Andrew Dance – Andrew Wood's dance diary

Remembering Hugo Demartini, artist

On 10 February 2022, I stood in University Parks, Oxford with 100 small sticks and paper slips between my cupped hands. Raising my hands upward, the sticks and paper were lofted into the air. As they were rising they slowed until, for a moment, they were suspended, neither rising nor falling – a cloud of sticks before me, about to scatter and return earthward in a shower.

Dance as sculpture | dancing as sculpting | dancer as sculptor

I began to research art manifestos with a view to writing one for dance. Taken together with my recent practice research for the dance ‘Torus 2.3.3’ then I came to the conclusion that dance could be re-contextualised and situated as sculpture.

Torus 2.3.3 – a dance #LandscapeDance #FoundDance #Voluism

This dance was recorded on two occasions in January 2022. While this is a solo performance. It is also a duet. For I dance with the embodied memory of my previous dance. Thus the past is present: always present.

Pathway – an invisible dance

A path is made by travelling – often repeatedly – along a route and trampling the ground. There is a performative element to it, and the path is a memento or record of movement making a pathway. We could say that we ‘path the walk’ though we usually say that we’ve walked a path. Here is documentation of a walk on the edge of a woodland near Horton-cum-Studley in Oxfordshire which I made in October 2021.

Behold! The Aikido headstand! #HeadstandChallenge

My research into headstands, led me to consider a different stance to one which I’d normally use, and where the outside of my hands rest on the ground, supporting. Hence, the Aikido headstand!!

New dance (2021) – Coming Home

Dancer Jo Blake and I created a duet. We had less than six hours dancing together, and we used a score with three parts to create this new dance. Subsequently, I submitted our dance to Dancin’ Oxford for its Moving with the Times 2021 commission.

Falling, folding and shoulder dancing

So much dance tradition involves our feet: stationary and standing, or travelling in space – walking, running on them, etc. But how about dance which is falling, folding in our body, and dancing with our shoulders on the ground? I played with some ideas and created a couple of sequences.

Fomenting dance

Recently, I heard a radio interview with scientist Jane Clarke who’s an expert in proteins. It made me wonder if there was material here for dance! I also thought of an unusual way to document dance. These ideas are noted down and they become a way of fomenting new dancing.

One year on: stay home, save lives, do Qi Gong!

It’s about a year since the Coronavirus epidemic began in the UK (March 2020) and there have been two periods in lock-down (stay at home order). During this period, I’ve had a regular practice of Qi Gong (Qigong) – the 18 movement form – and this is what I’ve found in it.

Spring Awakening #HeadstandChallenge

Oxford City Council (as Dancin’ Oxford) asked for contributions to its Spring Awakening project. Dancers contribute video clips of themselves dancing which are edited into a final film for digital distribution. A headstand seemed to summon-up the period in which we were living – the world turned upside down by Coronavirus!