March 23rd, Protein Facebook
My drawings on Protein Facebook
March 25th, 2011LOL (Lots of Love). Protein Dance Company
March 20th, 2011LOL (Lots of Love), Protein‘s fabulous new work was at The Place last week. As the title suggests the dance is concerned with how the internet and social networking is transforming relationships, replacing human contact with a series of letters, dots and dashes. The changes in the way we connect, find love and develop relationships.
As well as dancing the performers speak text in rapid, anxious one liners. The dance is fast and funny, but as it progresses the confusion of the online language combined with unrequited human longing results in melancholic solitude.
Andy Pink has created a fascinating soundscore with video animation by Rachel Davies
LOL (Lots of Love)
Chris Thompson, Director of Learning & Access at The Place described LOL (Lots of Love) as “A brilliant show, so many layers and textures and knotted wires”. During the devising of the dance the cast visited community groups around the country to speak with ‘real people’, the material they drew upon was verbal, interviews and online.
Artistic Director, Luca Silvestrini says “it’s not about technology it’s about relationships within the technology; about humanity, a celebration of flesh and blood through live performance”.
Protein are Company in Residence at Greenwich Dance. Last year during the devising of LOL they performed an extract of LOL at the Greenwich Dance Cabaret. I drew the duet, To The Bone danced by Protein dancers recently at The Wapping Project. see: https://blog.sallymckay.co.uk/2011/01/
Greenwich Dance. Spring Cabaret
March 16th, 2011The Spring Cabaret at Greenwich Dance last Friday was the chosen venue for Lisa Stubbs to celebrate her birthday. Her friends filled three tables to watch an evening of innovative dance and later surprisingly to participate in. As always I drew a few sketches of the dances as they unfolded before me.
Tamzen Moulding Matthew Hawkins
The first dance of the evening, Tamzen Moulding‘s It Started at The End combined dance and acrobatics. Matthew Hawkins followed with a solo inspired by spending time in a sculptor’s studio in China to an interesting trak sound track of the voices and activity in the studio.
Avant Garde Barn Dance
Avant Garde danced a preview of their multimedia production, Illegal Dance. During the interval Rosie Davis led some of the audience in a barn dance.
Wendy Houstoun
Wendy Houston performed ‘a short monologue for a tongue tied citizen’. I have drawn Wendy’s work before, she choreographed a dance for the Yorke Dance Project called Home on the Range, which I drew last October, see
https://blog.sallymckay.co.uk/2010/10/
Accompanied by the fabulous Squirrel Hunters: Steve Blake, Freddie Gottlieb and Peter Gibson. Dance Caller Rosie Davis encouraged the Cabaret audience to grab a partner and take part in a barn dance!
Sketch book abandoned, as friend Gill and I danced the night away. Another very successful and enjoyable Cabaret at Greenwich Dance.
Wire Sculpture
March 12th, 2011
James
I delivered and hung this life size wire sculpture last week, in the lawyers’ office in Chelmsford, Essex, joining Irina. It is based on Laban dance student, James Pett. Image soon of the two sculptures together in their new abode.
I am still missing Irina‘s calming presence in my studio. Irina was delivered in January see archive January 16th to view image:
https://blog.sallymckay.co.uk/2011/01/
In Praise of Teenagers
March 5th, 2011Yesterday at midnight I had a message from my friend Camilla “Are you in one piece?”
Why? – because it was my eldest son’s 17th birthday and I had agreed that he could have a party: ‘Hey Mum is it Ok if I have a few friends over?’ ‘Sure – how many?’ ‘about 15 or maybe a few more…’ ‘ Ok’ ‘some will stay the night’ ‘Ok’ ‘I’ll read you the invite I put on facebook…’ ‘OMG Nooo!!!’ ‘Too late it’s gone – hey trust me it’ll be fine…’
And it was
Max (3rd from left) and friends in the morning
Happy Birthday Max!
The Forsythe Company at Sadler’s Wells
March 1st, 2011I Don’t Believe in Outer Space William Forsythe‘s latest work premiered at Sadler’s Wells, London last week. The dance is an intensely personal work looking at the very nature of fragile existence through Forsythe’s eyes. The dance is both comic and tragic, the stage is strewn with balls of black tape suggestive of meteorites, but it is not about astronomy. Forsythe says ‘the space it is talking about is the one where you look back on your life and you think, where the hell was it? You finally begin to focus on the fragility of the whole experience’.
The show opens with a fabulous dark and physical monologue from Dana Caspersen, she plays two neighbours meeting for the first time. One scary and predatory, the other polite, sweet and desperately looking for a way to get rid of him, her body completely changing in shape character and movement as she alternates between the two. (above left)
Spoken text as well as music by composer Thom Willems, using lines from Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and others both as a melody and lines slipped in as spoken word.
‘As if by chance things are falling, as if by chance moving’
‘I can feel it’ ‘I put a spell on you. I love you and I don’t care’
‘you’d think I’d crumble, you’d think I’d die’
‘No more… no more stopping, no more going. No more sun. No more taking a walk in the dark’
Sunset from the studio
February 27th, 2011It feels as if the hinge between seasons is finally opening and Spring is squeezing through. On Wednesday I went to Sadler’s Wells to draw The Forsythe Company. At the end of the performance the beautiful stranger sitting next to me asked to see my sketch book, said something immensely flattering, gave me a daffodil and vanished!
View from Second Floor Studios where I have my studio. Thursday evening, 5.45.
Lewisham College
February 27th, 2011On Wednesday I was in the dance studios at Lewisham College, south London, to draw during a Dance BTEC Diploma class and rehearsal of Access to Dance. I was warmly welcomed by the students and their teacher, Amy Thornhill. I am looking forward to returning for more drawing soon.
BTEC Class
Access to Dance during rehearsal
Access to Dance will be performing at Trinity Laban on 22nd March.
Friday, drawing Rosemary Butcher’s class
February 25th, 2011My last opportunity to draw at Rosemary Butcher‘s amazing class. Friday’s sketch book:
‘Separation of the paths’
‘Keep the connections you found in your body’
‘Your space is entirely personal’
I drew slowly during the second hour of the class, the studio felt charged with emotion which I wanted to transfer to paper.
More drawing in Rosemary Butcher’s class
February 17th, 2011Thursday morning with Rosemary Butcher and the dancers at Independent Dance, Siobhan Davies Studios. First hour: pencil and sketch book.
‘Peel the body from the floor revealing new space’
‘Reaching the edges of the territory … fragile territory’
‘Space you know … space you don’t know’
In the second hour, I again drew on larger sheets using charcoal. My hand moving fast, I empathized and connected with the sensations the participants felt as they continued on each individual journey. Each drawing is of only one figure following their transitions of movement.
