Jennifer Homans on 20th-century choreographer George Balanchine, in conversation with Dame Hermione Lee; Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College. A joint DANSOX and Oxford Centre for Life-Writing event, 24th November, 2022 – Maggie Watson reports

On Thursday 24th November, DANSOX and the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing presented a joint event in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Oxford. DANSOX director Professor emeritus Sue Jones introduced the Centre’s founder, Dame Hermione Lee, who interviewed writer, academic, and former dancer Jennifer Homans about her biography Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century.

Homans had spent ten years working on the book: in 2017 at the Dancing Lives conference at Wolfson College, Oxford, she spoke of her quest to explore Balanchine’s work with a view revealing the man himself through the dances that he created. Five years on, this was an opportunity to discover more about that process and about how Homans had addressed the problems that she had encountered.

 

66 Dances: A series of fortunate events. Andy Solway reflects on process, production and performance, Littlemore Church, 2nd-3rd December 2022

Dance is for the young. That’s what the world says. Dance companies are full of young dancers with incredible physical skills, and choreographers are funded to make spectacular performances with their young companies. But this view is belied by the huge numbers of older people who dance into their thirties, forties, fifties and beyond. I have always loved to dance, but I often think that I’m not a ‘real’ dancer. I’ve never been in a big company, I only danced seriously for about 12 years, then I more or less gave up until my late 50s. I don’t talk about dancing to my work colleagues, or in my kayaking club. But still, at 66, dance remains a core part of who I am.

66 Dances began, like many things, during lockdown. My friend Steve Batts, who is director of Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company in Derry, put on November Dances, a series of 21 live streamed performances in November 2020. It was a great event, Every weekday night a community of people from all over the world gathered to watch for about 15 minutes. Each night Steve created a space in our imaginations where he could dance for himself and for us. This summer, I was involved in several dance workshops and projects that I enjoyed immensely. However, I was also feeling afraid. I have had several small ailments that were quite worrying at the time, and many friends have quite serious ongoing health problems. Would I be able to dance in a year’s time? In a week? 66 Dances arose out of these feelings. The idea was to make a two-day event in which I would perform my age in dance.

 

Andy Solway presents 66 Dances, St Mary and St Nicholas Church Littlemore, 2nd-3rd December 2022

66 Dances is a challenge, a taking stock, an artistic collaboration, and a reflection on the world over the past 66 years. On 2nd December, respected Oxford based dance artist and improviser Andy Solway will be 66. Over 2 days in the beautiful setting of Littlemore Church, he will perform 66 dances, supported in this unique event by an amazing, diverse group of dancers, musicians and other collaborators.

Dates: Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd December. The performance runs from 9.00am to 7.00pm each day.

Venue: St Mary and St Nicholas Church, Cowley Road, Littlemore, Oxford, OX4 4PP

Tickets: FREE, but numbers are limited. Reserve your place on Eventbrite. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/…/66-dances-tickets…

You can donate on the door, or to the Just Giving page. All proceeds will go to Macmillan Cancer Research.
https://www.justgiving.com/page/andrew-solway-66dances-littlemore?utm_source=copyLink&utm_medium=one_page&utm_content=page/andrew-solway-66dances-littlemore&utm_campaign=pfp-share&utm_term=9ccdee8c943341f59d64676639a1d21a

Check out the Facebook event link for further information – https://fb.me/e/2nNOlIKQn

If you can’t attend, why not watch online? 66 Dances live stream:

Friday https://youtu.be/crOS9cOLDy4
Saturday https://youtu.be/ghRbpl4PZtM

 

Clorinda Agonistes. Shobana Jeyasingh Dance, Oxford Playhouse, Tuesday 15 & Wednesday 16 November; introduced and discussed at DANSOX, Wednesday 9 November 2022 – Maggie Watson reviews

An informative and stimulating DANSOX event, hosted at St Hilda’s College on 9th November, heralded Shobana Jeyasingh’s new work, Clorinda Agonistes, which played to full houses at Oxford Playhouse last week.

