David Bower on the highs and the wyrrd's of this years' Signdance programme
David Bower of Signdance Collective. Photo by Jon Adams
26 March 08 Okay, so what ‘ails. Well quite a fair bit, its a big un' for us at the Signdance Collective this year. First, over the next few months, I will be reporting the events in the run-up for the Signdance collective showcase. The whole thing’s called The High-Wyrrd Showcase , and it is going to be held over a long weekend in the quaint little old market town of High Wycombe. It will all begin on Friday 19 - Sunday 21 September. As of now, the schedule is shaping up nicely, and we believe it represents a healthy broad range of local, national and international artists. It is an all-inclusive event, which aims to exclude no one.
Why High-Wyrrd - Wyrrd is an old English word, in this context the definition Wyrrd describes a situation or an event that brings about a shift in awareness and perception, i.e second sight. The sisters of fate, the ancient Greek mythological archetypes, have been coined The Wyrd sisters, and has been used famously as the title of one of Terry Prachetts books. Shakespeare also refers to them in his works.
The other thing I’am going to be writing about is the process of creating Signdance Collective’s new work, called Three Films + One. We have already covered a lot of ground with the first two pieces. Part one is called, The Words and part two is called Listen.
Isolte Avrila of Signdance Collective. Photo Nitra Festival
We have been collaborating with a guitarist, Alex Ward, from The Luke Barlow Band and also from Alex Ward and the Dead Ends (don’t ya just love that name!). In ‘The Words’ we are aiming to investigate the limitations of language, and by way of dance and visuality seek to explain stuff that words can’t describe and for that matter even impedes, like Daphne du Maurier’s, birds in the eponymous book ‘The Birds’. We created a part of this work in Graz, Austria just after the great storm, (although I can’t see what was so great about it). The whole city exuded an air of caution just like Hitchcocks scene at the schoolhouse in the movie The Birds.
The thing with oral language and even the written word is that sometimes we place so much faith in its infallibility that perhaps its possible that we may be denying ourselves insights due to the fog of words. For those of us who are deaf, this has a very real significance.
Listen came about as a piece to try to seek, investigate and introduce an example as to how disability is utilised as an artistic device/tool with which to create work. Art as as a primary function, which raises a mirror, as opposed to art as a statement, and thereby in turn reducing it to a secondary function that serves an ulterior purpose i.e spoonfeeding the audience. In this work, we are utilising ‘Tinnitus’, which is a constant sound or ‘ringing’ in the ears. The publicity describes it as thus,
Listen, the second of four 20 minute signdance/film pieces, utilizes a visual/sound computer programme on a wide screen, and several art forms combined to show how SDC's artistic director David Bower creates dance using his tinnitus (ringing in the ears), allowing the audience to experience his interpretation of sound. Music Luke Barlow, Film Sarana Mehra, Dance Isolte Avila
The next two pieces are Travelling and Here. Travelling, the final piece, will be created in Sardenia. We will be collaborating with Caravona’s Allesandro Mellis and Ornella D’Agostino. Carovana are a company that explores behavourial archeaology and contemporary dance. They will be choreographing the piece as well as creating a twin piece that they will perform too. ‘Here’ will happen in Turkey, Primoz Bayzak from Betontanc Dance in Slovenia will be working alongside Caglar Kimyoncu, a Turkish film-maker based in London to create the third part. We will have a fair bit of time in Turkey and Sardenia; I intend to document this as a travel log on this blog.
Till then, I gotta say stay tuned for some more comin’ up, see ya later xx….
Photo by Caglar Kimyoncu. Outline of the city of Istanbul from the sea
24 April 08 Istanbul Is an amazing city, full of history that is at once both ancient and contemporary. Theres a lot of tourist blurb that de-sensitizes and strangely makes mundane what is in fact is an intensely inspiring and vibrant hub of energy. It sits on one of Eurasia’s most volatile faultlines it runs from north to south down the Bosphorus straits. People in Istanbul look to the antiquity of the Aya Sofya, and count their blessings.
There is stuff here that I no longer see back home in the UK. Children play football on the streets. Wizened old ladies peer at the world from their windows with kind smiles. Cats craftily slink through the half sun-lit alley-ways. Musicians cajole and question stall holders along the bazaars. All life is here, ebbing and flowing, the kind of life that is the stuff of poet dreams.
Photo by Caglar Kimyoncu. Food for thought.
Although I have got to to say it is also a really complex place to negotiate, for example a visually impaired dude or a girl in a wheelchair is going to to have a bit of a headache trying to negotiate the endless twists and turns and staircases that traverse the seven hills that is Istanbul.Although I saw one blind boy being led by his mother, I presume. He seemed to be cool with it, but then he probably knows the place like the back of his hand.
We are here to create the third part of Three films plus one. The piece is going to be called Here. Initially there just three of us here over from the UK - Caglar Kimyoncu from FilmPro, Isolte Avila and myself, plus Istanbul based artist Evrim. Later we will be joined Primoz Bayzak (dir for Here), Mark Holub (music director) Vicky Heathcock (technical director) and last but certainly not least Luke Barlow (musician and long time collaborator). Our small group has already hit the ground running, gathering the initial rushes for the film element of “Here”. These are mainly rehearsal shots and possibly usable material. We are investigating what it means to be “here” because apparently most of us, thought-wise, are in the past or in the future. We do not really see each other, in the sense, that we only see what we want to see as opposed to really ‘seeing’ the real person. Apparently, a lot of us cannot really ‘see’ ourselves, which in Bhuddist terms renders us as a kind of a ghost. Whoah,scary…
Photo by Caglar Kimyoncu. Isolte Avila during improvisation for Here
Today we went down to the Capali Carsi, it is pronounced, Shapali Sharsi. There is a huge indoor bazaar, surrounded by a labyrinth of alleyways. The dynamics of the crowds and the stillness of the timeless architecture provided a strong and potent framework for the photography and the choreography; a real sense of this world together is what makes it work.
The children came out of the shops to help us with the filming; they were suggesting ideas and confering as to how they would approach the shots. We found an amazing shop full of anything made of metal. It had metal headdresses made of coins, pocket gunpowder kegs, and bits of old wrought iron depicting what could have aramic writing. The owner was incredibly generous and allowed to film some sequences inside. The interior was a real Alladins cave. There is so much visual information that you just want to film it all.
I'm going to be writing about how the piece comes together in the time that we are here. Tune in to this blog in a few days, til then, peaceful thoughts x
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last updated: 2008-03-26 12:08:09
tags : international deaf_Arts disability arts theatre performing arts festival dance