Titless Wonders

The most terrible thing about breast cancer is that you can have this life-threatening disease and not feel sick.

– Jan Bolwell in The NZ Herald, 10 October 2002

I just thought 'this is it'. I knew at that moment that my life was going to change. I just knew, I hadn't had a diagnosis...but something deep inside me told me there's something here that is going to change my life. And it did.

– Dancer and choreographer Jan Bolwell on discovering a tumour in her breast

...cancer thrives in secrecy, hence the film.

– Director Gaylene Preston in an interview with Today Live's Susan Wood, 9 July 2001

...I thought 'do I really say goodbye now, or am I gonna fight this?' And thought, 'I'm not saying goodbye.'

– Interviewee Kay Larking describes a key moment from her fight with cancer

It scares the people around you. My children were really upset, you know. I don't think I'd ever been sick; I don't think they'd ever had to worry about me. It was kind of a novelty too, having your children worry about you.

– One of the breast cancer survivors interviewed

...she's a dancer, and actually it was from seeing Jan's dance, that's what made me make the film. Because Jan has choreographed a dance that tells her story through the whole journey.

– Director Gaylene Preston on dancer Jan Bolwell having inspired the film, in an interview with Today Live's Susan Wood. 9 July 2001

The only way I can reconnect with my body in some way is to dance.

– Dancer and breast cancer survivor Jan Bolwell on her relationship with her body after surgery

She didn't really wanna acknowledge it in a lot of ways. That got worse and worse too, as time went on, because she felt like even if she acknowledged it in any kind of a way, she would be giving in to it ... She didn't even like saying 'cancer.'

– Aimee Gruar on how her late mother Shirley Grace reacted to being diagnosed with cancer

I'm taking myself back into the parlousness of being on that hospital bed, being wheeled into a theatre where you are completely in the hands of other people.

– Jan Bolwell on creating her 2001 solo dance work Off My Chest, which features in the film

...I started to tell everybody. And then one day, I said to my husband, 'I can't tell another soul.' Because I was dying as far as they were concerned; I was dead. And they were going to bury me. And I wasn’t ready for this. So I'd stopped talking about it.

– Interviewee Ruth Bly on some of the reactions to her cancer diagnosis