Speaking at DANSOX, Jeyasingh described her work’s lengthy gestation period. The inspiration that she drew from hearing Claudio Monteverdi’s operatic scena Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda led her to research the story derived from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata that lay behind it. Initially drawn by Monteverdi’s use of recitative, which Jeyasingh felt had an emotional effect similar to the vocalisation of syllables in classical Indian dance, she discovered a story that in spite of its late mediaeval orientalising tropes offers new resonance and meaning for audiences today.

 

DANSOX presents Jennifer Homans & Dame Hermione Lee in conversation on ‘Mr B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century’, Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, 24th November 2022

DANSOX joins forces with the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing to present two distinguished scholars in conversation, Jennifer Homans and Professor Dame Hermione Lee, launching Jennifer Homans’ important new biography, Mr B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century. An unmissable discussion of one of ballet’s most influential figures.

George Balanchine did for dance what Picasso did for painting: he changed the art and the way we see the human form. Homans follows Balanchine from his childhood in Tsarist St Petersburg, through the upheavals of the Russian Revolution, two World Wars, and the cultural Cold War, to New York, where he co-founded and ran the New York City Ballet.

• Jennifer Homans is the dance critic for the New Yorker. Her widely acclaimed Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet was a bestseller and named one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review. Trained in dance at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, she performed professionally with the Pacific Northwest Ballet. She earned her BA at Columbia University and her PhD in modern European history at New York University, where she is a Scholar in Residence and the Founding Director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts.
• Hermione Lee is a biographer and Emeritus Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at Oxford University.

Date: Thursday 24th November, 5.30pm

Venue: Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford OX4 1DY

Followed by drinks reception; free and open to all.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/jennifer-homans-on-20th-century-choreographer-george-balanchine-tickets-440915097927

Find out more and purchase Jennifer Homans’ book here

Read Maggie Watson’s account for Oxford Dance Writers of the 2017 DANSOX and Oxford Centre for Life-Writing collaborative event which also featured Jennifer Homans here

 

DANSOX presents Shobana Jeyasingh Dance discussion & demonstration of Clorinda Agonistes, Jacqueline du Pré Music Building 9th November 2022

Ahead of their performances at the Oxford Playhouse the following week, renowned choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh with dancers and artists of the company are invited by DANSOX (Dance Scholarship Oxford) to discuss and demonstrate the creative process for their exciting new work Clorinda Agonistes. The piece is inspired by the heroine of Claudio Monteverdi’s celebrated work, Il Combattimento, and the Tasso poem, based on the proud and fiery Muslim warrior Clorinda who defiantly refuses to reveal her name.
Followed by a Q&A session.

Date: Wednesday 9th November 5.30pm

Venue: Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford OX4 1DY. 

Reserve a seat: email susan.jones@ell.ox.ac.uk

 

Oxford Dance Forum presents Dance Scratch Night, at the Old Fire Station (OFS), Oxford, 5th October 2022 – Maggie Watson reports

The Oxford Dance Forum (ODF) Scratch Night was an opportunity for four choreographers to try out newly created dances in front of an audience.  Nathan Grassi introduced each work on behalf of ODF, and skilfully moderated the feedback discussions that followed each performance.

The evening started with a fragment from Andy Solway’s extended work 66 Dances, with which he plans to mark his sixty-sixth birthday over the course of two days at Littlemore Church in December.  Eight dancers, alongside musicians Malcolm Atkins and Paul Medley, presented an improvisation that included danced responses to haikus by Erica Ison, which were written on pieces of paper that were pinned to the back curtain and selected at random.  Imagery from the first haiku inspired a duet in which the dancers circled each other like birds.  Solway and Jenny Parrott responded to the second haiku with movement that conjured up the sense of dripping water; I could almost feel the rain splashing onto Parrott’s head and neck.

