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.

 

Café Reason Butoh Dance Theatre present TIPPING POINT: Our World in Crisis, Al Jaber Auditorium Corpus Christi College, 11th & 12th January 2020

With the clock ticking for the world to take action on climate change, Café Reason’s timely and provocative new work offers a creative response to the threats facing our fragile planet. Eloquent dance and eclectic live music express the vulnerability of the earth and our own responsibility for it, past and future.  Tipping Point: Our World in Crisis weaves together surreal physical theatre, vocal improvisation, original video, bizarre costume, and found objects, to shine a slantwise, shifting light on our complex and evolving relationship with the Earth. At once beautiful and disturbing, it presents an absorbing, challenging, and moving audience experience.

Café Reason is an Oxford based experimental performance company specialising in butoh – a radical dance form that originated in post-war Japan. Its work has aways enjoyed a synergy with other disciplines, combining dance with original music, poetry and other texts, installation art, and video. Constantly innovating, the group seeks to extend the boundaries of perception and the interpretation of what it means to be human.

Performances:  Saturday 11th & Sunday 12th January, 7.30pm

Venue:  Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College, Merton Street, Oxford, OX1 4JF 

Tickets: £12 book through Eventbrite

Find out more about Café Reason performances and classes 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.