Friday, December 3, 2010

Furniture and Food!

Great feedback from Notting Hill's First Wednesday Programme.
Silvia Nayla was an incredible furniture store that allowed us to use
our bodies as furniture: decorative and useful. Then, Tiny Robot, was an interesting restaurant, and it was an absolutely fantastic challenge. Pictures to come.
Check out what people have said:

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

post-rosa


The name rosa comes from sub-rosa which is latin for under the rose. Sub-Rosa refers to secret operations, links to confidentiality between people, and is overall, something occurring without public notice; essentially, underground going-ons. Though the experience on sunday was private it was also public; part of it was in confidence, and part of it was extremely exposed. For this reason, it was not necessarily sub-rosa; it was a rosa event.

We welcomed our guests to the Marble Hill Pub. Hopefully there, they felt warm, invited, included, anticipatory. Perhaps after feeling warm and comfortable they felt slightly restless, wanting to know what to expect and when to expect whatever it was that might happen. After they followed the performers outside to the park space, unexpectedly they formed sidelines like at a football game. They divided themselves, keeping us in the middle. From the photography, it seems people were making choices about where they wanted to stand, move to, and for the most part, they remained alone in their experience of ROSA. On one hand, how the spectators received the 'performance' was utterly individualised and non-demanding. The spectators had the control over where they placed their bodies, how close they chose to get to the performers, and whether they remained in the bleak cold observing aggression, play, animalistic behaviour, or comraderie. Though it may seem demanding for an audience to watch something outside in the cold, it was their choice to stay. It could also be seen as non-demanding in that there were no specific seating or standing placements, people had the choice to control their body's positioning. Interestingly, many children and dogs were very engaged in what was going on; the public paused to see what was happening. Most audience members braved the cold. Going back into the pub, like post-football or rugby game attendees, was a breath of comfort, a resort to warmth....

My experience was mainly positive. I felt like I could really manifest aggression in physical form without holding back; the contract we had between each other and our bodies was special. We knew nothing was personal; it was just an expression of athleticism and force that we don't often get to approach so wildly without holding back much. I felt proud of myself when I remained standing. Though there was a moment at the end when I was lying on the ground face down and felt Laura and Nefeli lying near me. I suddenly felt more non-living than I could have imagined. I really felt like I was in another dimension. In order to break the tension, my body started a fit of laughter; in essence, I was laughing at death.

Following the performance it struck me how morbid the imagery could be seen towards the end. We embraced being physical with the body; we mocked the violence of society; we displayed people bringing other people down (women bringing other women down); we demonstrated instances of force that may have been seen as extreme as rape; and we were footballers anticipating the ruggedness of the experience or the possibility of injury. But we were in black, covered in dirt, and some of us were immobile and relaxed/exhausted to the point of total stillness towards the end. It could have easily been seen as dead bodies. We were at the end, encircled by the audience; human curiousity is strong. The audience's bodies contained us; they contained our life and our death; ultimately, there is an underpinning for people controlling people; people trying to control (unsuccessfully) death.

My fascination with philosophies of life and death, particularly, existentialism in relation to Simone de Beauvoir and other French feminists, suffuses the performance work we do as a group. I could not ask for more courageous, talented, and powerful women to work with. Also, the spectators that came are becoming and growing as a community. In the future, I think we will play with having just two people, or perhaps having many people. What would happen if men were involved? What if we stayed in our dresses and stilettos? There are many future possibilities and more spaces to explore with these expressions of the fight for survival; the fight to remain in a pack; or just an instance of the 'fight' within.

Will post more pictures in the Rosa gallery very soon. Special thanks to Nick Gough, Oz Owen, and Graham Bradley for taking some fantastic photos. And also to Marc Chmielewski for filming the event.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Pre-Performance Ruminations

It's gray, cold, and gloomy. My body peers out into what's left of the pre-dusk light. How often do we get the opportunity to exhaust and test our physical limitations? I run outside, ignoring the possibility that my muscles will tense from the undesirable conditions. I see my breath, I feel blood coursing to every inch of my body. I can make it go, I can push it, I can struggle, I can fight. But my body chooses when to stop. The control is limited and an illusion.

