Resolution 2023
Previous Performance Credits
Brink - Sharklegs
Brink lives in an unbalanced world. Every step could throw them into the vast void of space. But no one can sit still forever. How can they live when every action might make their world capsize?
This one-person show takes acro-balance and contemporary clowning and throws it into a constantly rocking bowl. It explores our chronic fear of the apocalypse caused by the impact of the climate crisis and our sense of impending environmental cataclysm…
Cast and Credits
Created by: Kezia Cole and Richard Hay
Performer: Sean Croft
Dug Meat - Tough Boys Dance Collective
This work lives as our reaction to the burning hot summer of 2022. We noticed that there is a collective feeling of dread among us, that taints our basic experience of care, conflict, obsession, resilience, sex and community. In this climate of paralysing oversaturation, the work we are presenting is not really about what we’re feeling about the state of our world, but how we are feeling it together.
Within a cyclical structure, the movement draws from contemporary physicalities and hip hop theatre. We’ve worked with our dancers to develop a collective language that sees the human devolve into the dog, the slug and the corpse.
Where do we go now that all the grass is dead?
Cast and Credits
Choreography: Tough Boys Dance Collective
Dancers: Donna Smith, Andrea Callaghan, Naissa Bjørn, Charlotte Bennett, Yu-Chien Cheng
Funding: We Dont Settle - FUEL grant. Ugly Duck. Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
Leda and The Swan - Hollie Miller
Leda and the Swan is a famous Greek myth, in which the God Zeus, disguised as a swan, rapes Leda in an act that lead to the Trojan War.
This performance was born out of anger at how Zeus’s sexual violence has been romanticised as a subject in art history. This work seeks to find for Leda, a feminist retelling of this narrative that repositions her with an active sense of agency, using sculpture, puppetry and costume to hide/reveal/slip between shapeshifting and rebirth imagery in a pupal state of recovery and becoming through highly-visual, movement based storytelling.
Cast and Credits
Performance, choreography, sculpture, puppet and costume: Hollie Miller
Music: Craig Scott
Movement Direction: Mary Mannion
A Three Part Drama - Andrew Scott
Everyone’s life could be a television series.
Life is dramatic, sad and beautiful.
Dramatically, Andrew believes that this heavy feeling of loneliness can consume us but love in some way can set us free, whether that be, for someone or something. Being lost is nice but not forever.
So how can we get out of this cycle of loving, losing, don’t know what we’re doing?
Is this all life is? One dramatic, heartbreaking, beautiful series on repeat? Well Andrew doesn’t want it.
But in fact he is
trapped in this endless series. Filled with lonesome and confusion, longing to tap the fast forward button in hope to break the loop and feel anything but this.
Warning: This series is based on real events, although some scenes have been dramatised.
Duration: Never ending
Cast and Credits:
Choreographer and performer: Andrew Scott
Music: Wilfred Kimber, Nick Drake
Special thanks to the people that have stayed and to those who have passed by.’
3m² - Nikita De Martin
Did you know that two people’s skin measures 3m²?
Where do I end?
Where do you begin?
With confrontation and sensibility, 3m² sneaks into the private space underneath the skin, speaking about belonging and inherited body identity, the artist’s personal experience as an uprooted woman and the solitude as protagonists of a generational identity crisis.
Cast and Credits
Concept and Performance: Nikita De Martin
Movement Director: Miia Mäkilä
Scenography: Nikita De Martin
Sound Design: Paolo Canaglia
Lighting Design: Nikita De Martin
Contribution to the original creation: Simon Vincenzi and Nao Nagai
B brain(s) - Sanya Malnar x Marianne Raynal
B brain(s) is a hybrid, hyper-visual contemporary dance piece. It presents itself as an eerie, contemplative experience for both dancers and viewers.
‘We can never escape our bodily envelopes, nor disconnect from the objects of our direct thoughts and feelings. It seems individuals sense the world independently from one another, yet we don’t know how exactly. Different levels of existence might be overlapping.’
The work invites audiences to reflect on existential perception while combining movement, creative make-up, and fashion on a modulating musical soundscape. Bodies merge in expressive garments, poetically depicting life occurrences.
Age recommendation: 12+
Content warning: Strobe lighting and smoke
Duration: 20 min
Cast and Credits
Choreographer & Artistic Director: Sanya Malnar
Co-creator: Marianne Raynal
Performers: Sanya Malnar and Marianne Raynal
Photographer: Elly Wel
KOKONA - AllouAqui Dance
KOKONA is a playful exploration of the worlds of femininity we are experiencing and embodying, and of the ones we can’t quite navigate. It is an attempt to place two unalike bodies in conversation with an ever-changing concept that at times makes sense but sometimes can elude us.
Cast and Credits
Choreographers and Performers: Delicia Sefiha and Xavier De Santos
Once Upon a Time - Attila Andrasi
Once Upon a Time is a playful and virtuosic dance solo that explores the complex nature of movement through somatic experiences, drawing on emotional responses from the duality of adulthood and childhood. The performance examines the separation and disconnection of these life stages in a way that creates a deeper appreciation of the journey of growing up.
The audience is invited to recall their inner child through several narratives that are woven throughout the performance. These stories are designed to connect the audience to the performer on a deeper level, allowing them to appreciate the journey that both the performer and the audience have taken.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer & Performer: Attila Andrasi
Sound & Music: Gábor Csongradi
Consultant Dramaturg: Miranda Laurence
Play by Play - Nicola Adilman
Play by Play began as a duet in 2019 and is now being developed into a quartet that explores sports images, comedic storytelling, competitive relationships and athleticism through the intertwining of bodies.
