Carol Brown Dances: Carol Brown Writes

Carol Brown Writes

29.01.01

Photo: Carol Brown Time slips inexorably and here I am months after the last Writes, in London, in a quiet spell, improvising. I returned from New Zealand late December, moving from sand to snow, and discovered that my proposal for a research fellowship had been successful, hence all the improvising around potential sites of practice for Anatomies and Architectures.

The fellowship provides support for a three year programme of research: 2001 Knowing Spaces; 2002 Modelling Spaces; 2003 The Place of Performance.

It will enable me to investigate Choreographic process as a practice of writing space in the contexts of dance, architecture and new media. Through this research, dances will be created and performed which explore questions of space relevant to changing urban environments and patterns of spectatorship. In particular, I am interested in investigating how new technologies of perception, evolving through access to new media can impact upon the choreographic process and its performative outcomes. The fellowship is offered through the Arts and Humanities Research Board and is to be hosted by University of Surrey Roehampton.

In the meantime work in the theatre continues. Our tour of Poland with the triple bill, Ocean Skin, Flesh.txt and House on Fire was well received and invigorated some of the older works in the repertoire through the newness of the audiences. The British Council managed the tour which took us to Lublin, Bytom and Warsaw. Lisa and I gave several workshops and met both dance students and professionals from the impoverished but burgeoning cultural scene of post-communist Poland. Their hunger for new forms impressed me.

Shelf Life has also been on the road with performances in Rome as part of Romaeuropa in October, and in Prague in November in the International Theatre Festival 4 + 4. The challenge with Shelf Life is always how to sculpt the work to the space in which it is housed, and to create the quiet atmosphere of the piece so it can breathe through the spectators bodies. In Rome we were in the domed foyer of the National Theatre, a space between the house and the street. In Prague in a disused brewery in Holsovice we found a very different kind of a life for the work. Within an engine room with a tall ceiling, steel columns and a crumbling tiled wall, the shelf took on a real sense of decay and in the surrounding darkness it had the quality of a slow, winding descent, an asylum-like sense of neglect and discord.

Still in the aftershock of Machine for Living, we are in the process of extending its life through touring. The Corn Exchange was a rare find, a combination of space with grace (it was once used for exercising horses), however we are now faced with the challenge of finding large enough spaces with visionary programmers willing to house cross-disciplinary work on this scale.

Soon we are off to Vienna to perform the Triple Bill at dieTheater. This will be our first performance in Vienna, a city I feel a strong connection with through the influence of Gertrud Bodenwieser who lived there until she fled, together with my dance teacher, Shona Dunlop and dear and recently deceased friend, Hilary Napier, in 1938 with the Tanzgruppe Bodenwieser.

I am also returning to New Zealand in April to participate in the DANZ Conference, Future Moves 2001, and will be giving a keynote address dancing in the mediascape, as well as a series of workshops. In May I will return to Philadelphia to work with Group Motion Dance Company, making a new work for their June programme together with videographer, Tobin Rothlein.

Russell Scoones is now gigging around London at pubs and venues with his delightful songs. Most recently he performed as part of Crimson Sails an evening of work at The Ship, delighting London audiences on these cold wintery evenings. Mattias Ek has been in Cornwall photographing Lords, he's recently done two covers for Blueprint Magazine and we have a photo and write-up in this months Italian Vogue, as well as featuring in Dance Theatre Journal. Pete Wyer is just back from New York, with fresh thoughts for a future collaboration and a new studio to move into in the Sussex hills. Esther Rolinson is also just back from the US and is working on an urban design project in Redhill. Stewart Dodd, has completed his doctorate and is working on some major inner city development projects as well as fielding and fossicking for the future lives of Nerve, in London and Canada.

Email: carol@cranium.demon.co.uk

Other Entries: 01.07.03 | 22.11.02 | 16.05.02 | 18.09.01 | 29.01.01 | 21.09.00