Jacky Lansley’s ABOUT US, Modern Art Oxford, 19th February 2019 – Maggie Watson reviews

ABOUT US is a remarkable embodiment of ordinary human experience that reveals the universal through the personal, and places dance firmly in the political sphere. Jacky Lansley is a dancer and choreographer, who uses sound, music, lighting, film and narrative to convey layers of meaning collaboratively, and she began working of this piece in the aftermath of the Referendum on membership of the European Union.

As we entered the gallery, and sat on the chairs arranged around three walls (the fourth was used for projection), we realised that the performers were already among us, intent and focussed, drawing us into their world, which is also ours.

 

Jacky Lansley presents About Us, Modern Art Oxford 19th February 2019

A welcome opportunity to see dance in thought-provoking collaboration with other art forms in the beautiful space of Modern Art Oxford (MAO).  ABOUT US is a multimedia performance created by Jacky Lansley with artists from dance, visual art, experimental music and theatre backgrounds. In it interdisciplinary collaboration enables powerful explorations of personal and political struggles around loss, joy, caring and oppression that affect us all.  Inspired by the everyday experiences of the human condition, this performance plays with multiple perspectives – near and far, live and film, inside and outside – to draw the audience into an intimate world of which they are a part, it is a performance about us all.

Jacky Lansley is a choreographer, performance artist and writer who has been practicing for four decades. The artist’s work combines visual and theatrical disciplines and is concerned with space and the site specific; she has made works in many different kinds of indoor and outdoor environments, including the Cornish coastal landscape with which she has had a long-term special relationship. The artist was a founder of two of the UK’s seminal independent dance studios – X6 Dance Space and Chisenhale Dance Space – and in 2002 she moved into her own studio, Dance Research Studio, in London, which has supported the making of more recent works including: Holding Space, View from the Shore, Standing Stones, The Life Class, Guest Suites and ABOUT US. Her book Choreographies: Tracing the Materials of an Ephemeral Art Form was published by Intellect Books in 2017.  Jacky Lansley received the Jane Attenborough Award (2018) for outstanding contribution to dance.

Performance:  Tuesday 19th February 6.30-8.00pm

Venue:  Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BP

Tickets:  Available online for MAO here

Read Jacky Lansley’s blog about the work here

 

The View from Inside the Ball: Being part of the Installation – Jane Connelly writes on Eva Kotátková’s A Storyteller’s Inadequacy at Modern Art Oxford

From 5^th December 2013 to 2^nd February 2014 Modern Art Oxford presented A Storyteller’s Inadequacy, the first UK solo exhibition by artist Eva Kotátková in which she proposed a playful and awkward relationship between performance, object, sculpture and installation.  A Storyteller’s Inadequacy saw a giant speech organ command the space of the Upper Gallery, creating a playground, gym, theatre and circus mixed environment for a group of performers to enact poses and temporary body constellations. The performers interacted with an eclectic range of objects in an exploration of the possibilities as well as the limits and barriers in human communication and interaction. Oxford dance artist Jane Connelly describes her experience as one of those performers in the personal account below.

 

A Storyteller’s Inadequacy – Eva Kotátková at Modern Art Oxford 30th November 2013 – 2nd February 2014

Modern Art Oxford presents the first UK solo exhibition of Eva Kotátková’s varied conceptual work featuring the most prolific performance based works to date.  Local independent dancers Marina Collard, Paulette Mae and Jane Connelly are among a shifting team of performers in A Storyteller’s Inadequacy in which the artist proposes a playful and awkward relationship between performance, object, sculpture and installation.   A giant speech organ commands the space of the Upper Gallery, creating a  playground, gym, theatre and circus mixed environment for a group of performers to enact poses and temporary body constellations; they interact with an eclectic range of objects in an exploration of the possibilities as well as the limits and barriers in human communication and interaction.