While being curious about the vigour and physicality of the sport world, Nicola pokes fun at its performative, exaggerated and ultimately silly nature. The world of sport is known for its peculiarity in separating men and women. Play by Play aims to create a contemporary atmosphere that is fluid in its idea of gender.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer: Nicola Adilman (she/her)
Dancers: Jacob Elliott Roberts (he/him), Tylee Jones (they/them), Jay Yule (she/they), George Frampton (she/her)
Costume Designer: Jacob Elliot Roberts (he/him)
Music: Gabrielle Palaric-Skinner (she/her) and Robert Loveless (he/him) from the band Touched
Lighting Designer: Lucy Hansom
Alpha Misfits - Scilla Rajalin
Alpha Misfits is a contest, a verdict, a game - with no prize, no evidence and very few rules.
Departing from methods of documentary making, this work portrays a radical search for relationship and identity. It’s a race towards the inevitable, towards relative truth and un-reliable form.
In collaboration with the performers and composer Zacharias Wolfe, as well as off-the-record collaboration with hundreds of filmmakers, directors and fabricated characters, the work explores ideas around honesty, passion and a non-linear journey towards the self.
Alpha Misfits becomes the self-categorised outsider; a slightly dysfunctional mechanism, unwilling to adapt.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer/Director: Scilla Rajalin
Performers: Lewis Walker, Kaivalya Brewerton, Fiona Macbride
Composer: Zacharias Wolfe
Rehearsal Assistant: Fiona Macbride
Lighting designer: Edward Saunders
Illustrator: Ingrid Stenback
Photo: Genevieve Reeves
Additional Music: Klara Keller
Choir: Alma Appelgren, Sofia Bertilsson, Alice Wallenius, Liv Nyberg, Ella Vahtras, Filip Södervall, Gabriel Holmertz, Simon Frank, David Edström, David Kronstrom
With thanks to Ellie Chick, Petter Skurdal, Ronan Cardoza, Christy Paul, Naissa Bjørn, John Hardy, Clod Ensemble and Coco G. Supported by: Responsa Foundation, The Place, Bathway Theatre, Greenwich University and London Contemporary Dance School.
I Wonder If This May Be Held - Fabio Pronestì
A series of glimpses from the past are held together halfway between our waists, in the calmness of a walk. I Wonder If This May Be Held is a practice of encountering the other, rooted in a place of yielding and watered during a time of being apart.
In collaboration with Lorenzo Tombesi and visual artist Denise Aimar, the work shares a reflection about what holds the encounter together, while encouraging its becoming. Two bodies craft the space while, in what seems the umpteenth attempt to contain the present, some memories re-emerge: echoing between the proximities of their void.
Informed by the symbolism present in Michelangelo’s Pietà and by the theatrical practice of Schiera, the work becomes a possibility to recognize each other, tracing countless paths from where to reach and be reached, whilst involving the audience in their consequential unfolding.
Cast and Credits
Performers:Fabio Pronestì and Lorenzo Tombesi
Visual Design:Denise Aimar
Sound Design: Riccardo Di Gianni
When Trees Fall - Jonny Aubrey-Bentley
“First there was a crash and a rumble underground
Then sideways became upwards and upwards came down…”
This is a piece about connection. Inspired by the interconnectivity of the forest and its supportive networks, When Trees Fall explores the healing power of nature in times of loss and uncertainty.
Trees, like us, have the capacity to communicate. They do this via their root systems which connect to a network of fungi. This symbiotic relationship forms a collaborative structure known as the mycorrhizal network, or the Wood Wide Web. But what happens when it breaks?
Cast and Credits
Performers: Genevieve Reeves, Ed Mitchell, Igea Noioso
Composer: Jonny Aubrey-Bentley
Knitwear: Fanete Perrineau
The Buffered Self - Sana El-Wakili
"Part of me died… but part of me was already dead."
The Buffered Self is a cacophony of dance, theatre, and spoken word that has its own colour, with a heart of raw story that's Autobiographical based on Sana El-Wakili's Experience of disability, mental illness and grief from the loss of her father.
The show uses Sana El-Wakili's signature style of free form, freestyle dance with spores of modern and hip hop tuned with a spine of physical storytelling. Blending with this is heart wrenching spoken word and theatre.It's a heart breaking, emotional and vital story to be told. Three voices telling the story of one.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer/director/creator: Sana El-Wakili
Dramaturgy: L U C I N E and Sana El-Wakili
Performers and poets: Sana El-Wakili, Tunay Janes and Stephanie McNeil
Creative producer and assistant director: L U C I N E
Sound designer, composer: L U C I N E
Splice - Hannah Ekholm and Faye Stoeser
Splice
is an exploration of connection and architecture between two bodies as they
configure themselves between restriction and possibility, solving a physical
puzzle.
Cast and Credits
Choreography: Hannah Ekholm and Faye Stoeser
Dancers: Oliver Chapman and Hannah Ekholm
Music composed by: Floating Points
The Hope Within Us - Paradox Dance Theatre
The Hope Within Us draws on the intertwined story of a young black woman and her choices. She is forced to make a decision, journeying through the unknown to navigate a world in which decisions about women's bodies are made by men.
