charli XCX’s rave-infused Brat.
“She [Charli XCX] talked about how people are craving permission to live audaciously again. To party, be bratty, take up space,” Mathieson says. “It’s hard to justify joy when there’s so much awful stuff happening in the world. But joy is resistance too.”
And while the work might on its surface look like a neon-soaked techno trip, it actually hits deeper.
“It’s coated in this electric, booming world. But under the surface, it’s about society enduring; about capitalism’s endless treadmill. The inner conflict we feel, mirrored in the external chaos.”
It’s also a full-body ordeal. Every night, Mathieson and co-performers Lucy Lynch and Sharvon Mortimer essentially run a half-marathon.
“They [Lynch and Mortimer] compared it to childbirth,” he laughs. “You go through this horrible labour, then forget. We’ve been through physically hard times, the adrenaline, the exhaustion. Parts of your body get toned. Others just bloat.”
Despite the toll, the piece has become something unexpected. Something that everyone can relate to, regardless of any external factors. “At first, we thought we knew our audience, but it took on a life of its own. Older folks say it reminds them of their raving days. Younger ones see themselves in it. It’s specific, but somehow universal.”
Perhaps that’s the secret. In a world that feels too much, too fast, and too fragmented, The Butterfly Who Flew Into the Rave offers an hour of intensity that meets us right where we are. Sweaty, wired, aching, euphoric but somehow still dancing through it.
The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave is being performed from 12 – 14 June at Buxton Contemporary as part of RISING. Tickets can be accessed here.
Beat is an official media partner of RISING.
