Women GOLive, Old Fire Station Oxford, 14th & 15th July performances – Maggie Watson reviews

Women GOLive has continued to surprise, excite and entertain Oxford audiences with eclectic but well chosen performances of highly original work. The second and third nights of this four-night run included traditional and experimental South Asian dance from Arunima Kumar and Anuradha Chaturvedi, new contemporary dance works from visiting artist Salah El Brogy and Welsh company Ffin Dance (who bravely gave new takes on iconic music), a fresh work from Hanna Wroblewski, Mara Vivas’ and My Johansson’s interactive performance installation, and humour from Sarah Kent and Aliki Mbakoyianni. A terrific line-up.

 

Metamorphoses by Le Marchepied, Old Fire Station, Saturday 21st May 2016

Myths of transformation, love and loss are brought to life the way the ancient Romans would have seen them danced.  In collaboration with Oxford University researchers, Swiss company Le Marchepied have created their version of the popular Graeco-Roman dance form orchēsis, also called tragoedia saltata, or tragic pantomime. Their performance Metamorphoses is accompanied by an open interactive workshop on orchēsis taking place at St Hilda’s College in the morning of Saturday 20th. Audience members are warmly invited to participate or observe in advance of the evening’s performance (for more information on the workshop or to book a place, please contact helen.slaney@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk).

Since 2013, the Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers research project has been working with groups and individuals, including the Oxford-based Avid for Ovid, to develop a range of conjectures for how orchēsis might have appeared. In their experimental reconstruction, Le Marchepied will present a series of individual interpretations based on mythological scenarios from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, known to have been used as a libretto for orchēsis. They bring to life Ovid’s vibrant tales of gods, mortals, passion, loss, and transformation in a way that has not been seen since antiquity. This performance will form part of Le Marchepied’s 2016 tour of the United Kingdom.

Performance:  Saturday, 21 May 2016, 6.00pm

Venue:  The Old Fire Station, 40 George Street, Oxford, OX1 2AQ

Tickets:  Free, available from www.ticketsoxford.com or 01865 305305

You can find out more about Le Marchepied here and about Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers here

 

Avid for Ovid at DeadFriday, Ashmolean Museum, 30th October – Maggie Watson reviews

Scholarly, artistic and professional, Avid for Ovid’s highly original creative work was on show in a series of performances as part of the Ashmolean’s wildly popular sell-out DeadFriday Halloween happening.

Accompanied by Malcolm Atkins, dancers Susie Crow, Marie-Louise Crawley and Ségolène Tarte used Roman pantomime to explore the grief and horror of death. As we sat on the floor of the Cast Gallery, a line of candles marking the edge of the performance area like footlights, we saw expressions of human and beyond-human emotion, the quality of each experience being powerfully affected by whether or not the dancers wore masks. Crow, who was unmasked, gave a profoundly moving portrayal of Aurora grieving for her son Memnon that fell firmly within the range of human empathy. On the other hand, when the dancers wore masks, Crawley’s dread-inspiring transformation into a tree and Tarte’s terrifying embodiment of a werewolf seemed almost to pierce the veil that hangs between the natural and the supernatural.

Among the academic papers, craft workshops, musical performances and a theatrical re-enactment of a Roman funeral, Avid for Ovid evoked both pity and terror in its audience: the ultimate Halloween experience.

Maggie Watson

1 November 2015

 

GOlive Oxford Burton Taylor Studio 18th July – Nicholas Minns reviews

Critic turned critic-entrepreneur Donald Hutera is creating and curating opportunities for dancers to perform who might otherwise have few occasions to show their work. Oxford is a first for GOlive and there is a further outing at the Chesil Theatre in Winchester on July 24. The venues are small — the original GOlive venue at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town holds 60 people and the Burton-Taylor studio seats 50 — but their intimacy works well for the small-scale works Hutera is presenting. One of the advantages of this proximity is the value given to the subtleties of communication; there are elements of this evening’s program that provide a master class in the art of integrating the head and eyes in the moving body, a vital aspect that is all too often overlooked in dance training.

 

GOlive Oxford curated by Donald Hutera at Burton Taylor Studio 15th-18th July 2015

The GOlive Dance and Performance Festival has built an enviable reputation for breaking the rules in the mere two years since veteran dance/theatre critic Donald Hutera (the Times) first applied his encyclopaedic knowledge of international arts to curating a playful eclectic programme of performances for small spaces.  This year following a season at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town in June GOlive goes on tour, with performances in Oxford and Winchester.  Featuring performers from Oxford and across the UK in the Burton Taylor Studio’s intimate setting, GOlive Oxford offers something for all lovers of dance in two programmes over four days.  If ya gotta go, GOlive!

