Yvonne Rainer and my divorce from painting

The Big Intensive has been mind shaking so far. Words about that are on the way, in the meantime, Dance UK, the national voice for the dance sector, have published my third article about visual arts and dance.

Here is an excerpt from the article, titled Falling in Love With Another Artform, Yvonne Rainer and My Divorce From Painting:

'As an artist with integrity, you have to be prepared to follow your line of enquiry to the end wherever it may take you. This very situation stared me in the face three years ago, and it was heartbreaking to realise that my love affair with painting was over. After basing my identity, and whole world around striving to be the next great painter, I had fallen for another art form - dance. What is more I wasn’t trained in it and I was 25. However, as anyone who has fallen out of love will know, you just can’t ignore that pull of something that makes you feel life is meaningful again, offering you possibility to move forwards. So in 2008 I shut the studio door, leotard in hand and ran away with dance.

Yvonne Rainer similarly moved from dance to film. She was co-founder of The Judson Church during 1960’s in New York, where she first became intrigued by the relationship between the performer and audience, the political and the private in everyday life. In the 1960’s she rocked the conventions of the dance world, introducing pedestrian movement and using people as props. Her works were task based and looked to the uneducated eye, like someone doing Ballet badly.'

All the three articles and the introductory text that goes with them are collected here on my Artists' Newsletter project blog:

www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/797558

Here is a video of Yvonne Rainer's Trio A in 1978:

Working alongside international artists at Sadler's Wells from the 13 December

I have been invited by Sadler's Wells to be part of this year's Big Intensive from the 13 December 2010. The Big Intensive is a weeklong choreography lab. I will be joining 15 other international artists: Zoi Dimitriou, Mark Smith, Riccardo Buscarini, Charlotte Spencer, Arno Schuitemaker, Yuyu Rau, Linda Remahl, Nic Chalmers, Anna Melander, Lucia Tong, Flora Wellesley Wesley, Robbie Synge, Rachel Birch, Petra Söör, and Elena Jacinta who I trained with in 2008.

A weekend at the Southbank for 'MOVE:Choreographing You'

I am just getting ready to go back to the Southbank for day two of MOVE: Choreoghraphing You, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal.

It has been an inspirational weekend so far, and it is drawing together people currently working in the field. Last night Susan Sentler (Laban and ex Martha Graham), Rosemary Butcher and I stood in the Siberian cold outside discussing the days events until we could stand it no more!

Simone Forti blew me away, rolling down and then up some stairs without changing her dynamic even slightly, and she is 75! More about her here:

Rosemary Butcher's reconstrcution of Alan Kaprow's 18 Happenings in 6 parts, was fascinating and very well done, more about her here: www.rosemarybutcher.com/

Anna Haplrin's show Parades & Changes, Replays, reconstructed by Anne Collard, was spectacular, funny and very high quality. The cast undressed and ripped up huge sheets of paper, furling it round them like a bunch of Reneissance cherubs, with gentleness and joy that I recently saw during a festival hay fight at the Secret Garden Party. More about Anna Halprin Here:

The aesthetic remindeds me of Jessica Stockholder, my favorite artist. More about her here: http://art.yale.edu/JessicaStockholder

I can't wait for more today!

Dance Uk publish my second article about art and dance

www.danceuk.org/news/article/alexis-investigates-dance-and-visual-arts-article-two-coffee-stephanie-rosenthal-curator-move-choreo

Alexis investigates: A coffee with Stephanie Rosenthal, Curator of MOVE Choreographing You, Hayward Gallery. October 2010.

Dance UK publish the first article in my series about art and dance.

http://www.danceuk.org/news/article/alexis-investigates-dance-and-visual-arts-article-one-visit-siobhan-davies-dance-company/

Alexis investigates: A visit to Siobhan Davies Studios. October 2010.

Three drawings made about the experience of walking at a pace through Venice.

Dance UK To Publish A Series Of My Articles About Dance and Art

Dance UK, the national voice for the dance sector, will be publishing a series of my articles about art and dance at www.danceuk.org/news. Titled 'Alexis Investigates: Dance and Visual Arts' the series offers 'ways in' to the complex conversation that is happening between the two art forms. The influence of dance on other forms of art has recently been highlighted by a series of major exhibition and events programs: 'Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909 - 1929' has just opened at the V & A, 'Move: Choreographing You' is on at the Hayward Gallery and over recent years choreographer Siobhan Davies has orchestrated an ongoing program of events and conversations, including ROTOR -new work and commissions from artists working in other art forms which opens on the 3 November 2010 at Siobhan davies Studios and The South London Gallery.

