Titless Wonders

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

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

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'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

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

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

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 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

...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