Feedack re ‘blue’ – from Artist Dee Shaw:
“The presence of Angela’s dress was the first sound that I heard shushing across the floor, satin against concrete, this set the tone for a silent elegant start to ” Blue”
The large space became the outer body which encompassed her own and this set up a dialogue between performer and surroundings. The windows, a striking aspect of the space became the conversation piece between the two elements, a need to open them and to let in air and to bring in the outside became part of the ritual.
A single chair was the only furniture. Angela sat silently her reverie broken only by the raucous cries of seagulls which she turned to acknowledge striking up a conversation with the outside.
After crawling on all fours she tries frantically to rub the dust off her hands. In her red satin dress this became reminiscent of Lady Macbeth trying to clean away her sins of murder, this changed the mood of the piece. The second prop ( lengths of sky blue net ) she wound around herself displaying a reference to the virgin Mary, two polar opposites of the myth of womanhood. The finale was the unfurling of the net through the window and into the the courtyard below.
A beautiful experience, where simplicity unfolded into introspection.”
written feedback from audience member, artist and curator Carole Luby on the ‘blue’ performance installation:
“Angela Kennedy believes in how the body can convey, through the slightest of movements, a deep and resonating connection with all bodies.
Her work Blue in the gorgeous light and spacious environment on the first floor of Highbridge studios moved me in ways that I had not anticipated. As an ex dancer, but still enjoying a dialogue through her body, she refuses to give us the usual conventions of what we think we know about how the body should respond as in a choreographed intervention; she transforms the way in which we approach our normative ways of viewing and understanding of what we witness.
Blue also refuses a linear narrative; decisions made to open the line of windows along the wall, use the chair, revealed a psychological and physical opening up, also challenging our usual conventions as to how the performer engages with the audience.
As the performance progressed we were moved around the space. It was as if we were not there. But we were intimately involved with everything that was going on. Blue gave us a sense of ownership as well as a reason for feeling unseen. Disconcerting and unsettling as it was, we were unable to take our eyes off Angela as she occupied the space with images resounding with a neurotic madness, rage, tension and a compulsion to return time and time again to the inner body.
A chair, the only prop. I was reminded again of the Pina Bausch performances where a chair becomes a world, a space, a universe and the human body a repository for all the emotions a person experiences.
In its entirety Blue represented a nemesis in all that is pleasurable ….. which generously offered me an opportunity to think afresh of what it means to be human.”
Exactly a week since the performance and informal feedback. Not quite so exhausted as i felt earlier in the week.
Very helpful and positive feedback, 21 in the audience and on reflection still could have took more time, waited more.
but, after a long time out – many years of waiting, injury, disability and bringing up two children, I am now, curiously, returning to performing. not what i imagined, but in a very different guise; another degree, in fine art – since being an experimental dance artist in the 80’s and early 90’s. now, with my beginning again last year through the fabulous ’25sg’ live art residency, i feel with ‘blue’ it, my practice, is still ongoing, inter-discplinary, feminist, there is progress in process.
great to have an audience. it changes everything.
apart from the security guard locking my exit into the space for the performance and having to find the emergency stairs!- I felt it was ok..
next time, even more distillation..