“If it’s worth seeing, Hutera has seen it”  METRO

“…it might be the piece that hooks you forever…” Luke Jennings, The Observer

 

Embodying Emotion: Body and Being Network, St Hilda’s College 3rd June 2015

Where does emotion reside? How do we share it? To whom does it belong?  Programmed by the recently formed Body and Being Network, the event Embodying Emotion offers a chance to explore these fascinating questions this coming 3rd June.  Performing an original piece based on Ovid’s tale of Myrrha (developed as part of Avid for Ovid), choreographer and dance artist Marie-Louise Crawley and composer Malcolm Atkins will explore the embodied expression of emotion.  The performance will be followed by facilitated audience discussion.

Date:  Wednesday 3rd June 5.30-6.30pm

Venue:  Jacqueline du Pré Building, St Hilda’s College, Oxford
Attendance is free, but please register for this event on the Body and Being Network website by 1 June: http://bodyandbeingnetwork.org/2015/05/20/event-announcement-embodying-emotion/
This event is generously supported by a research award from St Hilda’s College.

The Body and Being Network is a new research initiative that aims to develop innovative interdisciplinary dialogues about the body. Co-founded by Karin Eli (University of Oxford) and Anna Lavis (University of Birmingham), the network instigates and supports collaborative encounters between scholars and performing artists, and challenges participants to develop analyses that involve their own embodied experiences. Find out about The Body and Being Network here

Find out more about Avid for Ovid’s work, and read Marie Louise Crawley’s reflections on portraying Myrrha here.

 

ADMD Colloquium and A4O Morphing in Progress, St Hilda’s and Corpus Christi 28th November

In continuation of the fascinating research work begun in 2013 on ancient Roman pantomime, Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers (ADMD) in association with Avid for Ovid (A4O) are pleased to invite you to an afternoon of talks and performance on Friday 28th November.

ADMD Colloquium 2

Lady Brodie Room, St Hilda’s College  1.30pm – 5.00pm

The theme of this year’s colloquium is Communicating Nonverbal Emotion. Confirmed speakers include Susan Jones (Oxford), Anne Woodford (École Normale Supérieure), and Audrey Gouy (Ca’ Foscari). A detailed programme will be available shortly at http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/ancientdance. We also invite your participation in a round-table discussion on the future of the network.

A4O present Morphing in Progress

Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College, Oxford   5.30pm – 7.00pm (Doors open 5.15)

A showing of new work under development by Avid for Ovid (Susie Crow, Ségolène Tarte, Marie-Louise Crawley & Malcolm Atkins).  The showing will be followed by a Q&A with A4O about their creative process. http://avidforovid.blogspot.co.uk

For more details or to register, please contact helen.slaney@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk or sign up via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/744532448933358/  The event is free of charge but we would like to keep track of numbers for catering purposes. If you’re unable to join us for the whole event, you are welcome to attend either the talks or performance separately.

ADMD acknowledges the support of The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).

 

Metamorphoses: work in progress from Avid for Ovid and Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers, Corpus Christi College 28th August 2014

Metamorphoses – dance interpretations of the poetry of Ovid is an evening of dance and music based on interpretations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses performed by members of the Avid for Ovid group who have been working  in collaboration with the Oxford University research project Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers.  The event is a showing of work in progress, and will involve audience participation in that artists and academics will be asking for feedback.  Dancers Susie Crow and Ségolène Tarte with composer Malcolm Atkins introduced by classicist Helen Slaney will demonstrate some of their practical processes and emerging studies.  The researchers are eager to find out what audience members see in the pieces and how the communicability of an ancient solo narrative dance form might be developed in a contemporary context.

 

Avid for Ovid: research-based practice from practice-based research

News of exciting new research with both academic and artistic strands happening here in Oxford.  Here the Avid for Ovid team introduce themselves, what has happened so far and plans for forthcoming work.

Who we are and why we are

Avid for Ovid is a group of performing artists interested in exploring the potential of using principles and ideas from ancient dance and music in contemporary performance. As performers we are keen to research ancient performance principles and to broaden our vocabularies by incorporating elements from the unique cultures of Ancient Greece and Rome in order to use them to develop narrative pieces that are meaningful within a contemporary context.

Core members of the group are Malcolm Atkins, musician; Susie Crow, dancer: and Ségolène Tarte, dancer.  Our interest in this work was crystallised through our participation in the Oxford University research project Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers in the summer of 2013.  Conducted by classicist Dr. Helen Slaney, social anthropologist Dr. Caroline Potter, and doctoral researcher Sophie Bocksberger, with the support of TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, University of Oxford), the aim of this practice-based project is to explore the nature and physicality of Ancient Roman Pantomime.