Performance – Page 2 – Creative & dance journal

Residuals: mark-making investigation

In December, I investigated surfaces and mark-making for the residuals project with Oxfordshire artists Hugh Pryor and John Hazel. Canvas, paper and various grades and sizes of carbon (charcoal) were investigated. We used hands, feet, broom and sponge to research mark marking.

Kinetic sculpture: Clock at Slower than Slow

In June, I attended a workshop entitled ‘Slower than Slow’ with Eva Karczag in Budapest, Hungary. On the second day, Wednesday 28 June we used our feet to contact each other in a sequential production. We created a kinetic sculpture with our moving bodies which I named Clock.

Kinetic sculpture: Waterfall at Co-Creative Practices in Contact Improvisation

I attended a movement and dance workshop with Nita Little teaching at Wainsgate Chapel, Yorkshire on Friday 3 June – Sunday 5 June. We practiced falling and catching a partner in continuos contact. I named this kinetic sculpture: Waterfall.

Dancing with Georgica Pettus

Dancer Georgica Pettus and I created movement sequences at the end of June which she set to music with ‘nonsense’ captioning. The result is ambiguous, comic and arresting. The strong graphic elements of the dance space – a dojo (martial arts hall for Aikido), combine with improvised dance practice, and leave us wondering and questioning.

Remembering Hugo Demartini, artist

On 10 February 2022, I stood in University Parks, Oxford with 100 small sticks and paper slips between my cupped hands. Raising my hands upward, the sticks and paper were lofted into the air. As they were rising they slowed until, for a moment, they were suspended, neither rising nor falling – a cloud of sticks before me, about to scatter and return earthward in a shower.

Torus 2.3.3 – a dance #LandscapeDance #FoundDance #Voluism

This dance was recorded on two occasions in January 2022. While this is a solo performance. It is also a duet. For I dance with the embodied memory of my previous dance. Thus the past is present: always present.

New dance (2021) – Coming Home

Dancer Jo Blake and I created a duet. We had less than six hours dancing together, and we used a score with three parts to create this new dance. Subsequently, I submitted our dance to Dancin’ Oxford for its Moving with the Times 2021 commission.

Spring Awakening #HeadstandChallenge

Oxford City Council (as Dancin’ Oxford) asked for contributions to its Spring Awakening project. Dancers contribute video clips of themselves dancing which are edited into a final film for digital distribution. A headstand seemed to summon-up the period in which we were living – the world turned upside down by Coronavirus!

Becoming Gentleness: performance

I’m very proud that despite a global pandemic, we still managed to create a new dance – ‘Becoming Gentleness’ – at Oxford Contact Dance. We danced with sticks – outdoors – in University Parks, Oxford on 23 October 2020. There was a beautiful sunset and a carpet of autumn leaves.

Stage dancing : Christmas Lights 2019, Oxford

On Saturday 16 November, dancer Jo Dyer, cellist Josie Webber and I, took to the stage in Oxford at the Christmas Lights Festival. We performed a revised version of the ‘In-between’ dance created earlier in the year.