LIVE NOW FESTIVAL 2023: Dance, technology and the body – blending the digital and physical
Webinar discussion and Q&A with audience
With Alexandrina Hemsley, Founder and Creative Director, Yewande 103 and Prince Laryea, Executive Producer, Avant Garde Dance
The use of new technologies has significantly impacted the contemporary dance sector since early digital developments began, contributing to the creation of a broad range of digital dance work that questions and shifts the ways in which choreographers and dance artists create and present work and connect with audiences.
Utilising screen and VR technologies, our LIVE NOW commissions FOUNTAIN by Yewande 103 and SCRUM VR180 by Avant Garde Dance reflect a dynamic approach to exploring the moving body in digital form and the ways in which new stories can be told and experienced through digital platforms.
Alexandrina from Yewande 103 and Prince from Avant Garde Dance will discuss the different ideas and approaches behind their LIVE NOW commissions FOUNTAIN and SCRUM VR180, the relationship between dancer, choreographer and camera, and how the use of new technologies has impacted their creative practise.
We are delighted to also be hosting a live screening of FOUNTAIN by Yewande 103 on Thursday 26 January, 7pm at The Lowry. Book your £5 ticket now: https://thelowry.com/whats-on/the-fountain-by-yewande-103-screening-live-now-commission/
Image credit: SCRUM VR 180 by Avant Garde Dance and Fountain by Yewande 103 / Alexandrina Hemsley. Dancer: Shahada Nantaba.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Alexandrina Hemsley
Yewande 103 is led by Alexandrina Hemsley whose creative practice lands in the fluid spaces of dance, choreography, writing, facilitating and advocacy.
Alexandrina interests are both enduring and in expansive states of flux – or just in connection/relation to the processes within life and within living. They deep dive towards the sensorial, the bodily, the multiple subjective positions of self – and self in intimate relation to self and other selves – as ways to find breath and voice amidst the unjust and inequitable. Alexandrina works with intricate improvisation scores and vivid performance environments which insist on conjuring embodied enquiries into a multiplicity of voices. This includes work within organisations around anti-racism, anti-ableism and embodied advocacy. It is a life long, nuanced undertaking. Alexandrina has performed and choreographed nationally and internationally since 2009.
Alexandrina’s work has been commissioned by and presented at Sadler’s Wells, The British Museum, Battersea Arts Centre, Southbank Centre, Cambridge Junction, MDI, South East Dance, Chisenhale Dance Space and The Yard Theatre amongst others. Their critical writing has been published by Sick of The Fringe, an introduction into Selina Thompson’s Salt (Faber & Faber), SPILL Festival and new publication exploring queering the future, Hereafter (Unbound). Other publishing includes The Silver Bandage (Bookworks) and LADA’s Live Art Almanac Vol. 5. Most recently, she has an essay, ‘‘Feeling My Way Through Several Beginnings’ in Performance, Dance and Political Economy – Bodies at the End of the World, Eds. Katerina Paramana and Anita Gonzalez (Bloomsbury Press). Their collaborations include Project O with Jamila Johnson-Small (2010 onwards, Sadlers Wells New Wave Associates) and Seke Chimutengwende (2016 onwards) on Black Holes. Alexandrina collaborated with Rosie Heafford and Helena Webb on Dad Dancing.
https://www.yewande103.com/about
Prince Laryea
Prince is an innovative and charismatic social entrepreneur with a distinct mix of creative and organisational skills. Excited by innovation and the potential to realise the remarkable, Prince’s professional background touches music and dance as both a successful artist and senior organisational leader. Prince currently occupies a senior role as Executive Producer for one of the UK’s leading touring dance theatre companies; he is also an associate coach and facilitator with The Clore, an internationally recognised training organisation for senior leaders in the arts sector.
ABOUT THE LIVE NOW COMMISSIONS
FOUNTAIN by Yewande 103
Building on Yewande 103’s current body of work around embodied advocacy, Fountain blends together dance and digital watery environments to explore tidal cycles of repair, loss, joy and intimacy. This powerful work draws on the symbolism and psycho-geography of water as inevitably linked to Black histories, embodiments, experiences and mental health.
Guided by choreographer Alexandrina Hemsley’s tightly woven movement score, dancers Rickay Hewitt-Martin, Rudzani Moleya and Shahada Nantaba, cycle through contrasting edits of splashing waves with a darkened theatre space, the trio shift between spectrums of being seen, mirrored & camouflaged by water.
Fountain situates itself amidst the colliding range and scale of experiences within Black subjectivities that water evokes: from the play of running through fountains in the summer, to the significance of oceanic passages and the impacts of colonial carving up of water and selves within Black existences.
Considering the water within our own bodies in relation to the other waters within Earth’s hydrosphere, Fountain tenderly senses our inescapable tides of life and death; welcoming how our watery bodies exist simultaneously as oceans, tombs and sanctuaries.
FOUNTAIN has been developed as part of LIVE NOW – a digital commissioning programme from The Lowry Additional commissioning support from Cambridge Junction. R&D support from The Place and a Wainsgate Dances 2021 residency. Supported using public finding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
SCRUM VR180 by Avant Garde Dance
It’s 2030, and dance is a crime. We should have seen it coming.
We spent the first two decades of the new millennium gripped by fear. The war on terror, financial turmoil, climate change, and global pandemics, an anxious public turned to big tech and invasive surveillance for a safety blanket – but at what cost? Scrum immerses you amidst riotous protest; as a rabble of young digital natives confronts a powerful regime, the question is, will they rebel or confirm?
Avant Garde’s trademark synaesthesia of hip-hop, contemporary dance and captivating soundtrack unfurl in this electrifying VR show for all ages.
Scrum – An Illegal Outdoor Dance Show, supported by Without Walls, 101 Outdoor Arts and Arts Council England. Commissioned by Brighton Festival, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Salisbury International Arts Festival and Strike a Light Gloucester. SCRUM VR180 film is commissioned by The Lowry
About Avant Garde Dance Company
Founded in 2001, Avant Garde Dance Company (AGDC) is led by Artistic Director and CEO Tony Adigun. AGDC is a critically acclaimed company at the forefront of London’s innovative Hip hop/Contemporary Dance scene. Dedicated to creating and distributing world-class dance, the company enjoys a broad appeal to diverse, intergenerational and multi-cultural audiences nationally and internationally.
Tony is a choreographer, director, curator, dancer, educator and mentor with a razor sharp eye for dance composition, musicality and form. His unique dance vocabulary has gained respect from the highest echelons of the dance industry.
AGDC’s recent works have reached over 170,000 audiences and engaged over 2000 young people taking part in learning and participation opportunities.
Nominated for the Best Independent Dance Company category in the National Dance `Awards, The AGDC mantra ‘Innovate Never Replicate’ is evident throughout the work, as the company embraces a sense of difference and individuality.
www.avantgardedance.com
www.illegaldance.com