Physic: an evening of poetry, music and movement curated by Professor Alice Oswald, Oxford Botanic Garden 17th July 2022

Physic is a unique and special evening curated by Alice Oswald, the University of Oxford’s Professor of Poetry, as part of Oxford Botanic Garden‘s 400th anniversary celebrations. In this roving performance of music, poetry and dance, each artist responds to the Garden as a place of healing. The event will commence at 7.00pm, welcominng visitors to enjoy the Garden after hours, and will include a diverse range of performances from renowned artists that will include poetry, music and dance. The settings will be closely matched to the style of the piece, including music in the Conservatory, dance among the Herbaceous Borders, and performances in the Rainforest and Waterlily houses. This rotational experience will culminate in a finale in the Upper Garden. The event is supported by TORCH, the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.

Confirmed performers include:

• Alice Oswald will be performing Against Leaves – a protest against deciduousness.
• Stevie Wishart will be performing her extraordinary blackbird transcriptions on violin, accompanied with poems performed by Alice Oswald.
• Saju Hari will offer danced interventions to the performances.
• Peter Oswald will be performing his poem-version of a story, Filo D’Oro and Filomena, collected by Italo Calvino, and several other flower poems written in Bristol.
• Erica McAlpine will be reading from a sequence of short rhyming poems based on the flowers she sees and grows in Oxfordshire.
• A performance of Kiki Katese’s work – more information coming soon.

Date: Sunday 17th July, 7.00-9.00pm

Venue: Oxford Botanic Gardens, Rose Lane, OX1 4 AZ

Booking: Tickets £20, book online here

Find out more about the event and the artists here

 

Porcelain, Chinoiserie and Dance: The Teapot Prince comes to Oxford, Worcester College, 17th June 2022 – Maggie Watson reports

The Ballet des Porcelaines, or The Teapot Prince, was an eighteenth century ballet in the chinoiserie style, for which costumes, sets and choreography are lost; only the score, by Nicolas Racot de Grandval, and the libretto, by the Comte de Caylus, survive.  In 2021 Meredith Martin, Professor of Art History at New York University, and Phil Chan, choreographer and co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, collaborated on a re-imagining of this work, which is now touring European venues that included  Waddesdon Manor on 16 and 17 June.  The animation of porcelain was a popular eighteenth century motif, and the original ballet’s story, in which a Chinese sorcerer turned a prince into a teapot, epitomised the simultaneous ‘othering’ and plundering of Oriental culture by Europeans.  The project’s goal was to recreate the work remaining true to its original artistic intentions while revealing the narrative from a broader post-colonial perspective.

 

DANSOX Day of Dance: Transnational Conversations, Jacqueline du Pré Music Building and Rooftop Suite, St Hilda’s College, Oxford, 10th June 2022 – Maggie Watson reports

DANSOX conferences at St Hilda’s College, Oxford are now a regular landmark in the UK dance research year.  DANSOX works in association with TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) and constitutes Oxford’s interface between dance practice and dance research; a space to investigate the ways in which practice constitutes research and, conversely, where research becomes practice.  Although Oxford University has neither a dance department nor dance studio, DANSOX plays a vital role at a time when other UK institutions and centres of academic excellence in dance and their collections are under threat.

The DANSOX 2022 Day of Dance: Transnational Conversations symposium was a collaboration with TORCH Humanities and Cultural Programme and the Network Britain and the Soviet Union: Cultural Encounters; the day interrogated the ways in which dance communicates across borders, cultures and generations through written records, images, recordings and bodily memory.  Open to all, and attended by an array of distinguished scholars, writers, and practitioners from major dance institutions, the day included performances, workshops, lectures, and experimental applications of virtual reality (VR) to performance.

 

The Teapot Prince, Waddesdon Manor 16th-17th June 2022

The Teapot Prince will be performed in the fairy-tale grounds of Waddesdon Manor before exploring the Manor after-hours. Be enchanted by this contemporary reimagining of the lost eighteenth-century French Ballet des Porcelaines – The Teapot Prince, bringing to life a story of magic, desire and exotic entanglement. Originally staged in a château near Paris, this is the first production of the ballet in nearly 300 years; it has been created by Meredith Martin, professor of art history at New York University, and Phil Chan, choreographer and co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, in collaboration with The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH) and the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The production features an all-star cast with New York City Ballet soloists Georgina Pazcoguin and Daniel Applebaum, alongside Broadway phenomenon Tyler Hanes, and the original score will be played live by the Oxford orchestra Instruments of Time and Truth.

