Oxford Dance Writers

C-12 Dance Theatre Present

THE CHAIR

Venue: The North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford
Dates: Thursday 4th November 2010
Box Office: 01865 319450 or http://www.thenorthwall.com

‘This was an incredibly intense performance that keeps the audience mesmerised until at the end.’ ***** Three Weeks 2009

C-12 Dance Theatre presents The Chair. This emotionally charged double-bill of dance-inspired physical theatre has been capturing audiences since the premiers in Sweden and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The first piece Enough, features a female duet struggling to deal with living with a burden. The title piece, The Chair uses theatrical narrative with fluid dance and movement work to tell the story of a man who is forced to face his past.

Murder, torture and forgiveness are explored through one man’s discovery of his past. What is the truth behind this individual’s situation? What will be his retribution? C-12 Dance Theatre will take you on a journey into one man’s existence of justice through this explosive piece of contemporary dance theatre.

C-12 Dance Theatre is an emerging London based dance theatre company who are rapidly gaining status on the dance circuit. Established in 2005 by Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster, Nasae Evanson and Adam Towndrow, the company fuses dance and theatre creating a unique blend of physical dance performance with a theatrical narrative.

Previous performance credits include Dance Umbrella’s Brief Encounter at the Southbank Centre in October 2008 where their duet, ONE, was received with critical acclaim.

OXFORD IMPROVISERS’ COHESION 4 FESTIVAL

PEGASUS THEATRE, Sunday 14 Nov 5.00-10.00

sound & vision

An exhilarating cocktail of improvisation with musicians, dancers and visual artists exploring the real-time interplay between music, visual imagery, film and movement.

Join them in the Pegasus Theatre to listen, watch and participate…

PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCES

5.00 – 9.00 in the Studio: Artists. musicians, dancers. new collaborations, new works
Clare Bassett, Kassandra Isaacson, Susie Moxley, Chris Stubbs, Stacey    Righton, Laura Peña, Aya Kobayashi

7.00-10.00 in the Theatre:
Bruno Guastalla and Macarena Ortuzar

Camilla Cancantata leads an improvised opera

Graphic Scores: showcase of work from the Graphic Scores Workshop (see below)

Attractive Wallpaper’s instant choreography and video

Synaesthetics Efthymios Chatzigiannis and Dariusz Dziala

Grand Finale with Oxford Improvisers Orchestra

in the Café and the Foyer

6.00-6.45      Zariba among the coffee cups

5.00-10.00     Aquaphonics & Anne L. Ryan in the foyer



Tickets: £10 gives you entry to all performances throughout the day and evening.

concessions £8, under 18s £6.

Pegasus Box Office: 01865 812150  www.pegasustheatre.org.uk <http://www.pegasustheatre.org.uk>

WORKSHOPS WORKSHOPS WORKSHOPS WORKSHOPS WORKSHOPS WORKSHOPS

IMPROVISING WITH VOICE TREVOR WISHART. Come along whether you can sing or not

Sunday 7th November 10.00am-1.00pm.

Venue: Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College.

Booking: Fran Ryan 07889 209448  cohesion2010@sonosophy.com

Participants are welcome to join the Feral Choir performing at Pegasus on 14th November

IMPROVISING WITH GRAPHIC SCORES Dr Dan Goren and Malcolm Atkins

Part 1: Tuesday 2 November 6.30-9:00 Part 2: Tuesday 9 November 6.30-9:00

Part 3: Performance at Pegasus on Sunday 14th November

Venue for parts 1 and 2: Richard Hamilton Building, Oxford Brookes University.

Booking: Dan Goren  07773796244  cohesion2010@sonosophy.com

PointZero physical theatre presents

CAFE LIFE

For one-night-only, a previously ‘dis-used’, or ‘differently-used’ open space is literally, physically transformed into a unique, intimate café/wine bar; where drinks are served, conversations unfold, laughter is heard and stories are told; – ‘life’ is experienced… against the inspired, relaxed backdrop of ‘live’ music & song, poetry, monologue, visual/fine art and physical performance.

‘Café Life’ is a meeting-of hearts-and minds, a chill-out oasis amid the sometimes punishing dry heat of pressured life, this cosy hide-away offers customers a warm, welcoming environment where the realities of everyday life, gently spill out and are shared and reflected amongst an easy-ambience of excitement, friendship and play, expressed over cup of coffee, or a glass of wine; within an delightful atmosphere of unassuming creativity, offering rehearsed, as well as spontaneously improvised presentation & performance.

The evening’s intimate, easy-rolling performances, include professional and non-professional artists, a loosely pre-arranged performance programme, as well as an ‘open mic/floor’ set, where Café Life customers are spontaneously invited to participate within the evenings’ performance programme, – so if you’re feeling inspired and have a poem, or creative expression hidden away, but rumbling deep down inside of you wanting and waiting to be released… maybe this is your time to release it?!

