In 2007 Rachel was selected for the DanceWeb scholarship at ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna. In 2009 she was invited to return as a ‘frog’. Here are Rachel’s reports of her experiences, which can also be found with other scholars reports here.
danceWEB Impressions:
2009
After an amazing and ‘once in a lifetime’ Summer as a Dancewebber in 2007, I was extremely honoured and excited to be invited back again as a ‘frog’. 2009 was a very different but equally exciting, inspiring and transforming experience.
My focus this time around was with the more physical workshops. I also deliberately chose workshops and coaching projects with approaches that differ from my usual practice. I feel much more settled and confident in what I know now, a few years out of college, and I wanted to use this opportunity to try some new things. In particular Ultima Vez Partnering and Fighting Monkey had a very different approach to moving in contact with another person than the contact improvisation I usually practise. I learnt a lot, which has given me more options, as well as sometimes reaffirming to me why I choose to do the things I do.
Workshop teachers were greatly experienced, honest, humble and generous. Highlights included Davis Freeman’s Non-Acting Acting which was both challenging and valuable and has greatly increased my confidence in using my voice in perfomance. Rasmus Olme provided useful and inspiring ways of Questioning Choreography. Keith Hennessey’s workshop Queer, brought together queer politics and performance, two subjects which are important to me but often feel very separate. We explored sexuality, borderlands, and the space between through interesting, honest and thought provoking movement and discussion. Years of dance training finally resulted in some impressive party tricks involved a chair and a car bonnet thanks to Akos Hargitay’s Parkour which gave me that confidence to use my body in new, powerful ways. Chrysa Parkinson and Martin Kilvardy’s coaching project Practice: Making Sense in the last week sketched out a bridge between Danceweb ending and the exciting but scary prospect of finding ways of enriching my practice with all that I had discovered once I returned home.
After watching twenty seven performances I was struck by the huge breadth and variety that dance performance can take. I found Ann Liv Young’s exploration of race, sex and gender The Bagwell in Me shocking, disturbing and brilliant. Bengolea and Chaignard’s Sylphides was one of the most genuinely weird things I’ve seen, with a wonderfully unexpected and exhuberant ending. I loved watching Lacey and Livingstone making a pantomine horse by just putting a fitted sheet over their heads and integrating singing into a dance performance so easily.
Being immersed in this world of dance for five weeks made me feel incredibly well fed: Wake up, do some dancing, think about dancing, watch some dancing, talk about dancing, then maybe a little dancing in the lounge before bed, ready to wake up and do some dancing.. Heaven.
Other memories: the strong smell of lavender and mint cycling home in the evenings. Catching a rose thrown from the stage by Antonia Livingstone. Getting drenched in warm rain during an incredible thunderstorm on my little blue bike. Shared meals on the roof terrace. Dancing and swimming and drinking Aperol spritz and curling up in blankets then dancing and swimming some more into the night at the amazing pool party. Climbing into another Dancewebber’s lap after Magi Marin’s heart breaking, intriguing and funny May B too stunned to speak.
Being a frog provided a great opening to getting to know people more easily at the beginning. I was happy to be able to share my knowledge and experience to help people negotiate the city, the festival and the intense experience which is Danceweb. I was touched and happy at the end when people told me that they had appreciated this and found it a great help.
It is hard to articulate how much I have gained from spending five weeks with a group of people with incredibly diverse backgrounds, interests and personalities but the same shared passion for dance. One concern I had during our Danceweb salons was that the same voices seemed to be heard often, and whilst others were not given the opportunity to be heard. This culminated the last time we were gathered together when a banana that had been suggested as a talking stick was eaten by one of the most vocal and confident members of the group. There seemed to be cultural and language patterns operating, in who dominated the group. I felt that this was an important thing to deal with in a multicultural exchange programme and was frustrated that we were not able to resolve this.
Throughout this year’s danceweb I had in my mind the question of how the experience would feed into my future practice. I hope that this helped me to find strategies and ways of maintaining momentum afterwards whilst giving myself time and space to explore. I have invited several Dancewebbers to join me for a week’s residency in Yorkshire this December where we can play, try out ideas and hopefully sow the seeds of future projects. I am taking part in a research project at Dance City with another Dancewebber next month. I feel packed full of ideas and confidence for teaching and stocked up with physical experiences and inspiration ready to create. Certainly Danceweb has provided more questions than answers, but that is probably the best place from which to create.
Thank you so much to Impulstanz, Rio, Hanna, Dennis, Malou, artistic mentors Phillip and Christine, the workshop office team and of course all the other Dancewebbers. See you again soon Impulstanz!
2007 “What i did in my summer holidays”
When i left Vienna and got on my train back to the UK, the people in my carriage asked what i’d been doing in Vienna. I struggled to know where to even begin but after a few months time for reflection I will try to distill the blur of performances, workshops, research and parties that was danceWEB.