The Teapot Prince is based on an Orientalist fairy tale about a sorcerer who lives on a ‘Blue Island’ and transforms anyone who dares to trespass into porcelain cups, vases, and other wares. When the sorcerer turns the eponymous prince into a teapot, his lover, the princess comes to his rescue…

Performances: Thursday 16 and Friday 17 June 2022, 6.00pm 

Venue: Waddesdon Manor, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP18 0JH

Tickets: Adult £32, Child £16 Ticket includes access to the Manor’s west galleries & a talk by the ballet company

Book your ticket here: https://waddesdontest.seetickets.com/timeslot/the-teapot-prince

Porcelain, Chinoiserie and Dance: The Teapot Prince comes to Oxford

Friday 17 June 2022 , 10.15am-1.30pm

Linbury Room, Worcester College, Oxford

Three panels of creative artists and academics discuss the porcelain ballet, The Teapot Prince, as part of its world tour as it stops at Waddesdon Manor (16 and 17 June) en route from New York to Naples, Brighton and Paris.

Panel members: choreographer, Phil Chan, founder of Final Bow for Yellow Face; Meredith Martin, art historian and co-creator with Phil Chan, of The Teapot Prince; artist, Hannah Lim; poet and academic, Sarah Howe; ceramicist, Matt Smith; writer and ceramicist, Edmund de Waal; and art historian, Katie Scott.

Please register your place here

 

DANSOX and TORCH Humanities and Cultural Programme present Day of Dance: Transnational Conversations, Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Friday 10th June 2022

Dance Scholarship Oxford (DANSOX) and TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities) collaborate to present Day of Dance: Transnational Conversations, a rich mix of dance practice, research and discussion involving leading dance artists and distinguished scholars, and centring on Bronislava Nijinska‘s seminal work Les Noces.

Programme:

10.00am-12.00pm Welcome and Liam Francis choreography session – making new work.

1.15-2.00pm Keynote: Jane Pritchard on Nijinska’s Les Noces

Throughout the day from 1.00pm- 6.00pm, those attending can drop in on a showing of Future Rites by Alexander Whitley Dance Company in the Rooftop Suite

2.05-2.50pm Deirdre Chapman leads dancers in a demonstration and workshop of choreography from Les Noces

3.00-3.30pm Marcus Bell presentation Rites of Spring

3.30-4.00pm Meindert Peters presentation Kafka and Arthur Pita

4.00-4.30pm Hélène Neveu Kringelbach presentation Avant-garde dance in Senegal

5.00-6.00pm Book launch of Lynn Garafola‘s biography La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern with Judith Mackrell

6.10-7.15pm Keynote: Alexander Whitley on Future Rites? with dancers, followed by discussion

7.15pm Reception

Date: Friday 10th June 10.00am-7.45pm

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

Tickets: Free of charge; to register for the event please use this link.

If you would like to watch the livestream of the day please use this link.

For further info please contact susan.jones@ell.ox.ac.uk & marcus.bell@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

Finally, if you would like to attend the inaugural meeting of TORCH Network
Britain and the Soviet Union: Cultural Encounters you can sign up for a group discussion led by Gabriela Minden – on the London performances of Les Noces by Ballets Russes in June 1926, a month after the General Strike – by following this link.

 

DANSOX presents Interrogating the Dance ‘Classics’; events for Hilary Term 2022

DANSOX (Dance Scholarship Oxford) enters 2022 with a fascinating thematic programme of events over the Hilary (Spring) term. Interrogating the Dance ‘Classics’ began with a sparkling occasion on 25th January bringing together Dame Monica Mason (former principal dancer and Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet) with Jane Pritchard, Dance Archivist at the Victoria and Albert Museum. They talked about The Sleeping Princess and The Sleeping Beauty in the centenary year of the first performances of Diaghilev’s legendary production of The Sleeping Princess in London, bringing the history of this seminal Petipa work and its influence on ballet in Britain up to the present day. Forthcoming events include:

Monday 7th February 1.00-2.30 GMT online

Marcus Bell (St Hilda’s, Oxford) and Marie-Louise Crawley (Coventry) – Listening to Grace: Embodying Hidden Pasts, Imagining Just Futures. This joint presentation and discussion forms part of the ongoing DANSOX/TORCH series Dance as Grace: Paradoxes and Possibilities

Wednesday 2nd March 5.30-7.00pm GMT in person at the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford OX4 1DY

Alastair Macaulay, international writer and critic – Swan Lake

Attend in person or watch the live stream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uoVO76hjZc

Tuesday 19th April 5.30-7.00pm BST in person at the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building

Arabella Stanger (Sussex) – Dancing on Violent Ground: Utopia as Dispossession in Euro-American Theater Dance

For online joining links and enquiries please contact susan.jones@ell.ox.ac.uk and marcus.bell@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.

Unless otherwise stated all DANSOX events are free and open to all; if held in person the event will be followed by refreshments.

All future in-person events may be moved online subject to COVID19 precautions.

Find out about DANSOX here and watch videos of past events here

 

Serata Dantesca: a Sequence of Poetry, Music and Dance. Holywell Music Room, Oxford, 13th November 2021 – Maggie Watson reports

This was a beautifully planned evening of song, readings and dance, culminating in a performance of Franz Liszt’s Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi sonata. Presented by the Oxford Dante Society to mark the 700th anniversary of the death of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, it formed part of a season of Dante themed activities programmed and supported by TORCH, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, as part of their Humanities Cultural Programme.  There were some last minute changes: tenor Seb Hill had stepped in overnight learning three solos at short notice, and speaker Anthony Hunt was unable to attend; his essay was read by pianist Jonathan Katz, who devised the event and also acted as an informal master of ceremonies.

