I said in a very small voice, so as I wouldn't notice....
" I want to work in dance."
that,
I thought,
is very worrying..
So then gravely concerned.. I said in a loud voice so as Wimbledon College of Art would hear me....
"This MA thing, just doesn't really feel quite right to me, I v'e thought long and hard and have already that decided that this route is not going to my destination.... so it makes no sense to come with you".
I was stunned.
Then myself and everyone else looked at me as if I was mad...
and I said
"let's see,
just in case,
if i am really so bad at this dance thing...
lets see if I can get a handle on this because if I can I might just be able to realise my dream and if I never do I will wilt at the deadening hands of sculpture and whither on my own studio floor. I would rather fail spectacularly than fade away... and once I set off, failure is just not an option"
My honest and terrified refusal to accept my own untimely death convinced Birkbeck, and they jumped with me into deep, murky waters to see what we can find.
Over the next year this sketchbook with evolve as I venture into the depths.......
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Sunday, 9 September 2007
Halesowen College, and a trip to the beach with Dad.
I am joining the Halesowen College teaching team as guest lecturer for the week, as they take thier foundation students to Godreavy beach.
Acccompanying them will be Basingstoke College of Technology , staring recently retired and legendary Brian Stevens... my dad. Getting my hopes up for good weather, and the St.Ives Jazz festival as well as some great rocks to look at and some new young people to get to know.
Acccompanying them will be Basingstoke College of Technology , staring recently retired and legendary Brian Stevens... my dad. Getting my hopes up for good weather, and the St.Ives Jazz festival as well as some great rocks to look at and some new young people to get to know.
The last Couple of months in brief
Encounter is the first piece in a body of new work that I have been researching since september 2006.
Previously I have made large scale architectural works which have altered the space of their surroundings dramatically and encouraged the audience to move arou
nd the space in an unfamiliar way and used colour to provoke sensation. See picture.
This new piece has come out of research into choreography in it's broadest sense and research into rock formation and erosion: form created by movement and natural choreography in the natural world. Here is a list of words that are associated with this piece, to offer a way in, or a starting point for thinking about it in an abstract way.
Converge,
choreography,
fragmentation,
match,
mirror,
replicate,
landscape,
explorer,
miniature world,
double exposed images of venice 2004,
deconstruction of a sequence of movement,
collage,
rehash,
accumulate,
collection of debris natural or manmade,
patterns of accumulation produced by movement,
material deposited by moving forces,
sediment,
rivers,
litter,
collect,
reconstruct,
reinterpret.
This text is not an explanation of the work, but a statement of concepts that were in my mind when it was created, a context perhaps.
The audience was invited into this intimate setting and invited to walk around the work, experiencing it at close proximity from different angles, at times objects within the space appeared in the video that was being projected onto them. There were moments of correlation, fragmentation, juxtaposition, clarity and lack of it, structured in much the same way a piece of contemporary dance.
I had a great response from the audience who found it engaging and it provoked discussion.
Previously I have made large scale architectural works which have altered the space of their surroundings dramatically and encouraged the audience to move arou
nd the space in an unfamiliar way and used colour to provoke sensation. See picture.The notion of a work drawing attention to body and to a pattern of movement, both physically and spatially lead me to consider using movement and body more directly within my work. How would a dancer experience the work?
This new piece has come out of research into choreography in it's broadest sense and research into rock formation and erosion: form created by movement and natural choreography in the natural world. Here is a list of words that are associated with this piece, to offer a way in, or a starting point for thinking about it in an abstract way.
Converge,
choreography,
fragmentation,
match,
mirror,
replicate,
landscape,
explorer,
miniature world,
double exposed images of venice 2004,
deconstruction of a sequence of movement,
collage,
rehash,
accumulate,
collection of debris natural or manmade,
patterns of accumulation produced by movement,
material deposited by moving forces,
sediment,
rivers,
litter,
collect,
reconstruct,
reinterpret.
This text is not an explanation of the work, but a statement of concepts that were in my mind when it was created, a context perhaps.
The audience was invited into this intimate setting and invited to walk around the work, experiencing it at close proximity from different angles, at times objects within the space appeared in the video that was being projected onto them. There were moments of correlation, fragmentation, juxtaposition, clarity and lack of it, structured in much the same way a piece of contemporary dance.
I had a great response from the audience who found it engaging and it provoked discussion.
Thursday, 16 August 2007
Working Holiday
I have been on the beach for a week with a group of very talented dancers brought together by Attik Dance, on a creative holiday.
It was the best week I can remember, and there are so many ideas rushing around my head. Watch this space.
Chris Lewis-Smith, film maker and lecturer at Bath Spa has made a film about the week called 'Watergate Bay'.
Monday, 30 July 2007
LAST DAY TODAY 12-5. CLOSING CELEBRATION 6-9.
To give some context for my show here is another interesting website www.choreograph.net, a site intended to extend our thinking about coreography...
"Choreography is not to constrain movement into a set pattern, it is to provide a cradle for movement to find its own patterns - over and over again - to prevent a body - whether bound by skin or habits -from stagnation and enable lightness, a primal energy and possibilities only to be found once relations start dancing."
Klien
Interesting project
One of my plans with this site is to share my research process.
This of course is not just practical research, and I though it was about time I posted some of my reading matter.
I came accross this project a little while ago, here's and extract, and a lnk to find the full article by ALESSANDRA SUN.
"Choreographers and architects often say that dance and architecture share the same concern, and the shared concern is space; dancing bodies and the architectural built environment manipulate space.
But what is space? Is it static and always there, or is it ‘produced’ by movement and by construction? Is it three-dimensional as we commonly understand it, or is Time also part of the equation, as Einstein and the physicists after him have proposed – giving us notions of ‘spacetime’? Is it measurable, or is space itself a measure? Is it a conceptual framework, or does it have its own ontology – its own nature of being and existence? Is space a perception? Can it be owned or, what do we really own when a ‘space’ is ours?
These are not my questions; they have been, for centuries, part of the philosophical and scientific discourse about space. They make it clear at once that space and spatiality – or spatial property – are complex and multi-layered; the space which dance and architecture claim to share is not only physical, for there is more to space than we see in its physicality" Alessandra Sun
www.humanitieslab.stanford.edu/49/75
This of course is not just practical research, and I though it was about time I posted some of my reading matter.
I came accross this project a little while ago, here's and extract, and a lnk to find the full article by ALESSANDRA SUN.
"Choreographers and architects often say that dance and architecture share the same concern, and the shared concern is space; dancing bodies and the architectural built environment manipulate space.
But what is space? Is it static and always there, or is it ‘produced’ by movement and by construction? Is it three-dimensional as we commonly understand it, or is Time also part of the equation, as Einstein and the physicists after him have proposed – giving us notions of ‘spacetime’? Is it measurable, or is space itself a measure? Is it a conceptual framework, or does it have its own ontology – its own nature of being and existence? Is space a perception? Can it be owned or, what do we really own when a ‘space’ is ours?
These are not my questions; they have been, for centuries, part of the philosophical and scientific discourse about space. They make it clear at once that space and spatiality – or spatial property – are complex and multi-layered; the space which dance and architecture claim to share is not only physical, for there is more to space than we see in its physicality" Alessandra Sun
www.humanitieslab.stanford.edu/49/75
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Encounter Closing celebration
Join me for a drink and chinwag on monday the 30th of July in the project space 6 -9pm. There is also a great jazz/funk band playing next door in ben's cafe from 9pm. Love to see you there.
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