It is that time of the year again, suddenly Christmas is looming with urgent gift shopping imperatives. But don’t worry, once again Oxford Dance Writers is here to help with our round up of dance publications reviewed and received this year, from the highly academic and practical to the entertaining memoir and gorgeously illustrated records of companies and dancers; for the dance lovers in your lives, or to add to your own Christmas wish list… Great thanks once again to all our reviewers! (more…)
December 6, 2016
All I want for Christmas is… Oxford Dance Writers recommends 2016
Posted by susiecrow under Dance and Academia, reviews | Tags: All I want for Christmas 2016, Angela Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives, Ben Spatz, Butoh Dance Training, Dance Dramaturgy, Darcey Callison, Deborah Hay, Gandini Juggling, Jeannie Donald-McKim, Juggling Trajectories, Juju Alishina, Maggie Watson, Miranda Laurence, Paul Arrowsmith, Pil Hansen, Rachel Gildea, Rick Gust, Sir Peter Wright, Susie Crow, The Language of the Soul, Thomas J M Wilson, Using the Sky, What a Body Can Do, What Lies Beneath, Wrights and Wrongs |Leave a Comment
January 24, 2016
What Lies Beneath: photographic portraits of dancers by Rick Guest, Hospital Club Gallery, 22- 31 January 2016 – Maggie Watson reviews
Posted by susiecrow under reviews | Tags: Edward Watson, Eric Underwood, Hikaru Kobayashi, Hospital Club Gallery, Julia Weiss, Marianela Nuñez, Melissa Hamilton, Nicholas Bodych, Olivia Cowley, photo portraits, Rick Guest, Sarah Lamb, Semperoper Ballett, Sergei Polunin, Tamara Rojo, What Lies Beneath, Zarina Stahnke |[2] Comments
Rick Guest’s What Lies Beneath strips away the glamour from the dancer’s life and yet this exhibition in the gleaming white gallery at the Hospital Club is magnificently glamorous. Guest captures his subjects against luminous blue backgrounds in larger than life portraits that show the physical and psychological strain that lies behind every performance. He has allowed the dancers to reveal themselves as they wish, whether that is confident and in control, hesitant and uncertain or contemplative. They wear battered old practice clothes, their skin is scratched and bruised, and they have bunions, moles and body hair. There is a tension between the perfection and yet imperfection of their extraordinarily beautiful bodies. (more…)
December 31, 2015
What Lies Beneath: photographs by Rick Guest, book & exhibition January 2016
Posted by susiecrow under What's happening | Tags: Alban Lendorf, dance photography, Edward Watson, exhibition, Federico Bonelli, Hikaru Kobayashi, Hospital Club Gallery, Nehemiah Kish, Olivia Cowley, Rick Guest, Sarah Crompton, Sarah Lamb, Sergei Polunin, Steven McRae, Tamara Rojo, What Lies Beneath, Yuhui Choe, Zenaida Yanowsky |Leave a Comment
Photographer Rick Guest‘s latest publication What Lies Beneath accompanies the exhibition of the same name to be held at the Hospital Club Gallery in January 2016. Featuring an incredible range of companies such as The Royal Ballet, The English National Ballet, The Richard Alston Dance Company, The Dresden Semperoper, The Royal Danish Ballet and Wayne McGregor Random Dance, it includes images of dancers such as Alban Lendorf, Tamara Rojo, Sergei Polunin, Sarah Lamb, Steven McRae, Zenaida Yanowsky, Edward Watson, Olivia Cowley, Nehemiah Kish, Hikaru Kobayashi, Federico Bonelli, and Yuhui Choe. With a foreword by Tamara Rojo, Director and Lead Principal of the English National Ballet and an incisive essay by Sarah Crompton, this book is in a limited first run of 1000 copies, exquisitely printed by PUSH Print, and is in a large format, 300mm x 370mm.
Rick Guest writes:
“I wanted to make a series of portraits of the dancers themselves, as opposed to dancers dancing, to show the character that underpins their performance, to see the determination and sacrifice that it takes to succeed at such a high level. In an art form that deliberately conceals the enormity of effort that goes into its creation, we are not meant to see behind the curtain, but I think that this does a great disservice to the dancers, and that having a sense of what lies beneath both enhances our experience of the performance and leads to a more profound appreciation of the dancer’s essential being. These portraits are at once beautiful and brutal.”
What Lies Beneath is available from 15th December 2105 from rg-books.com
Further work can be viewed at rg-dance.com
Check out information about Rick Guest’s previous book of photographs The Language of the Soul here
Exhibition What Lies Beneath
Dates: 22nd-31st January 2016
Venue: The Hospital Club Gallery, 24 Endell Street, London WC2H 9HQ
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