20th November / 7:30PM / The King’s Centre, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2  0ES /
Entrance: £5.00 (donation) / http://www.pointzero.me

Celebrating the appearance in print of a fascinating new collection of essays edited by one of Oxford’s own writers on dance, classical scholar Dr Fiona Macintosh. One of three new publications from the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, launched at the recent APGRD Conference, “Choruses: Ancient and Modern”, this tempting volume is now available in store.  Price is eye-watering, perhaps we can persuade OUP to produce a more affordable paperback copy to make this thought-provoking scholarship more accessible to the dance community?

The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Responses to Greek and Roman Dance

When the eighteenth-century choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre sought to develop what is now known as modern ballet, he turned to ancient pantomime as his source of inspiration; and when Isadora Duncan and her contemporaries looked for alternatives to the strictures of classical ballet, they looked to ancient Greek vases for models for what they termed ‘natural’ movement. This is the first book to examine systematically the long history of the impact of ideas about ancient Greek and Roman dance on modern theatrical and choreographic practices. With contributions from eminent classical scholars, dance historians, theatre specialists, modern literary critics, and art historians, as well as from contemporary practitioners, it offers a very wide conspectus on an under-explored but central aspect of classical reception, dance and theatre history, and the history of ideas.

This book is an essential complement to the new, performance-based study of ancient theatre.  Lavishly illustrated, with many rare archive photographs, it traces a wealth of classical influences upon modern dance, from Fred Astaire to Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham.

Editor:

Fiona Macintosh is Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Reader in the Reception of Greek and Roman Literature, Supernumerary Fellow St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford

Contributors:

Daniel Albright

Henrietta Bannerman

Richard Cave

Ann Cooper Albright

Helen Eastman

Edith Hall

Sue Jones

Ismene Lada-Richards

Struan Leslie

Nadine Meisner

Pantelis Michelakis

Frederick Naerebout

Barbara Ravelhofer

Kathleen Riley

Tyler Jo Smith

Arabella Stanger

Jennifer Thorp

Ruth Webb

Suzy Wilson

Alessandra Zanobi

Yana Zarifi

Vanda Zajko

Publisher:  Oxford University Press

480 pages; 49 in-text illustrations; 9.2 x 6.1;

ISBN13: 978-0-19-954810-1

ISBN10: 0-19-954810-2

Following the recent Burton Taylor Scratch Night and Cafe Reason’s latest Diamond Nights evening, Ana Barbour reflects on her experiences both giving and facilitating audience feedback to the artists, and raises some pertinent questions about how to do this effectively…

On Monday 20th September I went to The Burton Taylor Scratch night.  There, feedback had been encouraged from the outset –stipulated both in the artists’ application process and in the publicity to potential audience members.  The session was well organised and involved direct face to face communication between performers and audience members in small groups.  The performers were able to direct the focus of their feedback by asking for thoughts/comments on particular aspects they wanted addressing – these were written on the programme notes.    Organising a platform event in the same week I was curious to see if I could find a way to generate feedback from an audience that had not been expressly asked to do so.  I was also interested to see how to gather ‘evidence’  – a process now being required of artists more and more in order to support eg funding and job applications.

So, in the Diamond Nights evening on 25th September we handed out cards and pen to each person and asked if they could jot any thoughts, images or comments (even if just one word) that came up while watching each of the performances (which I numbered for ease of reference).

Advantages and disadvantages of two different approaches:

The advantages of this written feedback is that people can make their comments privately (anonymously) and without the stress of exposing their thoughts /impressions to everyone else.  It also leaves a written record, ‘evidence’, that a work has been seen by an audience.

Disadvantages are that comments are one way and leave no opportunity for the performer to engage or ask for clarification or for the person giving feedback to give any explanation for their comments.  There are also the practical issues of writing in the dark, time between acts to write, legibility, and then as I am discovering, how to process and pass on these to the different performers.

In the B.T. feedback session the performers and audience had the advantage of directly speaking to each other, asking questions, following up thoughts and bouncing ideas off other commentators.  The structure of the session which ensured that you spoke to the presenters of each of the different acts meant exposure to a variety of audience opinion.

Some disadvantages were that it was a quite daunting task for an audience member to have the spotlight turned on them (or so it felt) to express an opinion face to face.  This would probably be inhibiting for anyone who was not already a committed artist or promoter themselves.  Additionally the range of different mediums (theatre, music , dance, poetry) was a possible further challenge for the person giving feedback.

For me it has opened up lots of questions about how to ask for feedback, and when it is appropriate or desirable to have feedback.  How constructive can general feedback be?  For what purpose is the feedback intended?  Do we even really want it?   I’m looking forward to exploring and learning more.

You can read Ana’s accounts of Scratch Night and Diamond Nights here:

https://oxforddancewriters.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/untried-untested-tonight/#comments

https://oxforddancewriters.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/diamond-nights-2/#comments