TRAFFIC in London

As part of Big Dance we will show an extract of TRAFFIC accompanied by a workshop for families, all at Yogahome's studio in Hackney.

19 MAY, free
YOGAHOME, from 3pm
11 Allen Road, London N16
Info 0207 249 2425

Supported by

Last Month at Axis Arts

Last month's performance at Axis Arts Centre was another wonderful opportunity for us to connect with each other, share TRAFFIC with a new audience and also to collect some more feedback to develop the piece further. This is the third time that my company was invited to perform at Axis Arts and as usual it was a great day working with the venue's generous and relaxed team and performing to a nice audience. One audience member wrote a review here

TRAFFIC next at Déda

As we are getting ready for our next performance at Déda, we are learning that this exciting venue has been threatened with funding cuts. To support the venue, follow this link

Last week at the ROH

Thank you to everyone who came to our performances at the Clore Studio at the Royal Opera House last week. Someone in the audience was reminded of Fischli and Weiss photographs. Let us know what you thought of TRAFFIC.

Here are some other comments I caught from the audience:

TRAFFIC next at Royal Opera House

EXPOSURE FESTIVAL

21 & 22 July, 7pm

Clore Studio Upstairs | Royal Opera House | London 

www.roh.org.uk

Works by Alesandra Seutin, Mayuri Boonham, Sarah Dowling, Marc Brew, Cameron McMillan, Deveraij Thimmaiah and Stephanie Schober

greenroom

Following funding cuts announced earlier this year, greenroom, Manchester’s only dedicated new performance venue for nearly quarter of a century, is closing down. I have been performing and creating work at this very interesting and friendly venue, and am very sad to hear about the news. Their extraordinary legacy is currently being documented on their online archive

New audiences at Laban Theatre

Laban Theatre has yielded a plan to offer complementary tickets for local residents to see the premier of TRAFFIC on the 17th March. The aim was to increase the awareness of Laban Theatre within the local community. This video contains the views and opinions of some of those who came to that performance.

Premiere at Laban Theatre and first review

A few days after our premier at Laban Theatre I found our first review here. Thank you everyone for coming to see the performances and we are really looking forwards now to our next shows!

Final Rehearsals

 

We are in our final rehearsal stages and I have started to talk to Jackie Shemesh about ideas for the lighting design.

An advocate for independent dance artists

Gill Clarke is one of my favorite dance artists and I am very happy to hear that she just won the Jane Attenborough Dance UK Industry Award at the Critics' Circle National Dance Awards at Sadler’s Wells.  The writing says:

The Jane Attenborough Dance UK Industry Award honours an individual working in dance who has made an outstanding contribution to the art form and who, through their knowledge, skill and generosity, has had a significant effect on dance. The winner is chosen following an open nomination process, making the winner someone who is truly respected and admired by their colleagues.
 
Gill’s nominations for the award cited the importance of her impact as an advocate for independent dance artists. Also, her generosity, offering time and advice to support fellow artists, resulting in her being recognised as a major influence on the careers of many independent dance artists and choreographers.

 Gill in her award acceptance letter says: “I would like to accept the award on behalf of Independent Dance Artists – that powerful and under-acknowledged workforce that is made up of all those artists who work in the demanding freedom outside the relative security of institutions. These multi-talented artists are vital to the Dance ecology – they are the performers or choreographers of most of the contemporary work seen around the country, they act as bridge-builders, connecting a public of all ages to the rewards of engaging with dance, they teach and inspire the next generation of artists as well as established company members, and most importantly their investment and passion generates knowledge that will help us to keep re-defining Dance, ideas that will find their way into mainstream theatres such as this – and new choreographic forms in media and contexts that we cannot yet imagine.”

As an independent artist, Gill Clarke has spent her careers as a dancer, choreographer, curator, producer, teacher, mentor, researcher and has influenced many other artists. She is also the co-director of Independent Dance

Out of the studio

We had a rich and intensive day last Sunday at Northampton University, that gave me many new ideas of how to develop the work. I taught a workshop for Northants Dance and saw a performance of "Counting Piece", a short silent work for 8 dancers that I have created this summer with the student's company Playgrounds, which is directed by Matt Gough. What I really enjoyed about the seeing the students perform was their commitment to the materials and to the spirit of a group piece, which has a quite different feel to the more intimate trio we are making. Then we presented our work in progress followed by a talk. I decided to present a lot more material than before and some of it was still very raw. Vida Midgelow, who is a reader for dance and performance at the university, led the session. What are the most memorable moments after watching the two pieces? How would you describe the works if they were not a dance piece but something else? What is the performance quality of the work? Why did you decide to work with live music? The stillness and movement of the accordion was one thing that was picked up by the audience, how to capture it in a satisfying way?

