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!
Two dancers; two cellists. This performance is a collaboration between cellists Josie Webber and Bruno Guastalla; and the dancers Josephine Dyer and Andrew Wood. There is a space between dancers and musicians which is elastic and malleable: in-between movement and music. In this improvised work, we examine this in-between, and the roles of leading and following.
From the Performance Programme (PDF)
I danced at the Turrill Sculpture Garden last year when I performed with Oxford Contact Dance in their Garden Dance. That time, I was dancing in a quartet of dancers with cellist Josie Webber accompanying.
This time it was also a quartet of sorts – two dancers – two cellists: a quartet of performers. We were playing with the relations in leading and following between musicians, dancers and each other. Breaking the division between music and movement; musicians and dancers. We’d created a composition and a score at a rehearsal session the previous week
The dance involved considerable improvisation within the score which acted as a framework – for both musicians and dancers. Jo and I used techniques drawn from contact improvisation. This was our first public performance together which worked really well. Indeed, with the expert playing of Josie and Bruno on cellos then it was a fantastic experience. The performance was 24 minutes long.
It was photographed by Karl Wallendszus (see below) and by Andrew Bell who took some great black & white photos.
There are two films of the ‘in between’ performance, produced and edited by Fiona Bennett – a shorter one presented above – and the full performance.
Performance Photographs by Karl Wallendszus
In these photos, Josie Webber and Bruno Guastalla on cello; Josephine Dyer and me (Andrew Wood) dancing; and the audience for the performance!
Thank-you to Karl Wallendszus for the use of these photos