About Touch Wood

Under-preparedness is every other dance season's worst enemy, but this bold venture is making a virtue of the work's new-born energy.
The Independent

Initiatives like this are essential in an arts ecosystem where product is valued over process. Artists need to be supported in researching, trying, maybe failing, so that the boundaries can be tried and tested.
Dance Art Journal (2023)

Join us to discover the new ideas that dance artists have been developing at The Place’s studios over the summer. Across two evenings, eight dance makers will share their research in a series of short performances. Experiments which are beautiful, bold and bonkers, will sit alongside each other as the makers try new things, often for the first time, in The Place's intimate studio theatre.

Each evening ends with an invitation for you to share your responses to the performances you’ve seen with the choreographers and performers, in a facilitated feedback session.

The studio performances mark the end of Choreodrome, The Place’s annual programme of residencies and commissions that provide artists with a nurturing space, time, and resources to develop new ideas.

Please note: The evening will be BSL interpreted

Programme

5 September 2024

Ekleido

Ekleido is a choreographic duo made up of Hannah Ekholm (she/her) and Faye Stoeser (she/her) with their work being performed in multiple venues and festivals across the UK including Glastonbury, Breakin’ Convention at Sadler’s Wells, Resolution Dance Festival and Latitude. Inspired by the Rorschach inkblots, a personality test widely used in the 1960’s, they will explore themes of human perception creating live, moving adaptations of the symmetrical inkblots in an architecture of three bodies, combining contemporary dance with underground club/battle styles.

Tom Cassani

Tom is a UK based performance maker working with choreography, magic and live art. His performances draw on an expanded approach to magic examining the nature of perception and truth. Using his body as a site of deception his work explores the construct of performing the impossible. Tom's project examines the body as an unreliable measure of truth, exploring the public/private body and hidden labour intrinsic in embodying deception, taking skills from the world of magic and circus sideshow into new choreographic modes and contexts.

Dorine Mugisha

Dorine, born in France to Tanzanian parents and now based in Glasgow, is a performer, instructor, and founder of Body Movement where she runs retreats, workshops, and events. She is passionate about seeing more representation of plus size bodies, nuanced stories of black bodies and themes around identity and belonging. Dorine has been developing her solo performance titled Asili (meaning Origins in Swahili), delving into her multicultural upbringing, navigating the intricacies of adapting to diverse people, places, and institutions - a journey of self-discovery and acceptance. During the residency, she will be deep diving into the choreographic element of this piece (using Whacking, Krump and traditional Tanzanian styles), as well as character development.

Brooke Milliner

Brooke, a six-time World Hip Hop Champion, has been a dominant force in the global Popping scene for over 15 years. Known for his exceptional musicality, intricate choreography, and technical prowess, he challenges perceptions of Street Dance Styles through storytelling and digital media. Brooke will be exploring his children's show, What’s Your Power?, using dance to convey a crucial message about embracing diversity.

6 September 2024

Aishwarya Raut

Aishwarya is a dancer and choreographer from India with a MA in dance. She has worked in film, fashion, stage and site-specific works. She continues to develop her movement vocabulary with influences from Indian folk dance within contemporary movement. Aishwarya will be exploring female narratives in folk tales from the Maharashtra region in India diving into topics of desire, resistance and the influence of nature on the human body through a duet.

Isaac Ouro-Gnao

Isaac is a Togolese-British multidisciplinary artist, somatic trauma therapist, mental health scholar-activist, and freelance journalist, his work is rooted in magical realism, Africanfuturism, and indigenous African Spirituality around themes of childhood, trauma, memory, and mental health. you're a man now, boy is a project by and for Black men (trans and non-binary) with lived experiences of ill mental health, integrating Hip Hop, West African & contemporary dance, magical realism & indigenous African spirituality.

Jackie Kibuka

Jackie is a dancer, movement director, choreographer, teacher, actress with over 15 years experience in the UK street dance and Hip-Hop theatre scene. She is an authentic and versatile mover in many styles including Waacking, Popping, Locking, House, Hip Hop, Contemporary & Commercial. She will be creating a dance theatre piece inspired by the life of her paternal grandad and personal Ugandan heritage. The piece is explores the narrative of first-generation Uganda British on the journey of discovering legacy, heritage and their roots.

Eli Lewis and Joe Garbett

Eli and Joe are a queer couple and Plue is their first collaboration. Their collaboration is an unlikely one, joyously splicing together their very different dance practices.

Eli is an award-winning performance artist based in the Bristol. They make performance that playfully straddles dance, live art and installation. Eli is interested in how people hold & process risk, occupying precarious spaces, and re-finding agency and playfulness within states of ‘not knowing’. Their practice examines where precarity intersects with queerness, ecology, collapse and care. A lot of their work revolves around queering human-object relationships and creating precarious performance environments that play host to suspenseful balancing acts.