The company began working on this piece when they heard the news that abortion laws in the USA may be overturned. Interested in the impact that it may have on not just women but our society as a whole, the narrative is told through the eyes of a cast of predominantly young black women from East London.
Cast and Credits
Dancers & Choreographers: Carl Nerona, Ikrah Bukuru, Loren Fraser, Zoeyanna Molton
Project director: Loren Fraser
Composer: Sterling Reigns
Mentor: Ayshen Mustafa -Abdullah and Rachel Bradbear
Social media manager: Ikrah Bukuru
Movement director: Carl Nerona, Zuri Thompson
Dramaturg: Annie John
Lighting technician: Alex Garfath
Written Poetry/spoken word: Moses Oridoye, Loren Fraser and Carl Nerona
I Can't Take My Body Off - Chewed Pink
I Can’t Take My Body Off, explores female relationships; to others, to the world and to ourselves.
Examining femininity through a queer lens, the dancers toss and turn between aggression and tenderness, power and passivity. They navigate through living tableaux where they allow themselves to be all things; beautiful, dramatic, awkward, humorous, stupid, hysterical, sexual, ugly, and unapologetic.
Sweaty palms cradle flushed cheeks, heads butt, limbs entwine, teeth snap and fingers pull at pinched lips. The line between sensuality and violence is blurred in a struggle to connect and be seen.
Cast and Credits
Choreographers and Performers: Ruby De Ville Morel, Catriona O'Connor, Lauren Ainley and Jasmine Springall
Music Credits: Blue Velvet - Bobby Vinton, Noche De Ronda - Frankie Reyes, Creation - Mica Levi, 3 Old Viennese Dances: No. 2, Liebesleid - Fritz Kreisler, Clara Rockmore, Nadia Reisenberg, Mistle Thrush - Cosmo Sheldrake.
With special thanks to Joe De Ville Morel.
Holehead - Oluwaseun Olayiwola
Part dream, part poem, Holehead is a meditation on masculinity, jealousy, and the limits of contemporary intimacy. Mirroring the ecstatic explosion of language in Walt Whitman’s I Sing the Body Electric, three queer male dancers attract, repulse, and diffract. They are in a forged world where there are no endings and no beginnings.
The dancer’s movements are questions and yearnings to make sense of the world around them. Ultimately, the piece aims to discover alternative modes to selfhood and togetherness.
Destined To Stem - Sarah Lisney
Growth is highly underestimated when it comes to self but how much strength do we recognise when it comes to passing knock downs? Destined to Stem looks into the strength and beauty of showcasing our individual selves whilst overstanding how much we have to offer. Merging spoken word and movement, this piece will take us on a journey of racial blockages, reflection and self growth.
Cast and Credits
Film Direction and Credit: Caitlin McCartney
Music Credit: Dennis George
Spoken word performed and Written by: Sarah Lisney
Giselle, This time it's about me - Hebe Salmon
“Hi, it’s Giselle… Call me back when you get this”
Reimagining the classical ballet Giselle, Hebe Salmon brings subtle humour and a contemporary perspective to this tale of love and betrayal. Her dance-theatre solo uses a series of phone calls to explore Giselle’s relationships with her mother (complicated), her grandmother (complicated) and her lovers (complicated).
Set in Giselle’s bedroom, themes of communication and memory mesh with autobiographical elements. Expect to see a work where a female protagonist is not defined by her relationships with men.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer and dancer: Hebe Salmon
Composer: Sam Greening
No Messing - Ellen Finlay
How does what you do make you who you are?
Inspired by the writings of Tina Campt and Judith Butler, No Messing is a cheeky and colourful journey through the embodied memories of Irish siblings Patrick and Ellen.
Binary but identical, different but the same - No Messing explores how they have arrived at this point by referencing sports, clothing, and play along the way. As they play, push, drag, carry, and annoy each other they explore layers of time and transformation that have shaped them into who they are.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer/performer: Ellen Finlay
Performer: Patrick Finlay
Director: Miia Mäkilä
Costume Designer: Loe D’Arcy
Sound Design: Ghadimi
Special thanks to Caroline McNamara, Emma Stanworth, Kalianne Farren, Meg Ryan, Rachel Cunningham, Chloe Brazinskas, Dance Ireland and Siobhan Davies Studios for their help and support.
Dvihīna - Shyam Dattani
Dvihīna, Sanskrit for 'devoid of gender', is an ensemble South Asian dance exploration with four diasporically-trained Kathak dance artists of diverse gender expression.
This work seeks to question the innately gendered movement in the form and the cis-heteronormative lens through which Kathak is taught, performed and viewed in the diaspora, by queering the ideas of Tāndav (masculine or vigorous) and Lāsya (feminine or graceful) in the abstract movement practice.
Although ideally, both these extremes should be embedded in the building of a dancer's movement vocabulary, the reality shows that the movement quality expressed usually coincides with a dancer's external gendered appearance, with little space for an expression that is fluid and doesn't conform to gender constructs.
Dvihīna hopes to, through the choreography, de-gendered costume and original score, allow an appreciation of the movement itself over the body wearing the movement.