The programme included two original dances, created with the support of DANSOX, Dance Scholarship Oxford.  The first was ‘That even I’, a solo created with movement direction by Estela Merlos and danced by Thomasin Gülgeç to music by Joseph Kay made by sampling extracts of spoken word.  Merlos, Gülgeç and Kay have worked together before, notably at the DANSOX 2021 summer school, and this piece seemed a logical development of work they showed then, in respect of its intensity, the dancer’s close attentiveness to the score, and the sense that the work had grown as an organic whole.

The second dance, ‘In a dark wood’, a duo choreographed by Susie Crow to music by Jeremy Thurlow, conjured up Dante’s wanderings through the forest at the beginning of Canto 1 of the Inferno, initially alone and then under the tutelage of  Virgil.  Cameron Everitt, as Dante, seemed to move aside invisible curtains of foliage, weaving his way beneath branches until he encountered Virgil, a severe but charismatic figure danced by Nicholas Minns.  At the end, the two made a stately geometric progress, exchanging places in a square pattern, as if Virgil were formally opening the way for Dante to go through a door, and leading him further on. 

The tiny floor area in a fully lit hall with the audience looking down from above was a very exposed stage for all three dancers.  Gülgeç, Everitt and Minns were within touching distance of the spectators, but with their individual and distinctive dance styles, they succeeded in drawing us into their imaginary worlds.

The evening concluded with the Liszt sonata, played by Jonathan Katz, and preceded by Hunt’s introduction, which reminded us that Frederick Ashton used the music for his wartime ballet Dante Sonata; Dante’s poetry has long been an inspiration for dance, and this programme continued that tradition.

This event, and also the Oxford screening and discussion of choreographer Luc Petton’s ballet Ainsi la Nuit for human dancers, birds and animals, have been recorded and will become available on the TORCH YouTube channel.

Maggie Watson

28th November 2021

Find out more about and give your feedback on TORCH’s Dante 2021 Season here

Check out the Ashmolean exhibition Dante: the Invention of Celebrity here

Read Barbara Berrington’s account of a previous Dante programme Dante in the Chapel including choreography by Susie Crow here

 

Remembering Sir Robert Cohan: Yorke Dance Project presented by The Grace Project, Jacqueline du Pré Music Building 28th-29th October 2021

DANSOX (Dance Scholarship Oxford) and TORCH (The Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities) join forces to present Yorke Dance Project in a moving tribute to Sir Robert Cohan, as an extension to The Grace Project, continuing the discussion “Dance as Grace: Paradoxes and Possibilities”. Director Yolande Yorke-Edgell will present Cohan’s ideas on grace. On 28th October dancers from the Company will show excerpts from Cohan’s works Canciones del alma and Communion, followed by discussion. On 29th October Yolande Yorke-Edgell will dance, and there will be a special screening of Cohan’s lockdown project – Lockdown Portraits – the last series of solos he created – followed by a discussion with the director of the film.

Dates: Thursday 28th October 4.00-6.00pm, Friday 29th October 4.00-6.00pm

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

Tickets: Admission free, but numbers limited for social distancing: book to reserve a seat by emailing susan.jones@ell.ox.ac.uk
and copying in marcus.bell@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

 

Dancing with Apollo – Torch Oxford creative residency July 2021

During July a week-long summer residency sponsored by TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) and supported by DANSOX and APGRD (Archive of Performance of Greek and Roman Drama) took place in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Curated by Marina Warner the residency brought together international choreographer Kim Brandstrup and two renowned dancers, Laurel Dalley Smith and Liam Riddick to develop a new dance-piece Cupid and Psyche with commissioned score by Edmund Finnis as part of the Dancing with Apollo project, originally devised by violinist Sara Trickey.

Read Professor Sue Jones‘ account of the project here

And view a short film of the residency made by Rocio Chacon now available to view on YouTube here

 

‘Dance as Grace: Paradoxes and Possibilities’: two TORCH seminars with live dance performances from Yorke Dance Project. Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College Oxford, 18th & 19th June 2021 – Maggie Watson reports

The Grace Project is an interdisciplinary investigation into the concept of ‘grace’ in all its forms, which evolved from the research of Professor Sue Jones on literature and dance.  Grace has been central to the development of dance aesthetics, but it has also been challenged by practitioners of modern and contemporary dance.  These two seminars, which were attended by socially-distanced groups of academics, practitioners and interested local people, interrogated the question of what constitutes grace by examining five contrasting dances performed by, and discussed with, members of the Yorke Dance Project led by Yolande Yorke-Edgell.

The dancers presented works by Robert Cohan, Kenneth MacMillan and Yorke-Edgell, the latter consciously channelling the influences of Richard Alston and Bella Lewitzky (who was herself influenced by the choreographer Lester Horton).