Carol Brown Dances: Biographies

Biographies

Carol Brown - Choreographer, performer, artistic director
Russell Scoones - Composer collaborator
Jerome Soudan - Composer collaborator
Stewart Dodd - Architectural collaborator
Esther Rolinson - Visual artist collaborator
Jane Thorburn - Film director
Mattias Ek - Photographer
Pete M. Wyer - Composer
Eye For Detail - Lighting designer
Mette Ramsgard Thomsen - architect
Dorita Hannah - architect, sceneographer
Gwen Van Spijk - arts manager

Carol Brown

Choreographer, performer, artistic director

Photo: Carol Brown Carol Brown grew up in Dunedin, a small city at the edge of the southern pacific. She started dancing with her sisters and was sent to modern expressive dance classes with the Bodenwieser dancer, Shona Dunlop MacTavish from a young age. She has continued to dance in formal and informal settings ever since.

After completing a degree in modern history at the University of Otago she travelled for a couple of years throughout Central America and Europe. In 1986 she found herself in London where she pursued a full time education in contemporary dance.

Her first choreography, The Broken Column, (1989) was based on the work of Frida Kahlo. After a brief period performing in New Zealand with the dance artist Bronwyn Judge, Carol returned to the UK on a scholarship. She specialised in dance theatre and completed a doctorate in choreography at the University of Surrey.

Carol Brown Dances was formed in 1996 with the composer Russell Scoones. The company was given a residency at the Place Theatre in 1997-98. From this time Carol has visited many different places as a performer and guest choreographer. Her work is renowned for its conversations with artists in other art forms. The dances she makes arise from an ongoing investigation into bodies, their histories and inventions, and the mediation of these through writings, film, digitization, buildings and sounds. Through a distinctive and eloquent performance of real and mediated bodily presences, this work seeks to unfurl a visceral poetics.

Carol has received numerous awards including, a Jerwood Award for Choreography (1999), a Lisa Ullman Travel Scholarship (1998), a University of Otago William Evans Scholarship (2001) an AHRB Research Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts (2002-04), and a Nesta Dream Time (2004-05). Carol Brown Dances receives regular support from the Arts Council England and tours with the British Council.

Photo credit: Peter Anderson.

See Carol Brown Writes.

email: carol@cranium.demon.co.uk

Return to Top

Russell Scoones

Composer collaborator

Photo: Russell Scoones Russell began playing bass, singing and writing songs for rock bands in the mid 1970's in Dunedin, New Zealand. By the 1980's he was touring Australia with Landing Party and The Modules, as well as performing with New Zealand actor and performance poet Peter Tait in Not Dead Yet.

In 1987 he returned to Dunedin to study composition with Antony Ritchie at the University of Otago and classical guitar with Sue Court. He composed the song cycle Poems to Eat based on the Tanka poems of Ishikawa Takuboku, which toured New Zealand theatres in 1990. He also composed, toured and performed with percussion duo Smith Vs Smith. In 1991 he was employed to help establish Artsenta, an arts workshop for people with psychiatric disabilities in Dunedin.

Russell came to England on a Creative NZ study grant in 1992 to complete a diploma in Arts Administration. In 1996 he co-foundered Carol Brown Dances and collaborated on the dance theatre pieces Ocean Skin, Flesh Txt, Like A House On Fire and the BBC2 dance film The Lift. He composed the sound installation for Carol's four-hour Shelf Life performances and Nerve, which was created from recordings made under the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia and inside the Pantheon and St Peter's Basilica in Rome. All of these performances have toured internationally.

Russell is currently artistic director for Planet People, a collection of musicians and composers with learning disabilities based in Surrey. Planet People's extraordinary dance film Our Moving World will be screened at the 7th London Disability Film Festival at the NFT in November.