Cast and Credits
Choreography: Shyam Dattani in collaboration with the dancers
Dancers: Anjali Tanna, Meera Patel, Shyam Dattani, Tanveer Alam
Music Composition: Bernhard Schimpelsberger
Mentoring: Suba Subramaniam, Akademi
Rehearsal Direction: Archita Kumar
Special Thanks to Urja Desai Thakore, Lia Prentaki, Eva Martinez and Louise Clohesy.
Funders: Arts Council England Partners: Richmond Council, Akademi, Sampad Arts and Pagrav Dance Company, with thanks to Sundhiya Dattani.
Find your Lines - Maya Takeda
Find your Lines begins with a game of cat’s cradle, which consist of making a pattern with one long piece of thread, and the book LINES written by Tim Ingold (2016). Then using her own entire body to form the shapes of the cat’s cradle, Takeda explores how she can apply her work using objects within LINES.
Cast and Credits
Choreography and performance: Maya Takeda
Lighting design: Shupin Liu
Music: “glacier” by Ryuichi Sakamoto
Head'in for Godot - Marie Chabert, Danny Kearns and Thomas Broda
Inspired by Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the piece navigates between the mundane, the absurd and the metaphysical to explore the themes of loneliness and longing for connection.
Suspended in time and space, two vagabonds stagger, trip and wrestle around a misty landscape. Disconnected from their body, they seem to be invisible to themselves and to others. Gradually some distant memories emerge, allowing their suspended weight to find some landing.
Blending contact improvisation, physical theatre and live music, the piece explores variations of touch, tonicity and weight. An atmospheric soundtrack accompanies them.
Cast and Credits
Choreography/performance/text: Danny Kearns and Marie Chabert
Music: Thomas Broda
With thanks to: Chisenhale Dance Space, Cells studio 118, The Cockpit Theatre
LOVE - Lulu Wang
LOVE explores the intimacies of love and its myriad configurations through contemporary dance.
LOVE created by Lulu Wang conceptualises its story from Chinese mythology and playfully modernises it with the childhood game of tug of war.
Cast and Credits
Performers: Lulu Wang, Josh Woolford, Freja Jenkin, Joshua Faleatua
Music: Zhenyan Li
Visual Consultant: Jahnavi Sharma
Producer: Jon Paul Mayse
Bhai - Hamza Ali
Bhai /bʌɪ/. Noun. A brother.
A friendly address for a man.
Bhai is a playfully dark dive into the intersections of movement and masculinity for brown men in Britain. What is the function of corporeality in the places where men seek brotherhood?
From prayer rituals and pints, gym culture and gender roles, Bhai uses physical theatre to caricature stereotypes and cultural hybridity - shining a light on the shadow of a man.
Cast and Credits
Creators and Performers: Hamza Ali, Azan Ahmed
Created in partnership with NYT associate company THE LAB.
With thanks to the National Youth Theatre and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Made of Soft Muscular Material - Alina Sakko ( MOŸ MOŸ collective)
made of soft, muscular material is a solo discussion between taking and giving space. A female body researching how to be heard.
”But my practice is to listen”.
It's a realistic spectacle wrapped inside
a blue plastic fur coat. It's a ballad sung too loud, with a mouth too full.
It's a soft humming before karaoke. It's a kiss on a carefully constructed
mess.
How is it to dance with all that?
Cast and Credits
Choreography and
performance: Alina Sakko
Creative partner,
visuals: Elisa Sakko
Sound design: Alina
Sakko / Elisa Sakko
Music: Laua Rip - Sexentrismi,
Portti, Hydra
Pointer Sisters
- I'm So Excited (Karaoke version: Braintree Music – EMI
Blackwood)
Photography: Elisa
Sakko
Supported by: Ugly
Duck, Kuusamo ARK Residency
Special thanks to Routa Company for being the home for the first steps of this work, to Arts Promotion Centre Finland for supporting my solo practice, and to MOŸ MOŸ collective, the support pillow system that makes everything just more possible.
Don't give up...I'm trying - What is Written Dance Company
Don't give up...I'm trying is a hard-hitting, brutally honest, and emotive contemporary and hip-hop fusion dance piece. The performance features elements of spoken word, striking lighting design and an original post-apocalyptic soundtrack.
Don't give up...I'm trying explores the themes of generational trauma from the perspective of a first generation immigrant. The work focuses on the internal struggles and pressures we take on because of our upbringing.
The performers portray the how these dynamics unfold after the catalyst of a family member passing, taking the audience on a journey charged with tension, vulnerability and truth.
Performers:
Laura Byrne
Libby Canagasabey
May Freeland
Diana Gorenkova
Aman Shreesh
Jacob Ujczak
Elisa Wooles
Han Yan
Choreographer and composer:
Jean Pierre
Song title: The depth
With thanks to Rosie-Whitney Fish, Arts Council England and Jason Piper, Kingston University
That thing - fuse
That thing exposes the unseen reality of what it’s like living with hidden disability, an uncensored performance of truthfulness and vulnerability.
Combining large-scale projection, contemporary dance, live music, and spoken word, That thing conveys with honesty the truth behind chronic illness. It speaks the unspoken thoughts, and manifests the intangible, with hope that this honesty will challenge perceptions about what disability is and what disability can look like.
There is hardship behind grace, and pain behind happiness. Trauma behind laughter, and fight behind a smile. Invisible does not mean untrue; it simply means it can’t be seen.
