Summer School
for Stockholm
DANCE MOVEMENT THEATRE
7 DAY COURSE
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STOCKHOLM SWEDEN
21st
Celebration
EVENING DANCE
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HAMILTON HOUSE
BRISTOL - UK
The Flower Drum
2019
4 DAY DANCE INTENSIVE
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CORNWALL
UK
The River That Finds
Us
1 YEAR FOUNDATION COURSE
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CORNWALL
UK
A PECULIAR SHADE OF BLUE
A FILMIC STUDY ON THE NATURE OF GRIEF
THE STANZAS
Each STANZA expresses a distinct 'world' or phase within the landscapes of grief.
HOLLOW
Stanza 1
Do we
stand at the edge
of days?
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Do we?
Do we?
While Spiderflower works with earth-engaged performance research, HOLLOW is the only stanza set within an entirely human-made environment specifically devoid of any natural connection.
Stanza 1 explores the top layer of how we, as a western culture, largely present and deal with grief. Which is, for the most part, to limit expression.
Dedicate to where we are disconnect and grief is actively suppressed, HOLLOW journeys into that state of being where tensions polarise between internalised sorrow and the veneer of held expression.
HOLLOW reflects on how isolation and separation impact us, and looks to the issue of how disconnection effects our experience and behaviour as human beings through the journey of grief.
THRESHOLD
Stanza 2
I am afraid.
I do not know
how far I will fall.
How fast I will fall.
THRESHOLD visits the twilight zone where we experience the presence of a loved one after loss, where they are felt - but cannot be seen.
Stanza 2 explores the nature of the threshold (the meeting place between worlds or realities), our relationship with it and how it exists within different time frames (eternal or momentary).
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SNOT
Stanza 3
While the world turns
and eats itself alive,
the stale breath of slow suicide
hangs low in the air.
Let me wind a necklace of black jet and raven hair.
SNOT journeys through and beyond the THRESHOLD into the realm of grief that remains hidden and unexpressed.
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Stanza 3 specifically travels into the unacceptable, grotesque face of sorrow and is anchored in exploring the unknown. As we stay with what is raw and honest, the relationship between grief and time become more apparent.
We find the dynamics of grief are at once ancient, yet impact the future as they give rise to rebirth and new life.
SEA
Stanza 4
This one shall love.
This one shall break.
This one shall hold
the rain.
SEA follows the story seeded in SNOT of our relationship with the future children, and has been filmed almost entirely underwater.
Inside the weightlessness and freedom of this terrain, the water-world brings a sense of timelessness and so takes us deeper into the experience of DEEP TIME and SLOW CINEMA.
Through immersion, SEA lifts us though the tenderness, grace and vulnerability we experience when grief becomes transparent enough to reveal the love within.
SALT
Stanza 5
For these times. In these times.
My ultimate focus was to inhabit the element of SALT as deeply as I could, and remain in dialogue for sustained periods of time.
A powerful synchronicity swept through real time, the landscape, the body and life as it happens.
Speaking a distinct language, it delivered the starkest mirrors to bring breathtaking beauty into the frame - alongside - gut wrenching reflections of bone dry death, decay and the cruelty of human nature.
SALT tells a story of ostracised grief.
RAIN ON EARTH
Stanza 6
Did you forget us?
RAIN ON EARTH, sits as stanza 6.
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It is the bravest of stanzas in terms of working with slow cinema and deep time, and bears simple witness to the human form as it exists
within the landscape as time passes.
It is our (unexpected) ending.