I have worked and trained in both dance and visual arts, as a maker and also as a manager in both mediums. Dance is spending more and more time in the territory of the visual arts and what is more this started as far back as the 1970’s (some might argue long before that). I am writing this series of articles as a ‘way in’ to this particular area of artistic activity because I believe that dance is a highly influential media and that the knowledge base of its practitioners can bring insight to many other realms. Dance is evolving in many different ways and it is key to the growth of dance that we, the dance community, realise the potential in cross-disciplinary relationships.

The first in the series will be about my revent visit to Siobhan Davies Studios to see rehearsals for ROTOR. Got to run- I have a meeting with Staphanie Rosenthal, Cuator at The Hayward Gallery, to talk about 'MOVE:Choreographing You'.

Sadler's Wells have selected me to train on The BIg Intensive.

Very exited to be one of 15 people, chosen out of hundreds to undergo an intensive choreography lab at Sadler's Wells.

The Big Intensive is a December course for choreographers and directors to provoke ideas, provide inspiration, and illuminate new creative possibilities. This year's theme concentrates specifically on choreography, with speakers from the worlds of dance, visual arts, dramaturgy, marketing and theatre.

I get to talk to Liz Lerman and Martin Creed in the same week!
www.sadlerswells.com/jerwoodstudio

The beginnings of a film

"How is this a drawing?"

This video explains how my objects sometimes feed my larger works, taken as part of an artist consultation project for STBY- a creative research company.

This one reflects on how works evolve from the mess, the studio also cleans up for movement based work too.

You Will Find Me Dancing Round The Ceiling of Kensington Palace.

I was recently invited by set designer Myridden Wannell to take the role of Princess Margaret and dance across the ceiling of the palace- in shadow form- as part of his design for Wildwork's 'Enchanted Palace' Installation.
There are some great images of the installation here:

www.myriddinwannell.com/#url

www.wildworks.biz/the-enchanted-palace.html

Choreography And Me.

I have been investigating the relationship between my visual art practice and dance since 2006.

The influence of dance on other forms of art has recently been highlighted by a series of major exhibition and events programs. 'Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909 - 1929' has just opened at the V & A, 'Move: Choreographing You' is soon to open at the Hayward Gallery and over recent years choreographer Siobhan Davies has orchestrated an ongoing program of events and conversations, including ROTOR -new work and commissions from artists working in other art forms which takes place this autumn.

For Dance UK, where I am Information and Communications Officer, I will be writing about this subject hoping to show dancers the importance of cross disciplinary collaboration, knowledge about other art forms and to highlight the strength of dance an an influential art form in its own right.

Tonight I am going to Siobhan Davies Studios to hear poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw and Sculptor Cornelia Parker discuss their creative process. Last year Siobhan asked Lavinia Greenlaw and seven other artists about how they saw choreographic practice in their work.

The articles (that you can view online here http://www.siobhandavies.com/conversations/about.php) encouraged me to answer the question myself below:

How do I recognise choreographic practice in my work?

Firstly I deal with meaning that is made up of a sequence of experiences as opposed to meaning distilled within a singular object: a sequence of made images and objects installed in a space/ shown on a film to orchestrate a particular journey through the space and a particular overall sense or 'meaning'.

My work is about how one thing 'speaks' to another, including the audience. Spatially I have an ongoing interest in obstruction and flow explored through various transparent and semi permanent materials and structures in space that you can move through, see through or that obstruct vision and your pathway, partially or completely.

In making my work I start with a situation, experienced with my mind and body in relation to exterior conditions and over a time base i.e. working in a cramped studio: me, the space the things, how I move, how I feel, or having an unhealthy relationship: what I do , what they do, how we interact, what the juxtaposition does in terms of energy.

Then in making the work I lay out 'things' in relation to another across a space and or a time base. I 'choreograph or orchestrate' the viewers experience of the piece, the (emotional) movement within them and the movement that they do in the space through a series of pathways and views offering places where things make sense pictorially and sequentially (in an abstract narrative) amongst those that don't.

I draw to remember where the weight was in my body after learning a new choreography in dance class and when I teach art I teach 'seeing' with the whole body not only the eyes.

You can view my work at www.youtube.com/alexiszeldastevens

'You Are A Lid To Me' was made in response to Cornelia Parker's '30 Pieces of Silver' in 2009.

NY Arts Magazine text by Max Andrews..

This is text about my work published in 2005 and still gives good context to what I do.

"Poking through a gash in the canvas, the candy-pink branch marks a conceptual transition for Stevens' in her installation at ArtSway. Puncturing the picture-surface started off as a silly, wonky gesture that seemed to mock the seriousness of the task at hand. But it was also a serious provocation to the authority of the canvas, and the breakthrough to the third dimension. "... more