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.

 

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

 

Café Reason in Tipping Point, Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College Oxford, 12th January 2020 – Susie Crow reviews

Oxford’s long established butoh dance theatre group Café Reason first showed its  ecologically focused work Tipping Point at the University of Hertfordshire last year, the outcome of this collaborative company’s collective exploration and creative response to “the threats facing our fragile planet”. In January 2020 the company unveiled it in Oxford over two sold out nights, testimony to a solid and sympathetic audience support base, but also to the topical urgency of its theme, increasingly in the public eye as we followed the horrific development of Australia’s bush fires. Corpus Christi College’s Al Jaber auditorium proved an apt setting, its reuse of ancient wall providing a dramatic irregular boundary and contrast to an otherwise technologically functional modern space.

 

Ana’s Time: a commemorative evening curated by Malcolm Atkins & Dariusz Dziala, Film Oxford, 10th October 2018 – Maggie Watson reviews

Ana’s Time, a celebration in film, poetry and music of Ana Barbour’s contribution to the arts, took place at Film Oxford the day before what would have been her fifty-second birthday. The audience, which included many of her collaborators, shared laughter and tears as a showing of some her short films brought back memories of Barbour as a performer and creative artist.

Barbour’s film output demonstrates even more than her live performances her capacity to imagine and then present to others her extraordinary vision of the world. Borderlands, opens to the sound of marching feet, before fingers, and then hands, seem to tiptoe over a mossy wall. There is a troubling humour about her presentation of the human body in the landscape as apparently disembodied body parts squirm through vegetation. Footage, a film around a line-up of bare feet, and Eye-I, in which an eye watches from the side of the screen, are witty but unsettling; in Crow’s Playmates, Barbour seems to levitate above the billowing grass, while in My Time (2011) she confronts the problem of her ageing body. The irony is that Barbour did not live to grow old.

 

Ana’s Time: evening of films made by or with Ana Barbour, Film Oxford 10th October 2018

Film Oxford hosts a welcome retrospective event on much loved local artist Ana Barbour who died last year.  The programme will include a curated playlist of her films, a short film by Dariusz Dziala with live music by Bruno Guastalla presenting ‘behind the scenes’ footage of Ana working on dance projects, and poetry by Ayala Kingsley.

Date:  Wednesday 10th October 7.00pm

Venue:  Film Oxford, 54 Catherine Street, Oxford OX4 3AH

The event is free, but donations towards Film Oxford’s dance film work will be much appreciated.  If you wish to attend please contact Dariusz Dziala on 07929 059974 or Malcolm Atkins on 07872 991287

Find out more about Ana Barbour’s work here

 

 

Café Reason Butoh Theatre present Dolls’ House, Pegasus Theatre 15th-16th January 2015

Café Reason Butoh Theatre is an experimental performance group specialising in butoh, the iconoclastic dance form that originated in postwar Japan.  Established in Oxford in 1997, Café Reason is the only permanent butoh company in the UK outside London and has achieved a fine reputation for its innovative theatre, site-specific and improvised performances.  An abandoned dolls’ house and an unclaimed bag of costumes were the unexpected starting points for the group’s enigmatic new show Dolls’ House which premieres at the Pegasus Theatre on Friday 16th January.  Through the compelling medium of butoh, with live music and film, it explores the dream symbol of “the House” and reveals the inhabitants’ secret lives and eternal dilemmas.  Dark, moving and humorous, the physical performance is underpinned by live music from a trio of multi-instrumentalists, complementing their compositions with digital effects and found sound to create a haunting soundscape.

Dolls’ House is a collaboration between Café Reason, film maker Dariusz Dziala, and musicians Malcolm Atkins, Bruno Guastalla and Pete McPhaill.  This truly original theatre experience has lighting design by Josh Tomalin.  Dancers are Jeannie Donald McKim, Ayala Kingsley, Fabrizia Verrechia, Ana Barbour and Cath Blackfeather: also appearing are Alex Donaghy, Andreia Paixao, Alan Frank and Paula Esposito.

Performances:  Friday 15th, Saturday 16th January 7.30pm

Venue:  Pegasus Theatre, Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RE

Tickets:  £13, £9 concessions, £6 under 18s

Book online here or call 01865 812150

Find out more about Café Reason here and follow them on Facebook here

Twitter:  @CafeReason #dollbutoh

 

Café Reason Diamond Night 13 at Oxford Brookes Drama Studio 19th April 2014

Café Reason returns this weekend with the 13th in their series of informal platform performances Diamond Nights.  At this Diamond Night, as the company will be trying out material for their upcoming new production The Heart’s Desire – created in collaboration with voice artist Anne L. Ryan – some of the evening will take the form of an open rehearsal. It will be a chance to see part of this work-in-progress and for audience to give some feedback to help the group develop the piece before its full performance at The Old Fire Station on June 13 and 14.  The occasion is also still open for artists who may have work they would like to present and share.

 

Diamond Night 24th November at Brookes Drama Studio – Lizzy Spight reviews

Diamond Night 24^th November 2012 – Writing for the first time for Oxford Dance Writers, Lizzy Spight gives us a different perspective on a stimulating evening…

Another very enjoyable evening full of little gems and diamonds being worked on. The space is intimate enough for the audience and the performers to get close to each other and for sensing the exchange between both. It creates an atmosphere of openness and being involved with the work in progress of each artist.

 

Café Reason’s 10th Diamond Night – Ana Barbour writes

Café Reason’s 10^th  Diamond Night.   24th November 2012

Six different works covering dance, poetry, projection, live music, film and voice in Café Reason’s 10^th Diamond Night  organised this time by Paola Esposito and Fabrizia Verrechia.  There was a good turn out for the cosy space of Oxford Brooke’s drama studio.  Good to see this support for new work.

The first piece by Anne Ryan was a short vignette in which a face peers out from a frame.  A soundtrack of recorded voice traces a range of emotions expressed in the subtle changing nuances of the framed face. Simple, elegant and strong.

 

Improvised music for improvised dance – Malcolm Atkins reflects

Experienced improviser and composer Malcolm Atkins shares his recent practice working with dancers, and raises intriguing questions about the relationship between dance and music…

Improvised music for improvised dance

As part of my practice of accompanying dance I regularly improvise for Café Reason Butoh Dance Theatre Classes. These improvisations which are solo responses to exercises and pieces developed in class, have evolved over the years I have been doing this. I was asked to record some by the class organisers and have started doing this and making them available as free downloads on a bandcamp site I set up in my name.

I have made them freely available so that anyone attending the class can develop their ideas between classes by being reminded of what they were working on but also to demonstrate that spontaneous musical improvisation in support of dance can create a very particular musical atmosphere which is often determined by the style of dance and the way the dancer stimulates and responds to a dynamically created musical accompaniment.