Photos by Zoe Plummer

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.

Read a review

"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)

Control

"I must hasten to add that music, which is 'found', is not usually found easily. " Tom Johnson

I "found" these interesting articles and lectures online written by Tom Johnson, in which he talks about his process of composing structural music and his wider observations about composition: http://www.editions75.com/English/articleslecturesenglish.html

Music in Studio 9

In October we spend the first three weeks of our production process at Laban. We means Camilla, myself and dancer Keir Patrick, who has been joining us for the first time. The support from Laban and funding from the Arts Council allowed us to focus intensively on the process, which is something I have been craving for. We introduced a piece of glass as a new instrument to the two accordions to complement previously created materials and to create new materials. Keir and me have also been playing the small accordion to accompany Camilla. Switching from playing to moving is an interesting new development for me. We are trying to integrate the two within one choreographic pattern, considering the different expressive possibilities each option brings and also the challenges that arise from going from something familiar to something unfamiliar. I am reminded daily about what it means to work in such a structural way that I have committed myself to by introducing mathematical patterns into the process. They require a lot of practice and constant intuitive decision making about how to apply them and where to go with the materials generated. This process is slow and difficult but very satisfying and surprising when it is working.

Funding

I received a letter from the Arts Council England to offer me funding for this project. Thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement to make this happen! This comes just in perfect time as we will begin with the rehearsals at Laban in a couple of weeks.

Playgrounds

Some more research, this time I am in Northampton to work with "Playgrounds",  the universities' company of third year dance students. The output of this residency will be a 15 minutes long silent dance piece to tour dance platforms and schools in the East Midlands from autumn 2010 to summer 2011. The main question in this process is how the patterns created with the abundant numbers can be shared in a larger group. How many different ways are there to share a pattern, what is shared? Rhythm, timing, material, modifiers? What kind of relationships emerge between the performers, when working in this structural way? I introduced another type of pattern into the process, which is also borrowed from Tom Johnson: "Counting in Circles", found in his book "Self-Similar Melodies". When working with these patterns for sound, I am trying to find out how they can work with different movement materials, and I change the patterns, or overlap them in different ways, to find the meeting point between the logical workings of these structures and the qualities in my choreography. Company director Matt Gough is blogging about the process here
'untitled' from matthew gough on Vimeo.

Residency in Cork with dancer Louise Tanoto

In July we have been resident at Firkin Crane, a theater located in a former butter factory in Cork. Dancer Louise Tanoto joined me for a week. After our previous intensive collaboration with Camilla (and her accordion), we concentrated on what we can do now with just the body, focusing on the different scales of movement and physical rhythms and sounds, and how they can be shared between us. This sparse approach to movement is something I have been developing for many years in many different ways. I wondered how the new process with Camilla had influenced me. I feel I am beginning to find a distinctly different way of thinking about the phrasing of movements, so the performers can "swing" together, like Camilla would say. As part of the residency I taught a class for professional dancers and the public sharing on the last day was attended by about 50 people. This was very informal, I performed some movement material, showed some footage on video (Louise had to go back to London) and talked a bit about how we have been working. I was surprised how interested people were in hearing about our process, some were dance experts but many did not have much experience with contemporary dance. People also contributed a lot of interesting and encouraging thoughts, my favorite comment was from a woman who compared me to Charlie Chaplin. There was also a question whether the Shandon bells would become part of the piece? The sharing was also free to attend demonstrating again that its mostly money that stands between people and the arts. I do hope that we will be able to go back and present the finished work in Cork at some point soon. The stay in Cork was also a great opportunity to meet with the other resident artists, particularly with Aaron Draper and Kimberley Almquist from New York, with whom we shared a house.
Pictures below are by Andy Ferreira

When language fails

I spent a week in Berlin to develop a new project, and on that occasion got the chance to see American choreographer Meg Stuart's Do Animals Cry  at the Volksbühne. The traditional building has recently been refurbished into a more trendy venue and the audience now gets to sit on big floor cushions. What sounds like a nice idea is very unpractical to say the least. Despite sitting uncomfortably for over two hours, Meg Stuart still managed to draw me into her world.
Her piece is about situations that could take place in a dysfunctional family, with her narratives being communicated through the body rather than through verbal language. I became curious about how she works with her performers, who all seem to be developing their own individual stories with a natural presence on stage. Alexander Jenkins was one of my favorite performers. The balance between details and a bigger scene was intriguing and like nothing I have seen before. There was an intimate feeling within a large work, helped by an impressive set created by Doris Dziersk. It includes a tunnel made of small pieces of wood, which made me want to run through a forest.