Russell lives in London where he continues to write songs and is also studying for an MA in Music Therapy at the University of Roehampton.

email: russell@cranium.demon.co.uk

Return to Top

Jerome Soudan

Composer collaborator

Photo: Jerome Soudan Jerome Soudan began playing orchestral percussion in 1974 before joining his first rock band ten years later. Since then he has played with and for numerous CDs, vinyl records, bands and composers and projects whilst completing a Masters in Musicology from the University of Lyon, France. He has composed music for television, performance art works, exhibitions and fashion shows in many countries including France, Spain, Holland and Germany. Jerome established his solo project Mimetic in 1998 and within dance he has worked with choreographers Lionel Hoche, Myriam Gourfink, Jan Linkens, Mihai Mihalcea, Giuseppe Bucci and Carol Brown.

email: mimeticzone@aol.com

Return to Top

Stewart Dodd

Architectural collaborator

Stewart Dodd founded Satellite Design Workshop Limited in 1995 after completing studies in architecture at the Bartlett, University College London. Satellite is a multidisciplinary design practice involved in the arts, residential and commercial sectors. The company has recently become more involved in collaborative projects, in 1999 with Carol Brown and Esther Rollinson on Shelf Life and in 2000 with Carol Brown on Nerve. Further collaborations are intended with artist Carl Von Wieler an the Actors Centre project in Covent Garden, London.

email: stewartdodd.satellite@virgin.net

Return to Top

Esther Rolinson

Visual artist collaborator

Esther has been based in the South East region since 1993. Often site specific, her work focuses on the idea of sensitising environments.

Presently Esther is exploring the architectural applications of three dimensional structures, light designs and digital technologies. She is carrying out research into the construction of intelligent building materials at the Computer Science Department, Loughborough University, which will culminate in 'Digital Garden', an outdoor environment co-ordinated by Gallery of the Future. Following the recent completion of 'Light-Decks' a large scale permanent light and glass installation at the Aquarium Terraces, Brighton she has been awarded a new commission to install a public work on Hastings Promenade.

email: esther-ian@pavilion.co.uk

Return to Top

Jane Thorburn

Film director

Photo: Jane Thorburn After studying fine Art at The Royal college of Art, Jane co-founded After Image in 1979, directing, editing and series editing over 100 arts and entertainment programmes. One of the early successes of the company was the Arts Magazine programme After Image which ran for three series. The programmes established an important reputation for quality and innovation and received a number of international awards as well as having seasons devoted to the company's work at the Pompediou centre in Paris and the Taomina film Festival in Italy. In 1989 The Greatest Show on Earth was the official entry of Channel 4 to the Montreaux Television festival. In 1994 the After Image production The Empress won the Royal Television Society best production design award and a special mention at the prestigious IMZ Opera Screen. Other productions include The Score, a classical music magazine series for BBC2, Camera an opera written specially for television featuring Dagmar Krause, 2 documentaries made in Nigeria for the Discovery Channel, PULL a sculptural ballet made with Bruce McLean and Ashley Page, S.O.S. for the series Sound on film and The Lift with choreographer Carol Brown.

email: jane@arc.co.uk

Return to Top

Mattias Ek

Photographer

Photo: Mattias Ek Mattias trained and worked as a photojournalist in Sweden before moving to London in November 1995 where he worked in such areas as fashion, portraiture and dance photography. He has produced photograhic works for companies such as: Carol Brown Dances, Seven Sisters Group, Lisa Torun Dance Company, H2 and Rorschach Collective among others. His images are often integrated within performances and used as promotional material.

email: mattias@talk21.com

Return to Top

Pete M. Wyer

Composer

Photo: Pete M. Wyer Pete is from Cheltenham, UK. Early works included guitar suites and other ensemble works, which were performed at the Warwick Arts Festival and the Cheltenham International Arts Festival, some of these scores are published by Lathkill Music.

Since then he has composed numerous works for television documentaries and children's programmes. His dance theatre collaborations began in 1997 with Matthew Hamilton and have continued with Lisa Torun and Carol Brown with performances in London and Philadelphia. He first worked with Carol Brown on The View From Here in Philadelphia.

