Here she shares her experience of creating the dance and movement for the event...
To begin with, I spoke to the group about what their initial ideas for the costumes were – What was the stimulus? What were they trying to convey? It felt very important for me to focus on the ideas behind the costumes, as primarily, this was a textiles project. It was my job to showcase the artistic work of the costume makers through the medium of movement: to bring the costume to life! The group were very articulate about the ideas behind their creative process and the vocabulary they used I could automatically link to movement. It felt like a very natural process and I felt comfortable as both dancers and costume makers were clearly coming from the same place, on the same page.
I began by working in the long gallery with one of the dancers, Conrad. We had the immediate sense that the costumes needed to be provided with a character, as they were both based on the tudor time period. We decided to take inspiration from the paintings in the gallery (would be odd not to!) and this resulted in us choreographing separate movements from over 200 of the paintings. We also decided to introduce speech, and scripted some sections of our performance. We wanted the characters to be portrayed as extravagant and eccentric, but also quite cheeky. I felt this challenged the historic conventions of the art gallery space: viewers often feel that that they have to walk around in silence, quietly contemplating what they witness. By placing two unusual moving and speaking bodies in the space, we automatically challenged the audience members and the gallery space.
Hayley’s process in the bandstand was more of a challenge due to time constraints, but it all came together in the end! We focused on commanding and powerful movements for her entrance, moving slowly so that she demanded attention from the audience members as well as passers by. We decided that Hayley’s performance would be mostly improvised, due to the restrictions of the costume. However this allowed Hayley to really embody the performance and respond in the moment to the beautiful sound of the Chinese harp.
Working with the window ledge performers, Cherry Lui and Georgia Kalinowska
was really interesting for me as I had little studio time with the untrained dancers. I choreographed a movement motif that I hoped would be accessible for them and they managed exceptionally well. Although they were not given an opportunity to rehearse in the space until the day, they were really confident and adapted very well. I focused on grounded, earthy movements to create the movement material used.
At first I thought it may be very difficult to perform the piece for 3 hours straight, but in actual fact it was so enjoyable, and each performance so different, that the time flew by! I think the idea of a promenading audience, led by the drummer worked really well as the audience were in a situation where they were unsure in what unusual space a performer would be found.
The costumes were fantastic and the audience reaction was wonderful. Overall, definitely a success! It was such a pleasure to collaborate with Nottingham Castle and it was an extremely enjoyable project to be part of. We felt extremely welcome and I think this allowed our choreography and performance to reach it’s full potential.