Cast and Credits
Dance artist and choreographer: Lucy Clark
Digital artists: DANI&TING (Daniela Zaharieva and Yi Ting Liong)
Musician: Philip Kinshuck
This piece was First commissioned by Dancin’ Oxford with support from Pegasus Theatre. The creation of this piece would not be possible without in-kind support from the following artists and organisations: Mo Pietroni-Spenst, Kimberley Harvey, South East Dance, Siobhan Davies Studios, University of Greenwich, Stopgap Dance Company
InAction - Maria Masonou
Who knew, in all this abundance of information, profiles and opportunities, the safest and most dangerous place would be my bed.
InACTION is a solo performance exploring themes of isolation and lack of motivation. It achieves this by examining the (what feels like life-or-death) struggle to take action; in this case, to just get out of bed. But when ambitions and digital narratives come crushing against reality, expectations are ever more suffocating; ever more paralysing. Maybe the only way out is to stay in
Cast and Credits
Choreographer/performer: Maria Masonou
Music Composer: Panagiotis Adamou
Photographers: Sergio Vaccaro and Adelina Burnescu
“...If I wanted I could use this time wisely” - Naomi Chockler
Music in headphones muffled as the train drives through tunnels, an impossibility to forget reality, without feeling real at all simultaneously.
“...If I wanted I could use this time wisely” reimagines familiar settings from our day to day lives as playgrounds for minds to wander, questioning the real and exploring the imagined.
You will witness precious moments of intimacy as a fight against repetitive cycles; searching for a feeling of presence and connection. Proximity will be displayed as both safe and invasive, ‘the daily commute’ as both a comforting bubble and an inescapable fate.
Cast and Credits
Choreography/ Direction: Naomi Chockler
Dancers: Alice Marriott, Grace Ford, Imogen Wright, Rose Lewis
Co creators: the dancers and Alex Gosmore
Photographer: Genevieve Reeves
Filmmaker: Dorna Ashory
Composer: Jonny Aubrey- Bentley
Illness Reaches its Crises in a Dissolving Sweat - Florencia Guerberof, Gail Sixsmith and Thelma Sharma
Featuring performers Florencia Guerberof, Gail Sixsmith and Thelma Sharma, this work is about the making of a dance piece having contracted Covid in the process.
Through angst and nausea, the dance becomes an imaginary purge in a soundscape of life force pulsations.
The dancer is confronted with a state of crisis, being caught up in-between the desire to move and not being able to. Through dance, energy is fully restored through a liberating, invigorating and cathartic sweat.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer: Florencia Guerberof
Dancers: Florencia Guerberof, Gail Sixsmith and Thelma Sharma
Light design:Maria Guerberof
Music: Bendik Giske
While Remembering - Mandy Tan and Malachi Briant
While Remembering seeks to physicalise the feeling of nostalgia and memory.
The piece invites the audience to dive into their memories and notice the questions and emotions that arise.
What came to mind? How does it feel to remember?
Cast and Credits
Choreographers and Performers: Mandy Tan, Malachi Briant
Composer:Toby Carswell
You With U by Aishani Shosh, Mithun Gill and Tulani Kayani-Skeef
This piece explores the weight of societal conditioning and questions the pressure of keeping up with these conventions. Is it molding us into homogenous beings, compelling us to believe we must look a certain way, behave in a particular way and live a life pre-determined by others?
Do we alter ourselves to feel worthy in the eyes of society? Are we truly ever free?
Cast and Creatives
Dancers and Co-creators: Tulani Kayani-Skeef, Aishani Ghosh, Mithun Gill
Composer, music director and multi-instrumentalist: Eugene Skeef
Co-composer: Shammi Pithia
Vocals and Bansuri: Varijashree Venugopal
Photography/behind the scenes footage: Salifah Kayani-Skeef
Lead image edit: Jacek Rebkowski
Mentor: Subathra Subramaniam
Nadine Elise Muncey - soft surge
Whipped up with sugar, water and gelatine into a solid-but-spongy consistency, that’s shoved between your teeth. Bite. Chew. Have another. And another. Again and again and again and again. Again. Again. Again. Soft, sweet, gentle, caring, delicious, love, surrender, sigh, melt, sticky, aching, gross, chewy, sore, disgust, frustrated. On and on and on and on.
soft surge is a contemporary dance work that aims to explore the understanding and complexities of tenderness. This word that is loaded with information and energy, towards the self, to others and to pain.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer: Nadine Elise Muncey (she/her)
Dance Artists: Freja Jenkin (she/her), Petronella Wiehahn (she/her), Julian Nichols (he/him), Shannon Oleson (she/her)
Emilie Barton - The Call
Will you answer the call and gather your bones?
The Call is a dance theatre performance that explores the raw human nature we have inside all of us that often gets suppressed by day-to-day life in western society.
You and the performer will go on a journey together, as strange happenings occur on a clifftop in Swanage, Dorset. Wolf-like transformation and transcendence are explored with myths such as La Huesera, The Bone Woman and The Crone.
Presented as an abstract mixture of storytelling, voice work, movement and dance.
Snippets of humour are injected into the ritualistic, feral, otherworldly and sometimes uncomfortable atmosphere. The Call may show you something of yourself.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer & Performer: Emilie Barton (she/her)
Iván Merino Gaspar - Lucero del Alba
Lucero del Alba tells the story of a person who lived censored by Spanish religious culture.
The protagonist takes pride in their queerness by playing with the fluidity of gender and their sexuality. While being surrounded by the trumpets and drums from the traditional music of Spanish Holy Week, the piece displays a language of gestural and physical movement, inspired by Renaissance religious art.
