Long Distance Relationships: London to ** with Love

It is so difficult to be far away from the people that I collaborate best with. I was very much affected by the performance we did together on September 7th. I have only just now had the appropriate moment to respond to the performance. I was in my living room in ** at 1:30am after that same day being on a train from Ningbo China to Shanghai and then a flight from Shanghai (delayed) to **. I was physically exhausted. When I started to prepare my mind and body for the performance, I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't know if I would remain tired, if this would show through the screen, or if I was to feel like I was even actually in a performance. In the end, I was in a trance, doing things to the screen and in response to what I perceived from the bodies on the screen. I really felt an intimacy that I didn't think one could feel without being physically proximate. The experience was powerful and emotional. I felt invigorated and inspired. Truly it did not feel as though an hour had elapsed, I think I could have performed all night. Interestingly, I really started playing to the screen with my face or minute details of my body so that perhaps on the projected screen in London I really was a disembodied presence in every sense of the phrase. I felt like I was sharing different parts of myself freely, even disclosing secrets to strangers. Perhaps the best part of the performance for me is that I couldn't genuinely gauge the audience's reaction; all my movements and impulses were coming from an authentic place. It is refreshing to exist as if no audience will judge your actions or your non-action. My collaborators, Laura Cherry and Treacle Holasz (who were gratefully dressed in fashions by Ziad Ghanem), unfortunately had a much different experience with the audience which was in fact very critically and verbally judging them for the duration of 2 hours. It truly makes me wonder about the purpose of performance; the role of the audience; and whether we can make work that both addresses and dismisses outside participants. I hope to develop this work and explore more questions about presence, absence, liveness, and performance states that feel like trances. In the meantime, check out the new gallery of photos (photographer Nick Gough).

I'm also proud to announce we will be working with Experimenta Gallery in Hong Kong for a show on February 14, 2012. Check out their website: http://www.experimenta.hk/blog/

Live Absence, Recorded Presence

MPG members Laura Cherry and Treacle Holasz will be performing a trio with Kate March on September 7th 2011 as part of Debut Contemporary's First Wednesday Series. Ms. March will be performing from **. As the group shifts and explores new ways to indulge in presence through digital media and cinematic dialogues several questions emerge. Can you feel someone's presence through absence? In this increasingly globalized world, how do we begin to value our absence of presence in order to maintain and develop meaningful connections between bodies? Does our physical proximity matter? Can you be remotely interested...

Press Release
How are you watching this? Me? Us? What is happening in your head? What emotion, what memory is this movement stirring in your mind? This performance explores how one perceives live performance and what it really means to be live. This is a physical theatre - dance piece choreographed by Kate March, and her dancers Laura Cherry & Treacle from The March Performance Group. The work has been created through a new question & answer style of multi-media choreography. Kate is working closely with the theme of Live & Life in ** posting videos of her movement online to her dancers in London who create movement directly from Kate's films & send back their filmed movement response. The choreography process & conversation is documented thoroughly due to the nature in which we're working. This enables the work to be more influenced by the thinking process behind the movement itself. The company are pioneering multi-media choreography embracing the technological advancements available to the dance & theatre world.
The group will also be collavorating with fashion designers Rosie Alia and Ziad Ghanem on the night