Performance
Balance of Power by Allora and Calzadilla, Tate Modern, London
In Balance of Power, three uniformed performers move through a cycle of three yoga ‘warrior’ poses that combine strength, balance and tenacity. It is a recurring strategy within Allora & Calzadilla’s practice to create images that bring together seemingly disparate elements, exploring their closeness. Here, they address the meditative, spiritual and personal discipline of yoga. They combine this with the collective body of the military, under the authority of the state and intended for warfare. Balance of Power questions the distance between these military and non-military worlds. The work explores the possible meanings and roots of ‘warrior’ poses within the culture of yoga. At the same time, it anticipates the introduction of yoga and mindfulness for soldiers as part of their combat training.
Balance of Power is performed by Luke Bafico, Luca Bakos, Jem Bentham, Giselle Nirenberg, Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Hannah Katherine Vincent, Darcy Wallace
Curated by Dina Akhmadeeva
Carousel and Carousel de Crystal by Pablo Bronstein, OGR, Turin and Sala della Musica del Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice. Images by Andrea Rossetti for OGR
In this new commission, and performance installation, Bronstein considers the structures of physical reality – city planning and architecture, the theatre, and the human body – through the lens of the extreme close-up, self-regard - or narcissism - endemic to our post-iPhone universe.
Co-choreographer: Rosalie Wahlfrid
Performers: Lorenzo Aprà, Irina Baldini, Desirée Caruso, Marco Caudera, Francesco Dalmasso, Elisa D'amico, Camilla De Campo, Riccardo de Simone, Rebecca Nivine Fakih, Annalisa Maria Morelli, Francesca Pavesio, Andrea Carlotta Pelaia, Paolo Soloperto, Maria Novella Tattanelli, Elisa Vassena, Rosalie Wahlfrid, Darcy Wallace.
The Grey Witch: Irene Cena
Interactive Abstract Body by Josiah McElheny, Shape Shifters exhibition, Hayward Gallery. Images by Mark Blower, Vladimir Yaitskiy and Chloe Douglas.
Performed by: Lorea Burge Badiola, Mathilde Lepage Bagatta, Laura Burns, Iris Chan, Clare Daly, Typhaine Delaup, Thomas Goodwin, Lizzie Hewitt, Christopher Matthews, Francesco Migliacco, Katja Nyquis, Belinda Papavasiliou, Hannah Parsons, Elisa Vassena, Hannah Katherine Vincent, Rosalie Wahlfrid and Darcy Wallace
Choreography Advisor: Susan Sentler
Liminal for Meltdown, Southbank Centre. Images by Sarah Hopper
An experimental new project by Sigur Rós singer Jónsi, Alex Somers and Paul Corley
‘Sleepwalkers’ performed by Darcy Wallace, Andrew Graham and Soul Roberts
Meadow of Archives by Stefan Jovanovic, Velvet Fools, Decima X London, Images by Camilla Greenwell and Moad Musbahi
This gathering will explore the line between a dance-performance and a somatic-based constellation ceremony. 21 performers will be invited to take part in a recounted tale around the key figures of the Tarot’s Major Arcana. The ceremony will be held and narrated by architect Stefan Jovanović, accompanied by the gong and synthetic soundscape of artist Simone Selvatici.
Tarot Oracle Dance by Stefan Jovanovic and Eleanor Bauer, Velvet Fools London. Image by Camilla Greenwell
For one night only, choreographer Eleanor Bauer & architect Stefan Jovanović will become readers combining two systems of oracular divination.Tarot Oracle Dance combines the Oracle Dance and the Tarothump in collaboration with a group of dancers, tarot-players, and musicians. The environment will have two fronts of stage, facing each other, with audience members invited to step forth as issue-holders and pose a question to the Oracle.
Modular Architecture by Phoebe Davies and Nandi Bhebhe, Raven Row London. Image by Phoebe Davies
Using Lucy Orta’s sculptures, dancers each explore and define a personal space before negotiating partnerships with other performers. Over the course of this day long performance, the boundaries between body and architecture dissolve.
Everything By My Side by Fernando Rubio, LIFT Festival, Southbank Center London, Canary Wharf Arts and Events, and Latitude Festival. Images by LIFT festival, Laura Limp and Dan Dennison
Slip in between the pristine white sheets of a stranger’s bed and listen to the long-lost memory of a childhood tale in this intimate, playful performance. Reawakening long-lost stories that have lain dormant somewhere in the recesses of our mind and soul, these sleepy encounters become a place for escaped nightmares, daydreams and silent connections.
