performance – Andrew Dance

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.

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!