I went to Metal in Peterborough to meet dancer Kate Marsh and see what she is doing on a Time and Space residency, as part of her G4A funded research. She is working with dancer Kelly O’Brien to start to develop their own choreography, informed by the specificity of their bodies, each having a missing limb. It was exciting to learn about the potential of this approach, how their particular physicality informs and enriches their collaborative practice and performance.
We could immediately see connections between our work, with ideas about embodiment, and an interest in the relationship of the arts to socio-political issues.
Showing work at Metal provides an opportunity to try out different ways of installing the films Darren and I have been working on. I’m editing Tea Break I & II on a split screen with the idea of projecting them on a larger scale this time, but still seen as a pair with all the interesting juxtapositions of movement.
The last of our three Open Studios will be at Metal in Peterborough on the evening of Thursday 29 January. We have a Time and Space Residency at Metal between 27 and 31 January and will be installing work emerging from our collaboration.
On 15 January I’m taking part in a Future Network event at Metal in Peterborough. I will be talking about the work that I’ve been doing with Darren alongside dancer Kate Marsh. Kate is currently on a Time and Space Residency with Metal.
Kate Marsh (based in Peterborough) and Welly O’Brien (based in Brighton) are using their time at Metal to continue their research and development of a new dance duet. As two dancers with missing limbs, they are both interested in the specificity of their own physicality and how this informs and enriches their collaborative practice and performance. The process will also develop them as choreographers, moving from dancers who perform the work of others to creating and directing themselves. They will work with film maker, Charlotte Darbyshire and creative facilitator Luke Pell to develop ideas for the duet. Click here for more details.
We were delighted that about 40 people came to the Open Studio at The Place, and nearly all stayed for the discussion chaired by Dr Veronica Sekules, Head of Education and Research, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. The mix of artists, curators, critics, dancers and choreographers led to a lively conversation about the contrast of the grace and beauty of the movement with the sense of constraint and frustration, about the incidental sounds of the elastic and the effect this has on viewers emotions and sense of frustration. Some viewed the projection and live movement as a visual experience, not necessarily looking for meaning, but appreciating as a ‘canvas’.
One viewer found the work shown compelling, a reflection of his own daily experience. He found Tea Break spoke so much of trying to get on and do things, against repeated obstacles. And he found the projection really compelling, the sense of struggle, which he could relate to his life and work.
Another pointed out that the way that the Tea Break films were shown on framed iPads introduced a further element of containment or constraint.
People discussed the contrasts in scale in the work shown, and the way that some had a narrative whilst the projection was more abstract, asking us whether narrative is important to us.
The projection and live element were the final part of the evening and choreographer Richard Alston said that he would have liked to have seen the development of the choreography as demonstrated in the film sequence before he watched Living Room. This would have enabled him to see how the work had progressed, leading up to the small intensity of the latter.
For another participant the projected film introduced a vision of multi-universes, dealing in space in 3D, where he was looking beyond, and back beyond that into further spaces.