Lucero del Alba is grotesque, sensual and unapologetic, but above all it is queer and free.
Choreographer: Iván Merino Gaspar
Dancers: Briony Rose, Milly Stead, Emily Lally, Amie Flynn, Bethany Knight, Matilda Feather, Samantha Wild, Camille Cooper, Iván Merino Gaspar
Kennedy Junior Muntanga - Grown Men Keep Breaking my Heart
This new collaboration between Joey Barton and Kennedy Junior Muntanga explores dance through the medium of storytelling. They portray complex societal issues through movement and art by extracting scenarios from their own lives, and influence from their environment.
Cast and Credits
Chorographers: Kennedy Muntanga
Composer: Kennedy Muntanga
Music Director: Bella Barton
Digital content creator: Rueben Cohen
With funding by David Cazalet, Frances Prenn, Alexis Prenn
Ed Mitchell - Life goes on
Life goes on explores the challenges we face in navigating life's unexpected obstacles. When Two people are faced with adversity, how do they confront it?
In collaboration with the dancers, this work will reflect our choices when faced with scenarios through their detailed physicality in storytelling.
Cast and Credits
Dancers: Grace Ford, Edan Carter
Music: Stanley
Petronella Wiehahn - Gathering Clouds
Dancers move as clouds, waves and storms through a world of light and water.
Gathering clouds explores our experience of weather and connections between each other and the natural world. Together with the rhythms of an electronic soundtrack, dancers create and follow currents, breaking waves and paths of lightning.
They move as deep sea creatures across the ocean floor and as soft clouds, held by the wind and each other.
Cast and Credits
Dancers: Jess Yeo, Lily White, Madeleine Jesson, Maya Yoncali, Nadine Muncey, Sky Cook
LOREN McK - Lesbian Dance Theory (part 1 - Again): Liberating a Speculative Field
Lesbian Dance Theory already exists. Loren is working in relation to the field and resistance to its origins.
This seriously humorous lecture and multimedia performance centres around dialogues, practices, histories and futures of those who identify as, with or adjacent to the term Lesbian.
Cast and Credits
Performer: Loren McK
Technical support: Courtney Nettleford and Nic Collins
R&D support: Sophie Holland, Sean Murray and Osian Meilir
Mentors: Florence Peake and Martin Hargreaves
Interviewees: Eve Stainton, Florence Peake, Shivaangee Agrawal, Jules Cunningham, Jay Yule and Eleanor Perry
The Shape of a Day - Bea Bidault and Theo Arran
The Shape of a Day is a contemporary dance duet, created by Bea Bidault and Theo Arran.
The performance takes the audience on a journey where the subtlety and details embedded bring human behavior closer to dance, as well as exploring the abstract movements and rhythms that bring the narrative together.
'Nobody can question that things fall again. A man gets sick and suddenly on a Wednesday relapses. A pencil on the table falls twice in a row. [...] Theoretically, nothing or no one would think of falling again, but the same is bound to, mainly because they fall back without conscience, falling again like never before.'
Julio Cortázar
The duet explores how a couple takes care of one another, what losing the ability to relate with our surroundings means, and how animism relates to the concepts of purpose, identity and being alive.
Cast and Credits
Choreographers: Theo Arran and Bea Bidault
Performers: Edd Arnold and Bea Bidault
Mentor: Lali Ayguadé
Rehearsal Director: Theo Arran
Nefeli Kentoni - Wall of Babel
Three bodies on stage, confronting each other’s tongue; mother tongue.
They are in a state of constant translation; until words are not enough, until movement is not enough, until taste, music, memories are not enough.
The Wall of Babel, is a multilingual performance piece interrogating concepts of identity, language, and translation. The fragmented narrative of the performance taking the structure of the human cycle and revolves around the characters growth and their attempts for communication. The audience does not always understand what the three bodies say, but it is present throughout.
Cast and Credits
Writer/Director: Nefeli Kentoni
Performers and Devisers: Melina Koutsofta, Santi Guillamon, Pablo Temboury, Fatima Rodriguez, Kenny Lai
Music Composition: Manos Stratis Musicians: Manos Stratis, Elana Sasson
Production Assistant: Marita Anastasi
Hannah Ekholm - Stimuli
Stimuli is performed by five dancers and an ensemble of five musicians. Each musician brings their own characteristics both reflecting and influencing the movement on stage.
We examine the tensions between dancer and musician, the push and pull of environmental stimuli.
Cast and Credits
Dancers: Joshua Attwood, Meshach Henry, Oliver Chapman, Artemis Stamouli, Hannah Ekholm
Musicians: Sam Shepherd (Floating Points), Valentina Magaletti, Miriam Adefris, Susumu Mukai, Marta Salogni
Photographer: Tom Andrew
harrynsmithy - dog eat dog
The wealthiest 10% of individuals in Great Britain hold almost half of all wealth in the country. dog eat dog is a playful and satirical imagining of what could happen to people when they bite off more than they can chew.
Two hoity-toity characters (you know the type) let their greed get the better of them and begin to lose their decorum. You’re invited to let harrynsmithy put you on a leash and take you on a walk through their world. But ask yourself this… could it be you walking them?