The past rehearsals have been physical and forceful with an underpinning of affectionate play. What has transformed humans into such sophisticated species; what has led to the harnessing of raw human emotions? Sometimes being cosmopolitan, graceful, and a sophisticate is also exhausting in itself. Is there a place where the exhaustion of the physical and the exhaustion of sophistication can collide? Given the chance, I would rip myself out of niceties and grace and choose a state of rawness and athleticism that pushed my body, and hence, myself, out of the duality of power and vulnerability or of being in control and being controlled. Sometimes when we embrace and allow for physical exertion, the need to control is released and body and mind can exist collaboratively. Though I do not support violence, I believe there are moments when physically demonstrating aggression are more productive than withholding; it is productive to push each other physically; to realise our competitive nature physically. Can we exist as poised, elegant, sophisticated and also passionate, messy, unpredictable beings? The space where both exist is the most exciting place to have presence in.

Sunday November 21, 2010 @ 2:30pm. The Lions and Lambs collide

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Friday, November 5, 2010

Post-Berlin....New Project

Berlin was an amazing and inspiring experience. Felix Ruckert was a great producer and artist to be in the company of while we were there. The response was overwhelming and I think people wanted to ask more questions than ever....We are hoping to bring this to Amsterdam next....

The new project is inspired by fight club...except we're making it our own.

November 21 @ 2:30 at an undisclosed location....

Some new phrase work/gestures I'm working with: (Click the link)


Monday, October 25, 2010

Berlin, Here we come...PR links....

The Berlin PR so far!
October 27th and 28th @ 8:30PM
  1. by Jeanne-Salome Rochat

    London-based choreographer KATE MARCH is bringing her combination of theatre, culinary arts and social criticism to Berlin for a two-night gig in Wedding. The girls dance on dining-room tables and offer food to the audience sitting around them as a way of examining, deconstructing and endlessly reclaiming a female body’s weird power.
    On October 27-28. Details HERE!


http://www.kulone.com/ALL/Event/1246165-GIRL-MEAT





Saturday, October 16, 2010

Berlin quickly approaches and other performance dates

Hello everyone. After several different ways to name the group, I have decided on the march performance group... Like the month of March, we consist of lions and lambs. We make live art and we construct experiences in which audiences become intimately engrossed. Our inaugural tour starts in Berlin at Schwelle 7 where we will show our evening of meat (or girl meat) produced by Felix Ruckert. It is on October 27th and October 28th, for more details please click on the following link: http://www.schwelle7.de/News.html.

We have some press from this performance, please look at the following links:



Finally, the piece we are currently working on entitled sub-rosa, will be performed at the Old Vic Tunnels from December 9-11th starting late. More information to come on this performance event.


Friday, September 10, 2010

Openness

Check out the latest movement ideas by clicking here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EogZjqlaFlY

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

h.e.e.l.

A project which is a series of live installations and then cinematic responses to each installation created by me. Here is my response to the first installment at the old vic tunnels this past saturday...Episode h (of heel)......


Enjoy. More to come!

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

More Still Pictures by Graham Bradley and Oz Owen






UNDONE

Red Light Night! Success...Pictures to come....




The Red Light Night performance at the Old Vic Tunnels was a great success....Pictures will be posted soon. Here is a snapshot...I think I will call the evening: undone.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Monday, August 16, 2010

tunnels preview

Mary Sherwin, Treacle Holasz, Laura Cherry are amazing collaborators who took risks today at our first Old Vic Tunnels rehearsals.

Click on this link:

Monday, August 2, 2010

on the wrong foot.

Jessica Noe` and I are feeding off of each other's bodies....I just took a bite out of what she had ot offer from NYC. This is my response to her nourishment....

(posted on youtube because this site was being challenging!)


Friday, June 18, 2010

gaining some momentum now...taking a stand with lapstances

I was contemplating how I want to use lapdancing as a vehicle for my own views, voice, dignity, and worth. I am considering something I call 'lapstance' where the person in the chair who is awaiting a lapdance actually has to use their own corporeal agency. We will engage in a mutual standing upon one another's lap. First I discard my high heels, and gingerly make my way onto standing on their lap. This isn't as quick as it sounds, it takes some precise timing and placement in order to minimise pain and discomfort...Actually it can be quite pleasurable, like a deep tissue massage if done properly. I return then to my seat (adjacent to them) and put my heels back on. I invite the person sitting next to me to do the same and to stand upon my lap. I assure them they will not injure me, and hope that they don't.....it's a tangible sharing of the body, and of power, of pain, of pleasure...lots of things. I'm sure this will expand....In the following video clip, just imagine the pillow as a person (though it being a pillow is quite amusing in and of itself)....I will lay a cloth over the person's lap before standing...but will not put one over my legs.

