1st July 2012
When you walk into the grounds of Eltham Palace in South East London it is like entering a secret garden, or walking through the wardrobe and finding yourself in Narnia. This Art Deco hidden gem, built around the remains of the Palace first recorded in Domesday Book of 1086, is the location Greenwich Dance and Greenwich Theatre present the annual Greenwich World Cultural Festival, a celebration of dance, music and theatre from around the world.
As Greenwich Dance’s Resident Artist I arranged a Creative Clay workshop in the Sunken Moat, led by my eldest son Max and his friend Jess, to make clay figures inspired by the dance taking place around them. Constantly busy with all ages creating a figure to take home.
Creative Clay workshop inspired by dance in the festival
Visitors to the festival were given a map of the palace grounds showing a bridge crossing the dry moat at three given times during the afternoon, asked to meet beside the bridge to be led to the area where a dance would be performed by Beyond Front@
Beyond Front@ dancing in the grounds of Eltham Palace
I gave the spectators small pieces of paper and pencils and suggested they try to get some of the movement on to paper, at the end of the dance we hung them on the Thought Tree.
Musicians played in surprise places around the grounds
Protein Dance’s The Picnic commissioned by Greenwich Dance
The Card by Graham Rawle
Remi and Anwobo of PlatformDTV with Victor discussing his life in dance
Come, been & gone. 2011. Oil on Canvas
Morgan Szymanski. 2012. Oil on canvas
Else Tunemyr and Hrafnildur Benedikstdottir danced, turned, rolled, spun, naked in water which they had spat, dribbled and poured over the studio floor. Reminiscent of french artist Yves Klein’s Anthropometry performance art paintings in 1960, when Klein dragged naked women covered in blue paint across canvas using the female models as human brushes. Friday’s performance was directed and performed by women so had none of the uncomfortable undertones of dominant male directing the woman as “living brushes”. Nathalia Mello joined the action via skype.