Cast and Credits
Dancers: Harry Wilson and Anna Smith
Composers: Sam Robinson and Harry Wilson
Fimbo Butures - Little Bimbo
Little Bimbo blurs the lines between the real and virtual as live and digital performers’ movements scroll through contemporary dance, sex work vocabularies and meme culture.
FIMBO BUTURES reimagines movement vocabularies from their work as contemporary dancers, strippers and nude models in the context of the ‘bimboification’ of the internet - Little Bimbo conceptualises this parody of aesthetics as drag and a logical response to the impending doom of late stage capitalism.
FIMBO BUTURES is an artistic collaboration between Maya Williams and Lizzy Tan, drawing from their shared backgrounds as contemporary dancers and erotic artists. FIMBO BUTURES has presented work at VAULT Festival, Camden People's Theatre's Calm Down, Dear Festival, Bermondsey Project Space Open House Hackney and riposte london, and reviewed by Dance Art Journal.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer & Performer: Lizzy Tan
Choreographer & Performer: Maya Williams
Artist: Zas Ieluhee
Performer: Bot.dushka/Badushka
Alice+Synne - Still Changes
Still Changes is a fantastical dance of transformation inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Extravagant, ethereal costume and ritualistic movement will transport you to surreal worlds of ancient myths, marvellous and grotesque creatures, and lands only imagined.
Watch as these mythical beings move and evolve through endless cycles of death, re-birth, shedding and shapeshifting.
Cast and Credits
Choreography and Costume: Alice Ortona Coles and Synne Lundesgaard
Dom Czapski and Jamie Hamilton - Funeral Music
The man you see on stage is about to lose his job. He doesn't like it one bit.
A multi-disciplinary work which takes place somewhere between dance theatre and experimental music.
Cast and Credits
Performer and co-creator: Chris Preece
Lighting Design: Luke Marino
Phoebe Shu-Ching Chan - Drifting.漂浮
The performance Drifting.漂浮 is a dance performance that explores the complex emotions of feeling disconnected from one's surroundings and the journey towards self-discovery.
Three performers are on a journey from the East to the West on stage, navigating two cultures and illuminating the nuances of language, culture, and relationships.
Different perspectives and stories are intertwined, transporting the performers into a world where identities and belonging are questioned and redefined.
Cast and Credits
Creative Director & Designer: Phoebe Shu-Ching Chan
Choreographer: Chen Yin
Performers: Donna Kim, Siyuan Meng, Yuhan Fu
Sound Designer: Pia Rose Scattergood
Lighting Designer: Eleanor Golledge
Visual & Video Designer and Editor: Phoebe Chia-En Sun
Videographer and Photographer: Adam Razvi and Woon Lin
Carpenter: Aleksejs Artemjevs
AMIANGELIKA, Angelina Gorga and Anastasia - ICARUS
An alternative take on the Ancient Greek Myth of Icarus and Daedalus -ICARUSis a multidisciplinary performance. It combines Contemporary and Frame-Up dance, real-time interactive projections using a motion capture system, and live electronic music.
The synthesis of digital and physical realms helps to explore the story from different sides, show reality dualism and translate the metaphor for ICARUS.
By remaining true to themselves, everyone can fly, through the performance.
New Media Artist: AMIANGELIKA
Choreographer: Angelina Gorgaeva
Choreographer: Anastasia Vlasova
Music Producer: 1100
Cast: Mia Bourhis, Pierpaolo Cosentino, Taylor Dacosta, Cat Lawther, Weronika Kamińska, Angelina Gorgaeva, Anastasia Vlasova
Divija Melally - The Skeleton is White
The performance explores, through dance and movement, how in the present modern world, the colour of our skin can affect our relationship to each other and to the environment that surrounds us.
Elements of contemporary, Indian Classical, and physical theatre are used to analyse the ways in which discrimination becomes embodied during a person’s life. Even if there is no immediate harm, merely the anticipation of racism, and not necessarily the act, is enough to trigger a stress response.
The work investigates the effects of the stress response system on the body, and how this could manifest into the entire physicality of the person.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer: Divija Melally
Music: Christopher Serazzi
Alex Groves and ZE - ANTI/THESIS
Anti/thesis III is the latest collaboration between choreographer ZE and composer Alex Groves. It’s about perception and sensation - clashing, contrasting and juxtaposing. A blend of acoustic and electronic music with highly physical movement that takes traditional techniques and hierarchies and flips them on their head.
CUNNINGHAM (hehe love you all babes promise it won’t be all this)
TECHNO (like casual rave culture nothing too deep)
FLOCKING (but like not and in unison and only one move so maybe not)
TRAVEL (eat that space up please for the love of god move it)
TURNING (dunno why I wanna be dizzy but I wanna be dizzy)
FOUR (gonna be basic, four moves innit)
CRASHY (maybe you’ll be on stage maybe you won’t)
BOOM CLAP WAVE CHORDS (iykyk)
Cast and Credits
Choreographer: ZE
Composer & Musical Director:Alex Groves
Dancers: Fi Macbride, Yuchen Yolanda Wu, Naissa Bjørn, Bethany Jarvis, and ZE
Soprano saxophonist:Lydia Kenny
Alto saxophonist: Tianyu Shangguan
Tenor saxophonist: Joe Pollard
Baritone saxophonist:Reuben Dakin
Anti/thesis III is kindly supported by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Clod Ensemble, LCDS and Bathway Theatre. With thanks to Hebe Salmon, Andrei Nistor, and Gabriella Yiannakou.