Temporary Title 2015 by Xavier Le Roy and Scarlett Yu, commissioned as the 31st Kaldor Public Art Project, Carriageworks Sydney. Images by Annie Mckay, Peter Greig, and Zan Wimberley
Temporary Title, 2015 is an exhibition where visitors enter and leave at will. That situation is made with performers forming and deforming groups or assemblies while composing a landscape in perpetual transformation. The performer’s actions and presences oscillate between recognizable and unrecognizable appearances which characteristics could be sculptural, animal, vegetal, mechanical .... and, sometimes, they approach the public to engage in conversations.
Taking up some of the materials developed for low pieces this work questions the dividing lines between human / inhuman, object / subject, transformation / transition / modification. At first sight, it can appear as something external to contemplate, but, the duration of the visit make it become a landscape in which we find ourselves, a situation to live, a space where our perception can be faster than the actions, otherwise says, a situation where maybe, time can wait.
Fluids by Alexandra Pirici, a reinvention of Allan Kaprow’s ‘Happening Fluids’ (1967), Potsdamer Platz for Berlin Arts Week 2015. Image by Lena Zaravotna
At Potsdamer Platz, a group of roughly 70 performers will occupy the same amount of space as the dimensions of the original ice structure. As with Kaprow’s happening, Pirici’s ephemeral monument will also be a collective moment created through physical effort, in which the increasing exhaustion of the participants will determine the structure’s duration.
Title In Process and Low Pieces (excerpt) by Xavier Le Roy and Scarlett Yu, La Biennale Di Venezia, Biennale Danza, 2015
Title In Process: is an exhibition where visitors enter and leave at will. That situation is made with performers forming and deforming groups or assemblies while composing a landscape in perpetual transformation. The performer’s actions and presences oscillate between recognizable and unrecognizable appearances which characteristics could be sculptural, animal, vegetal, mechanical .... and, sometimes, they approach the public to engage in conversations.
Low Pieces: What if opening and closing a show with a conversation was the simplest way to create a link between artists and spectators? For Xavier Le Roy, what is shown is as important, if not less, as the discussions that result from it: all of his pieces offer a basis for reflection. Two moments of exchange between the public and the performers therefore open and close low pieces. The presentation of the movements that these spaces of words frame like mirrors, is disrupted when the dancers, with whom the spectator were talking a few minutes earlier, are found undressed on stage, lying down or on all fours.
Dance Constructions: Slant Board Huddle and Scramble by Simone Forti, for the exhibition Simone Forti: Here It Comes, Index, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm. Images by Alice Heyward
Forti's first development of her Dance Constructions series was publicly presented at New York City's Reuben Gallery in December 1960, in an exhibition Forti shared with Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg, titled Happenings at the Reuben Gallery
THANKSBODYDANCE by Leah Marojevic in collaboration with Darcy Wallace, My Birthday Party festival curated by Frances Christella, Tripspace 2015. Images by Erika Symonds
A duet project which ran throughout 2015 where I invited different artists to talk and dance with me. These meetings did not always know what their product or outcome would manifest as, but did know that each process would begin the same, with myself and another person in a room, listening to a recording I had made in 2014 where I speak about my relationship to dance. From here, THANKSBODYDANCE endeavoured to let dance host and present the bodies doing the dancing, to make conscious and perceivable that which can not be choreographed (through choreography); a celebration of the personally owned, and mutually shared body/people, we/you are; to thank the body that dances. The works functioned as a form of live, moving portraiture and focussed on trusting what appears simple in order to understand what is complex. These dances tried not to perform but rather be contextualised by performance.
Ocitrop by Portico Quartet and Darcy Wallace, St John Sessions with Boiler Room London, St John at Hackney 2014
Ocitrop was formed by Jack Wyllie, Duncan Bellamy and Milo Fitzpatrick in Febuary 2014. Initially created as a commission for the Royal Academy of Art's exhibition "Sensing Spaces", the group use various site specific samples and respond to the spaces in which they play. Made with synths, samples and guitar in a largely improvised and immersive experience, in collaboration with contemporary dancer Darcy Wallace for the St John Sessions.
GROUPNESS by Becky Hilton, Pieces For Small Spaces, Lucy Guerin Inc, Melbourne. Image by Gregory Lorenzutti
'I want to fill the place with young people, crowd it out with them, say look, look at us all, we're here and dancing and we're here to stay. A kind of friendly dance protest.' Becky Hilton