Lapdance Series Rehearsal Footage 2

Interesting rehearsal yesterday with nefeli. It's difficult without a body, so Nefeli was
kind enough to lend me her body to try a few things on. A man was sitting next to us (we were at the Royal Festival Hall) and he got up and left after seeing some of the imagery. Later on he came over and asked what I was doing. He told me I looked cheap. The women that do those things have no dignity, they make money, but they have no self value and worth. He said no one likes that kind of thing, and the people that do are 'boozers'. Well, I said a lot of men may disagree with you. Also, what right does he have to place his views and words into the voices of these women whom he has had no contact with? He insisted I do something original. Obviously he didn't get the entire point of this project as trying to re-write the lapdance conventions into my own creative framing. He pretty much proved the very reason I am investigating this. I think there is a lot of controversy about the 'morality', dignity, and rights of both giver and receiver of lapdances. It's only taboo or cheap because we have learned it to be that way. Still constructing, re-constructing, de-constructing, and trying to figure out what the best context to perform this will be. Knowing how he reacted, I think perhaps I may need to discard my idea of having lapdances performed in a bar or club, I think this only feeds into the common way of seeing or experiencing them. It may actually need a theatrical venue to accomplish a new way of experiencing the lap dance. I think as this rehearsal footage shows, it can simply be fun and funny also. It's kind of a unique thing to have two bodies in such close proximity (especially when the strangeness of the situation turns into laughter)...there's a lightness that I am seeking to explore more in this work.....Enjoy.


Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Lapdance Series Rehearsal Footage 1


I have started working on a new piece/event which will include 24 lap dance experiences. I want to demonstrate that a lap dance can be more than grinding myself into your groin; it can be intimate in ways you have maybe never considered. 

Sample a small taste with this first film.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Successful Performance Event! Many Pictures...

It has taken me a long time to follow up on the performance that occurred May 1, 2010 because I was so exhausted, thrilled, still processing, and excited to develop in the future. The evening could not have gone any better. People wrote amazing comments about the piece for example : 'unlike anything I have ever experienced' or 'looking forward to the next one'.... I have an entire visitor's book with comments that truly demonstrated that the point came across: performance need not happen in a stage or in a formal context to change, move, or inspire people.

I felt overly pleased after the show, and also inspired to continue working with the position and the concept. Please enjoy some of the photography documenting the event. Click on this link or just go to the new May 1st page on the right margin of this blog:
MAY 1st Photos (by Oz Owen and Graham Bradley)

I hope to have a film up shortly.

Please join us in Berlin at Schwelle 7 to perform this piece on OCT 26, 27, 28, 2010. More information to follow....If you are interested in upcoming events please let me know.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Getting Closer to Performance

As we approach the performance we have been trying the movement without as much clothing to see how it effects the execution of the choreography emotionally and physically. It seems to be liberating for the performers though perhaps a bit uncomfortable to outsiders who are in the studio watching our process...

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

New footage

I'm playing with the idea of choosing to be on all fours. The distinct decision to be in any position affords a certain level of power and agency. Nefeli's character in particular will choose very clearly that she wants to be on the table and she wants to play on all fours for some time. She wants to define what the position means to her rather than the position defining what/who she is. Enjoy.

Images







These are the images that have been on my radar since the research began.

Research Continues...

I wanted to share some of the responses I have gained about the position from people not directly related to the development of the piece. In addition I have added some images that I drew from in the beginning of the project. I have decided to look back at these images after not viewing them for about 6 weeks. Initially I saw them in only one perspective, but now it has become easier to see the imagery in multiple ways after assuming these positions throughout the choreographic process.

Sample of Public Responses:

1. "Animalistic (is that a word?) Ask a little kid to act like a dog, cat, bear, lion, etc... they're immediately on all fours. It's the closest way most people (dancers excluded) can emulate animals. And on a side note, being on all fours makes me hyper-aware of my core/center.... not wanting my gut to hang down like a cow. :) I do not feel sexy on all fours, but maybe thats not the case for other people." (woman)

2. "I think in many ways it's a vulnerable position. It's also very primitive and powerful at the same time!" (woman)

3. "Ditto, and because the powerful and vulnerable can exist simultaneously, also very mysterious and sexy." (man)

Sample of Performer Responses (all women):

1. "on all fours: submission."
2. "grounded, unwinding from tension, balance, steady"
3."submission, dominance, strength, hierarchy, relaxation, solid base"

For me personally, this position is still teetering between pain and pleasure.

Monday, March 8, 2010

deepening the idea of 'on all fours'

more animalistic approach to the position. featuring nefeli tsiouti, laura cherry, marina pogiatzi

Friday, March 5, 2010

Rehearsals Continuing...