Annelise Bucher - RELAY
RELAY is an emotional chain reaction. The entirety of the chain reaction begins with one dancer who isn't paying attention to their surroundings, or to their impact they have on the world around them. Each collision leads to unexpected connections and emotional journeys between the characters. Each dancer has a musical melody that plays when they move - as the dancers meet and interact, their melodies mix and layer to create unique and playful music tracks.
Cast and Credits
Dancers: Venia Baltadorou, Federica Bertani, Charis Crudgington, Aga Mencel, Kristyna Kocianova
Music: Annelise Bucher
RELAY is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and supported using funding by The Fenton Arts Trust.
The 12th Floor (Charis Crudgington and Mette Nilsen) - I'm sorry to dissappoint you all
I’m sorry to disappoint you all is an ode to perceived failure. Intertwining movement and film projection, set to a soundscore by Phoebe Coco, two friends tangle together. Cocooned and swallowed by the vastness of the city, the unravelling begins.
In spiralling skies and uncertain waters, the pair learn to navigate their friendship as they move through their own journeys of self-discovery. Sharing the visceral and chaotic imagery that stuck with them over the past year, surreal and literal, they merge and depart from the visions that hold them.
The duet is choreographed and performed by Charis Crudgington (UK) and Mette Nilsen (NO), the two halves, friends and housemates of The 12th Floor. In this self-produced work, they are, for the first time, merging their practices and exploring their close knit dynamic. The film element, captured by the pair, is edited by Charis who developed her artistic voice in film through the “Behind the Lens” course at the Roundhouse.
Cast and Credits
Phoebe Coco composed and recorded the music through a supportive and collaborative process. Integrating her own and the dancers’ voices through use of the loop pedal, Phoebe has put her unique spin on the soundscore and brought it to life.
Performer and choreographer: Charis Crudgington
Performer and choreographer: Mette Nilsen
Music and sound: Phoebe Coco
Marketing assistance and promotional photography: Maria Madrusanwency
Promotional photography: Olivia Wallis Jackson, Elly Welford
Producing support: Tatiana Ivanova
Charis and Mette would like to give thanks to Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, East London Dance and Tripspace for their support with rehearsal space. Thank you to all friends and colleagues who have given their advice and support in and outside of the studio and to everyone who has generously donated to The 12th Floor GoFundMe page.
Wency Lam - Is Any Body Home?
Welcome to the place, the place where I hide. When you have a moment and feel safe, I invite you to try these with me:
1. Have your eyes wide open, staring at a fixed point.
Take 10 breaths as quickly as you can.
What feeling or memory comes up for you?
2. Find someone you trust.
Hold onto a corner of their clothing with your hand.
Close your eyes and gently pull it close to you.
What feeling or memory comes up for you?
Cast and Credits
Choreographer: Wency Lam
Devising Dancers:Hsinyu Wu, Esme Lovell Props
Designer:Liane Lang
Lighting Designer:Ali Hunter
Rehearsal space supported by Centre 151, Weston Rise Community Centre, Fieldworks Dance
Vittorio Pagani - A Solo in the Spotlight
A Solo in the Spotlight is a dive into the theatrical setting that follows a performer questioning his place on the stage. The answers he seeks might be hiding under rays of artificial light, hiding in plain sight.
Travelling through dance, spoken word texts and video projections, the soloist will explore some of the aspects of a dancer’s life, and the revolutions a body can know when put under the spotlight.
Cast and Credits
Lighting Design: Mark Webber
External Eye and Dramaturgy: Hannes Langolf and Martin Hargreaves
Sunniva Moen Rørvik
Mixtape movement fueled by hairspray, sour candy and Pepsi Max, Red Lick invites you to ride the rollercoaster down memory lane to (in Sunniva's opinion) the best pop-culture moments of all time.
Sunniva Moen Rørvik’s striking choreographic style creates comedic mayhem on stage, with lip-syncing to Trønderrock, honouring mother Gaga and costume changes on costume changes on costume changes.
All swirling in a perplexing mix instigated by queer Norwegian adolescence. It’s unpolished, unfinished and the first iteration of a wild ride.
Cast and Credits
Choreographer: Sunniva Moen Rørvik
Producer: Becky David
Costume: Löe D'Arcy
Dancers: Bel Eade, Sula Castle, Yu-Chien Cheng, Roseann Dendy, Löe D'Arcy, Andrea Callaghan
A special thanks to Nikita De Martin for help with lighting. Thank you to Thick and Tight, The Band that Dances, Wet Mess, SAY and many others.
Jayde Edwards - Mirror mirroR
Mirror Mirror takes the perception of seeing one's true self in a reflected universe. The abstracted narrative follows a power couple known as the "King" and "Queen" through a portrayal of two sides of a mirror in four dancers representing the same couple.
The concept of realism verses fantasy comes to play as two dancers showcase the realism and reality shown to the world in the current universe. The other couple represent this same couple through the 'mirror' in a fantasy expectation that the realism couple wants the world to see them as.
Cast and credits
Choreographer: Jayde Edwards
Dancers: Charlotte Arch, Jayde Edwards, Ryheim Scott and Jonah Wigley
Music Composer: Lula Roadnight
The Place would like to thank Chauvet Professional and Sound Technology & Martin for their kind support of our Resolution Festival with intelligent lighting fixtures.