Brighton Sea & Snow Globe. Photo: CiCi Blumstein
December 2, 2009
BLANK Open Studios & Blank Frame Drawing Extravaganza
November 16, 2009
Movement 12 – Landing Party
Movement 12 – Landing Party
(That’s sort of the opposite of a Launch party)
A celebration of our first two years of providing professional development opportunities for dance artists and their collaborators.
On 27th November from 7.30 – 10pm at the Pavilion Theatre, New Road, Brighton.
There will be drinks, nibbles and informal performance excerpts and inserts, films and installations from dance artists including:
CiCi Blumstein, Becky Edmunds, Virginia Farman, Yael Flexer, Victoria Fox, Claudia Kappenberg, Miriam King, Lila, Charlie Morrissey, Subathra Subramaniam, Ben Wright and Marisa Zanotti.
Places are limited, so please R.S.V.P to Rob Hopper at: info@movement12.org by 23rd November
November 14, 2009
Studios past, future, present – The Cauldron Studios, Bristol 1992
The Cauldron Studios ca. 1993. Photo: Vic Llewellyn
Mary Prestidge [co-founder X6 Dance Space & Chisenhale Dance Space] and her talk today at Movement 12 sparked off a search through my archive, looking for documentation of my work during the early 90s, in particular setting up the Cauldron Studios in Bristol. After Mary’s presentation, we talked a little more about how there is a scarcity of visual & documentary material from that time, especially if you were working on the edge, developing new work that didn’t fit into any existing category.
I co-founded the Cauldron Studios with Vic Llewellyn [Green Ginger; Desperate Men] in Bristol in 1992. The space was huge – one whole floor of a former Victorian factory building located in Easton, with a number of smaller artists studios already set up in other parts of the building. We wanted to create an experimental space for developing & showing our own work, as well as providing a space for collaborators, the local community, and others working in experimental music, physical theatre, dance, performance art, and visual arts. We had absolutely no money or funding nor experience, yet somehow managed to install heating, improve facilities in general, and even pass the official health & safety inspection to open the space to the public. It was a beautiful space, and I still miss it …
Very few photos exist of the Cauldron Studios during that time [and no video recordings it seems] but here are some of the images I could find so far:
CiCi Blumstein in rehearsal, The Cauldron Studios ca. 1993. Photos: Vic Llewellyn
October 30, 2009
What(ever) happened to British New Dance? Mary Prestidge talk in Brighton
presents
What(ever) happened to British New Dance?
A political, arts movement? A passing phase?
A talk by
Mary Prestidge
at The Nightingale Theatre, Surrey Street, Brighton
on Saturday 14th November at 2pm – Free
Photo: Esko Koivisto
Belatedly, in Britain in the 1970’s, the dream was not yet over; a new idealism and movement toward an independence and autonomy for the individual dancer was set in motion.
Mary digs into a period of British dance history which had begun to create new languages and strategies for the renewal and survival of an art form and its artists..
Her talk and presentation will ‘un’ cover people, places and events significant to this period from Mary’s own perspective and experience as an active participant.
Mary Prestidge: Biography
Originally an Olympic gymnast in the 1960’s, Mary’s first professional work was with Ballet Rambert in the period of Norman Morrice’s directorship who had reformed the company into Britain’s first Modern Dance repertory company in 1966. In the mid 70’s after a year in New York in the thrall of the post modern dance and theatre scene there she joined forces with other newly independent dancers, namely, Jacky Lansley, Emilyn Claid, Fergus Early and Maedee Dupres and co-founded X6 Dance Space and its successor Chisenhale Dance Space, in London. These organisations provided an important context for the research and development of new dance forms and practices in Britain from 1976 until the present day.
Mary has been an influential practitioner and teacher of new and experimental dance in both the independent dance scene as well as the specialist academy. She continues to evolve new work through collaboration with other artists and art forms in a variety of performing contexts.
Mary has been a lecturer in dance at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) from 1995 until 2008. She currently shares a studio in Liverpool with dance artists Andrea Buckley and Paula Hampson. Her solo work MaryLand has recently been performed in Sweden.
October 2, 2009
Moving into Studio One at BLANK Studios & Gallery
Studio One at BLANK, set up with The Green Felt, red measuring triangle & socks.
Moved into Studio One today, working on The Green Felt and preparing for my next installation/movement/space workshop with a group of teachers from Bexhill High School. The stripey socks in the foreground were knitted by my grandmother Hildegard, ideal for dancing on studio floors in winter …
September 29, 2009
PARK[ing] Day Brighton 2009 – first photos now up
All images 2009 © Bip Mistry
The first photos from PARK[ing] Day Brighton 2009 are now posted up on the BLANK Studios & Gallery website, here. There were 6 different park[ing] sites across the city in total. Sound artist Joseph Young and I collaborated to create our park[ing] space installation & performance, Drive-Thru Silence & The Green Belt Take-Away. See some of the pics below, more to follow soon …
July 15, 2009
Architectural space, movement & installation workshop – part 1: Blank Space
As part of their current research project Creative Transformation of Space, students and teachers from Filsham Valley School attended a day of workshops at Blank Studios & Gallery in Portslade, Brighton.
My workshop session began with an intensive, hands-on introduction to my working process, focussing on the creation of large-scale installations. The students then took on the empty gallery to create instant space compositions and movement improvisations.
The project continues …
In collaboration with Johanna Berger and Joseph Young, lead artists for this Creative Partnerships project at Filsham Valley School.
BLANK DAYS – click here to download the BLANK DAYS PDF brochure