More rehearsal footage (Performers continue to develop their solos or duet through recalling and developing improvisations from being on all fours and from the notion of being consumed-literally, eaten alive.) Some important words from Emilyn Claid's book Yes?No!Maybe....Seductive Ambiguity in Dance......"Seduction in performance becomes an interactive, interchangeable, pleasureable play of multiple meanings and identites between performers and spectators-a physical action of desiring."

"submit to pleasure as a statement of power.." (171)

I begin to really refine my research now as I ask: can the woman's body be submissive and dominant on all fours?
Other questions beginning to surface: What does the position 'on all fours' mean for a woman? How is it perceived in different situations, cultures etc.? Can this position be a source of power? Can being in a submissive position be a source of power? Are images of women, therefore, their bodies, being consumed by spectators?

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

women tabledancing

Latest Footage: Share feedback please!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Monday, February 15, 2010

Rehearsal Refinement #1

Every rehearsal I will be compiling all of the movement into the most refined moments on film.
Here is what we did so far.

Venue



This is the space for the dinner party, it's the banquet room at Candid Cafe near Angel.
Check out more about Candid Cafe at http://www.candidarts.com/

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Taste and Consumption

It's all about having, finding good taste. Beautiful, good, proper (with a little edge):

TaStE-----------
Taste as an aesthetic, sociological, economic and anthropological concept refers to a cultural patterns of choice and preference. While taste is often understood as a biological concept, it can also be reasonably studied as a social or cultural phenomenon. Taste is about drawing distinctions between things such as styles, manners, consumer goods and works of art. Social inquiry of taste is about the human ability to judge what is beautiful, good and proper.

Social and cultural phenomena concerning taste are closely associated to social relations and dynamics between people. The concept of social taste is therefore rarely separated from its accompanying sociological concepts. An understanding of taste as something that is expressed in actions between people helps to perceive many social phenomena, like fashion, that would otherwise be inconceivable.

Some judgements concerning taste may appear more legitimate than others, but most often there is not a single conception which would be shared by all members of society. People with their individual sensibilities are not very unique either. For instance, aesthetic preferences and attendance to various cultural events are associated with education and social origin. Different socioeconomic groups are likely to have different tastes, and it has been suggested that social class is one of the prominent factors structuring taste.

Pierre Bourdieu (1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was an acclaimed French sociologist.
Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions. He built upon the theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Georges Canguilhem, Karl Marx, Gaston Bachelard, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Erwin Panofsky, and Marcel Mauss. A notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations.
He used methods drawn from a wide range of disciplines, particularly philosophy, sociology and anthropology. His best known book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position. His argument is put forward by an original combination of social theory and data from surveys, photographs and interviews, in an attempt to reconcile difficulties such as how to understand the subject within objective structures. In the process, he tried to reconcile the influences of both external social structures and subjective experience on the individual (see structure and agency).

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Tabledancing woman




I'm considering covering more parts of the body than I anticipated, maybe the food just needs to be presented around the body, with only certain foods as decoration on the body to give an overall impression from the beginning of the dinner party.

Friday, February 5, 2010

A Research Scheme

Idea: Rework dinner and a show into interdependent entities rather than separate but related events.

Methodology:

Play in the studio and film in the studio with creating evocative movements in the smallest amount of space beginning in the 'table' position. Creating passionate and interesting movement that will draw people in as they engage in a highly socialised environment. Experiment on tables.

Interview potential audience members and create short pieces to try out the idea on several groups of people.

Attend Cabaret, Burlesque, and other typically performance/food or drink related events in London and other cities. For example, Afternoon Tease! is the original burlesque afternoon tea party. You sit down to a full spread of afternoon tea and are interrupted in the nicest possible way by stunning burlesque and cabaret performances. I hope to interview performers and audience members on their reactions, what draws them to these events.

Research nyotaimori, a Japanese tradition that refers to "female body presentation", often referred to as "body sushi," is the practice of serving sashimi or sushi from the body of a woman, typically naked...Interview people in this field about what the clientele is like and how they approach the body.

Work with a fashion designer to create costumes appropriate for placing food upon, while retaining a level of sensuality and mobility for the performers.

Engage with the pre-performance ritual of cleaning the body and preparing for long levels of stillness, perhaps through film.

Find collaborators in the catering business and a proper venue space.

More Research for ' moveable feasts'

Imagery for next piece

Phoenix Rehearsal Pictures