When I began teaching and facilitating dancing with sticks, I draw on my experience of contact improvisation but quickly found it wasn’t enough. I needed new concepts. A movement practice with sticks, has its own semiotics (meanings) and its own physics.
Continue reading Lessons from dancing with sticks – the semiotics of stick dancingCategory: Oxford Contact Dance
Becoming Gentleness: performance
I’m very proud that despite a global pandemic, we still managed to create a new dance – ‘Becoming Gentleness’ – at Oxford Contact Dance. We danced with sticks – outdoors – in University Parks, Oxford on 23 October 2020. There was a beautiful sunset and a carpet of autumn leaves.
Continue reading Becoming Gentleness: performanceBecoming Gentleness: composition session
A dance performance during a global pandemic was always going to be a bit different. At the composition session for it on 14 October 2020, we devised an outdoor dance in a park using sticks called ‘Becoming Gentleness’. The outdoor setting and the distancing from each other through sticks reduced the risk of infection from COVID-19.
Continue reading Becoming Gentleness: composition sessionDance in the face of coronavirus
The outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in March 2020 caused the suspension of our dance and class sessions at Oxford Contact Dance. Assembles were unlawful, ‘social distancing’ the new normal, and most people were isolated at home. We couldn’t dance together. What could we do?
Continue reading Dance in the face of coronavirusStage dancing : Christmas Lights 2019, Oxford
On Saturday 16 November, dancer Jo Dyer, cellist Josie Webber and I, took to the stage in Oxford at the Christmas Lights Festival. We performed a revised version of the ‘In-between’ dance created earlier in the year.
Continue reading Stage dancing : Christmas Lights 2019, Oxford‘I learn so much from my [dance] students’
‘I learn so much from my students’ is often said by those who teach. But is it true? Teaching/facilitating at a session of Oxford Contact Dance in October, I had something of a rude awakening!
Continue reading ‘I learn so much from my [dance] students’Yoga into dance : narratives from yoga & dance
Yoga into Dance was a two hour class led by me and Ashka from Ashka Zasada Yoga on 13 October at Oxford Contact Dance. Afterwards, I pondered our use of narratives in the session.
Continue reading Yoga into dance : narratives from yoga & danceFountain: a dance
Ideas for dance rarely come from nowhere. A few years ago, I saw a fantastic image of a man throwing a handful of small sticks into the air. The photograph had caught the movement, and indeed the moment in time as the sticks were suspended in a ‘stick cloud’. That was my starting point for a dance involving buckets and water.
Continue reading Fountain: a danceIn-between Performance films
There were two films of the In-between performance shot on Saturday 25 May by Fiona Bennett. A short feature with highlights, and a full length version. Both are presented here.
Continue reading In-between Performance films‘In-between’ performance
The Turrill Sculpture Garden in Oxford was the venue of my latest public dancing in a performance called ‘In-between’: two dancers, two cellists and a lawn to dance on. Thankfully, it didn’t rain!
Continue reading ‘In-between’ performance