More Sharing

Yesterday evening we performed together for the first time. We showed an extract of the new work to the students at London Metropolitan University, who gave us a very warm response. I knew most of them, because I currently teach the first year students of the Performing Arts Course. It was a nice opportunity for me to share my work with them while I am also mentoring them to develop their solos. To start performing the work at this early stage feels like the right thing to do. Things are still very fresh and the performers are still finding their way through the materials, its an exciting moment for us. I am looking forwards to this Sunday when we will teach a CPD workshop and perform at Northampton University. Photo by Zoe Plummer.

Drawing things together

Dancer Lise Manavit has joined us for the second phase of rehearsals, so we are finally all together in the studio, Camilla, Keir, Lise and myself (plus three accordions). It is amazing for me to step away from being inside of the work and to see what we have been creating. The atmosphere between the performers is very warm and there is a lot of positive energy in the room, which is a gift. Particularly at this point, when a lot of the material has been created and difficult choices about how to develop the piece as a whole are pressing. And new challenges arise of how to travel through the many complex materials that require a lot of concentration and constant listening to each other. An important conceptual element of the new work is that the performers try out and learn something new, in this instance playing the accordion (to Camilla's expectation). The idea is that this helps to stay alert and open. In reality this is also very challenging, it requires some trust, stamina and curiosity in our own process.

Various sharing and workshop have been coming up and I have invited some people into the studio to see the process. Last week we gave a lecture demonstration for the MA composition students at Trinity College of Music, which was followed by a discussion. This was a great opportunity for us to perform some of our materials, to share our thoughts and to collect responses from an audience that is very familiar with working with formal structures. I was not sure what to expect and started to question my own aspiration of working so intensively with concepts that I am not an expert in. The students were very generous and curious in the way they engaged with us. Some of the questions that came up: What kind of commitment and precision do the minimalist structures, like those we borrowed from Tom Johnson, demand? When reinterpreting scores that were created by another artist is it important to stay true to the spirit of the original work? Can you respond to only one aspect of someone else's work?

Found in Translation

This week I have been traveling to Manchester to work with Sankalpam, a Classical Indian dance company directed by Mira Gokul and Stella Subbiah. Sankalpam have commissioned me to create a short piece alongside  choreographers Luca Silvestrini and Stella Subbiah herself in collaboration with theatre director Philip Zarilli. Dancers Lucia Tong, Kamala Devam, Charly Ashwell and Natalia Thorn perform the works. This was another opportunity for me to follow my obsession with counting. I found various patterns of counting in circles and gave them to the dancers to interpret. It was exciting to see the Bharata Natyam application to the numerical concet. Last Friday we premiered the programme entitled "Corporeality" at the greenroom, where Sankalpam have been resident for the last week, rehearsing and teaching open workshops. Looking at the three very different works by the three individaul choreographers, we decided on a journey that gradually strips away layers and leaves us with the physicality of the dancers.
We started with Luca's piece, which draws from the dancers' biographies, followed by Stella and Phillips work, which deals with the psycho-physical process of Abhinaya (internal acting) to end with my piece, which is a minimal and abstract dance piece. We received a very warm response from the audience at the greenroom, which was followed by a question and answer session. Someone asked, what was lost and what was gained in translation. Everyone agreed that they discovered a new ease in their process when opening it up to the performers who brought new responses and new materials with themselves. Moving outside of our familiar comfort zone and searching for new meeting points was a risk worth taking and that seemed to cross over to the audience.

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"Corporeality" tours in the UK in November to Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (6/11), Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster (9/11) , The Brindley, Runcorn (12/11), Laban Theatre, London (16+17/11), Barbican Theatre, Plymouth (19/11)