Upcoming works include 'If I had known I was dreaming...' for soprano and string quartet at The Purcell Room on February 15th as part of the closing of Japan 2001 Festival, and other new works include 'Triptych' with Lisa Torun, 'Making Moves' for South East Dance Agency, 'Piebald Pegasus' (working title) with Emilyn Claid, 'See-Saw' with Phrenic New Ballet (Philadelphia) and 2 new quadraphonic installation pieces using text: 'Rain at Night' and 'Gut'.

email: pmw.arts@virgin.net

Return to Top

Eye For Detail/Michael Mannion and Ross Cameron

Lighting designers

Eye for detail produce lighting designs for architecture, theatre, dance and film. Along with collaborations with Carol Brown, their designs have toured internationally with dance companies such as Candoco, Javier De Frutos, Ricochet and Fin Walker/Walker Dance.

email: michaelmannion@lineone.net

Mette Ramsgard Thomsen

Architect

Mette Mette Ramsgard Thomsen is an architect working with interactive technologies. Her research centres on the design and development of spaces that are defined by physical as well as digital dimensions. Her work has resulted in multiple research events in the form of exhibitions, performances, workshops and seminars. Her work has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), from The Arts Council England as well as from the Arts Foundation, Copenhagen. She has worked in multiple international research centres including the Fraunhofer Institute, Germany and the Human Interface Technology Lab, University of Washington, USA.

Mette is currently a researcher and tutor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, research fellow at the Department of Computer Science, UCL and a Senior Lecturer at University of Brighton, School of Architecture and Design. She has taught multiple workshops in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Seoul, Copenhagen, Aarhus, GMD [St Augustin, Bonn] and Braunschweig.

Return to Top

Dorita Hannah

Architect, sceneographer

Dorita Hannah Dorita Hannah is an architect, scenographer and associate professor of Design at Massey University's College of Design Fine Arts and Music, exploring the relationship between space and performance through her practice, teaching and research. She specialises in architecture for the visual and performing arts, and has been designing for theatre and exhibitions since 1984. She has been internationally involved in theatre architecture and design through the Prague Quadrennial, where she first exhibited in 1995, was NZ's co-Commissioner in 1999, and principle collaborator with the Czech Theatre Institute in 2003 on the 'Heart of PQ', an interactive installation exhibiting the senses in performance. The last project came out of SCAPE @ Massey, a Design Studio for Social, Cultural and Performance Environments. It has been internationally presented and published (included in an upcoming Routledge Press book; The Senses in Performance) and selected for exhibition at WSD 2005 in Toronto this March. This project established an ongoing collaboration with Carol Brown, running international workshops and formulating projects that allow their mutual interest in movement and architecture to be developed and played out. Hannah's current research focuses on 'event-space' and the twentieth century avant-garde. Her design work has received awards both in New Zealand and internationally, including a UNESCO Laureate in 1999. She is also a finalist for the 4th Milka Bliznakov International Prize for Women in Architecture.

email: d.m.hannah@massey.ac.nz

Return to Top

Gwen Van Spijk

Arts manager

Gwen Van Spijk is an independent arts manager, consultant and trainer and a founding partner of CUE [Cultural Utilities and Enterprises llp], a project and production management company that serves as a conduit and platform for the realisation of adventurous new performance work. Offering a range of management and production services, the CUE team support and facilitate the activities of artists and organisations working in the fields of dance, theatre, live and performance art. Artists currently supported include amongst others: Nigel Charnock, Carol Brown, New Art Club and Russell Maliphant.

Gwen initially worked in the commercial sector in the USA and UK, moving into arts management in 1988. Positions have included Business Manager at Peterborough Arts Centre [1988 - 1991], and Administrative Director for Motionhouse Dance Theatre [1992 - 1997].

In 1997, Gwen embarked on a career as an independent arts manager; this involved managing a core portfolio of independent artists / companies; undertaking short-term projects and consultancies in the areas of business planning and organisational development; and delivering a range of training and support initiatives for junior administrator/managers and young companies.

Gwen continues to undertake the same range of activities within the framework of CUE, recent projects include: Venue Needs and Options Analysis Consultancy for essexdance; evaluation of Birmingham Royal Ballet's Breakthrough Project; delivery of West Midlands Dance Management Initiative; Organisational Development consultancies for Anjali Dance Company, Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company and Mosaic Arts; delivery of project management training and business plan mentoring for Arts & Media Training; and she is currently a visiting lecturer in UK Arts Policy at Coventry University.
Gwen has a particular interest in interdisciplinary and collaborative work and in the creative applications of emerging technologies. The underpinning aim within Gwen's practice is to work closely with artists and organisations to enable them to achieve their vision.

Gwen is Chair of the Board of Dance 4 and of IDMN [Independent Dance Managers Network].

Return to Top