 

Leanne Benjamin: built for ballet, an autobiography, Leanne Benjamin with Sarah Crompton – Maggie Watson reviews

Leanne Benjamin arrived in London in 1980, aged sixteen, to attend the Royal Ballet School, and became a principal dancer with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet (SWRB) at twenty-three.  Her career in dance has been exceptional but there is nothing complacent about this memoir, co-authored with writer and broadcaster Sarah Crompton.  Benjamin is as disarmingly open about her failures as she is about her successes, whether they relate to her dancing, her decisions, or her behaviour.  Punctuality (or rather her lack of it) was a continual challenge:  she missed the opportunity to be promoted to soloist by arriving late on stage during a performance of Les Patineurs; on tour in India, she took a sightseeing trip and arrived at the theatre too late to step in and replace an injured principal dancer.   On the other hand Benjamin candidly does not regret a ‘silly’ decision to rehearse Romeo and Juliet with Peter Schaufuss in secret, behind the back of her director Peter Wright at SWRB, because it gave her a unique opportunity to work with Frederick Ashton. 

 

Rendez-Vous Dance present What Songs May Do… Burton Taylor Studio, 4th-5th October 2022

Oxford Playhouse’ Burton Taylor Studio this week offers an intimate evening of dance with What Songs May Do… Revealed by Nina Simone’s songs, this highly anticipated duet by award-winning choreographer and Rendez-Vous Dance artistic director Mathieu Geffré exposes with an unapologetic passion the fractured relationship of a once romantic couple as they delve into their past in an attempt to rebuild their future together. What Songs May Do… is an inclusive dance piece that celebrates love in all its diversity.

What the critics say about Geffré and Rendez-Vous Dance:

“An artist with pedigree, bringing depth, experience and impactful movement quality.” Graham Watts, Dance Writer

“If you’re searching for that perfect balance between strength and grace, I strongly recommend Rendez-Vous Dance.” Chloe Fordham, Dance Writer

Dates: Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th October, 7.30pm

Venue: Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford Playhouse, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2LW

Tickets: £12.50, book online here

Duration: 60 minutes, no interval

Age: recommended 13+

Find out more about Rendez-Vous Dance here

 

Oxford Dance Forum presents Dance Scratch Night, Arts at the Old Fire Station 5th October 2022

Oxford Dance Forum (ODF) hosts another stimulating Dance Scratch Night at Arts at the Old Fire Station, an evening of new works in progress by local dance artists, with time for audience feedback and discussion. Oxford artists showing work in this edition are Andy Solway, Ayala Kingsley, and Ségolène Tarte, and ODF is also delighted to welcome visiting company Dew Dance from High Wycombe. Further details about the works in progress they will be sharing:

Andy Solway: Six from 66

Andy Solway has been creating improvised performances since the 1980s. The pieces in this Scratch Night are fragments from a two-day performance planned for later this year. 66 Dances is a challenge, a taking stock, an artistic collaboration, and a reflection on the world over the past 66 years. On 2 December, Andy will be 66. Over 2 days, 2 and 3 December, at Littlemore Church, he will perform 66 dances, supported by an amazing group of dancers, musicians and other collaborators.

Ayala Kingsley: Intermediary

This piece came out of Café Reason’s Starting from Zero lockdown project, where Ayala experimented with using everyday materials and objects to explore states of relationship, restriction, and transformation. It was then developed for Café Reason’s Virtual Diamond Night in March within the theme of Hidden.

Ségolène Tarte: Peregrine Suite (Excerpts; work in progress)

Different times, different places, different states of minds… There are so many ways to travel! Dedicated to all who yearn for travel, and particularly to those who find themselves constrained to traveling in their imaginations, Peregrine Suite is an evocation of travels in time, in space, and in minds; it spins a tale of connections with others, with the self, and with the wondrous. Let yourself be carried along this semi-improvised ambulation across ballet, butoh, and, contemporary; follow the spinners of tales…

Dew Dance: Under the treetops

Under the treetops is a contemporary dance performance, celebrating nature and the significance of trees, intertwined with stories of the community. Performed by Dew Dance, we explore how trees signify growth, sustain life and are a place of shelter. Trees are home. Originally choreographed for bespoke outdoor spaces, Under the treetops is undergoing further development and adaptation for stage.

Date: Wednesday 5th October, 7.30pm

Venue: Arts at the Old Fire Station, 40 George Street, Oxford )X1 2AQ

Tickets: £5 book here

Find out more about Oxford Dance Forum here