During ImPulsTanz I watched 31 performances, quite possibly as many as in the rest of my life put together! Highlights for me were The Art of Seduction, where angle poise lamps were used to highlight bodies and faces and performers mimed to a recorded soundtrack. The gorgeous fluid animalistic movement and characters of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Toneelhuis’s Myth. Yasmine Hugonnet’s Re-PLay where three dancers moved with video camera, projector and a white paper screen in an inventive way. Kettly Noel and Nelisiwe Xaba’s use of props and language to explore friendship and meeting in Correspondences. The Case of the Spectator where Maria Jerez created a whole world under her armchair and watching the performance quality of Anna Teresa de Keersmacker. I would never have imagined that I could be so moved by watching cardboard disintegrate as I was in Blessed by Meg Stuart. A few pieces left me cold but these provided a much-needed moment to sit quietly for a while! There were always interesting discussions to be had afterwards, with much variety in different people’s responses to different pieces.
During Vampire Theresa Pro-series with DD Dorvillier and Jennifer Lacey we used works of theirs as inspiration as well as laughing meditations, observing as a wizard, as a child, as a journalist… I was extremely confused and a little frustrated at times but it opened up for me a whole new way of ‘practising’, of constantly experiencing and being in the moment rather then working towards a future goal. A research project with Wendy Houstoun left me really excited and a little overwhelmed with possibilities and wondering how i could begin to integrate text into my work.
Contact Improvisation with Andrew de L. Harwood was definitely a highlight. Learning to ”wait for gravity” and move in a free and sensitive way between a partner and the floor. It was such a treat to spend a week dancing with such a great group of people. Three amazing open contact jams with beautiful dances and easy transitions between partners left me desperate to do more contact dancing on my return to the UK.
I took workshops with Martin Kilvardy, doing guided improvisations and just enjoying dancing each morning and Chrysa Parkinson who gave us simple but original ways of guiding and initiating movement in a partner and scores for group composition. Auditioning for Superamas was a super intense, varied and interesting experience over a whole weekend. In Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais classes I discovered ways of moving my body more comfortably and efficiently and learnt much about the structure and function of my body. This detailed study gave me a deeper understanding of things that i have heard technique teachers say many times.
Salons with Jonathan Burrows provided structure and context for the many things that were happening and gave an opportunity to reflect on what we were learning and how this applied to our development. He reminded us to remember who we are and what we do and his helpful advice included ‘silence the parrot’ and ‘it’s only a stupid dance’! Salons were also a chance for all the dancewebbers to be together.
I became aware of the separateness of UK dance scene from mainland Europe. When choosing which performances to book before traveling to Vienna there were many artists that I hadn’t heard of who I now realise are really big in Europe, and many British companies didn’t seem to be known to people from other countries. What a difference 20 miles of sea can make (that’s 35 kilometres, see what i mean?) It was fantastic to get a wider perspective, outside of the northern city I choose to live and work in but where all the dancers have had the same training. I have much more of a desire to perform in my own work now and to incorporate more than just movement. I am aware of and excited by all the possibilities and directions I could take, using voice, language, visual art collaborations, improvising in performance…
I was really impressed by how well organised danceWEB and ImPulsTanz were. We were really well looked after and supported throughout. I felt privileged to be with so many articulate, passionate and lovely people and to be treated like a VIP in such beautiful grand buildings! It was fantastic spending five weeks getting to know dance artists from around the world. Highlights from the social side of things include dancing until dawn at the danceWEB party and people drumming on chairs when the music finally stopped so we could keep dancing. Sleeping out on the Studentenhaus terrace squashed together watching shooting stars, getting slightly hysterical with ‘move over Australia you’re squashing me’ and ‘Turkey give Iceland a kick, she’s snoring again.’ Cooling off in a fountain after a performance and eating ice creams which melted as soon as they hit the pavement even at midnight. Enjoying cycling through the beautiful city, planning to see Vienna when i had a day off (it never happened.)
Reflecting back on my experiences now I feel a bit as if it was over too soon, that we had just scratched the surface and begun. I realise that i left Vienna without even finding out what most other Webbers do in their own work. There was always so much happening, and the question of how much to try and pack in. However I think that this is the way it should be, just a beginning, the start of what happens next. So the question for me now is how to take this forward, to distill and integrate this amazing experience into the work I make. I am making work on my own body, exploring ideas, planning to travel, setting up projects and hoping to collaborate with dancewebbers again soon.
I have just finished a job teaching at Chester University which I got as a direct result of having done danceWEB and after my experiences in Vienna was packed full of ideas for teaching. After danceWEB I feel like I have left my training behind and returned to the UK with hugely increased confidence. I am excited and optimistic in the performance that is being produced at the moment and the part that I have to play in this.
Many many thanks to ImPulsTanz, the DanceWEB team; Rio, Jana, Adam, Edit and to Arts Council England (Yorkshire) and The Gordon Foundation who funded my participation in danceWEB.
Lift at Yorkshire Dance
In 2010 Rachel was selected for ‘The Fourteen’ training programme at Yorkshire Dance along with thirteen other dance artists “with an innovative and rigorous approach to their work, who have developed their practice in a wide range of professional and community environments.” The programme has helped her to develop skills including visioning, marketing, financial management and career planning alongside artistic development and expert guidance from Artistic Mentors and Career Mentors.
