Ladies Night
A collaboration between a new generation of London-based dance artists and Southbank Centre forms a group called ‘Collective Movement,’ working as a platform for dance contributors whilst engaging in a supportive dance community in London.
Thursday, January 12th, artists from ‘Collective Movement’ performed an evening of dance works, ‘Body of Movement,’ presented at Royal Festival Hall. Performers/ choreographers consisted of female duos.
How wonderful it is to have a night of performances by all women! To make myself more clear rather than sounding like a man-basher, the assumption is that there are few men who are interested or involved in dance, and generally if this is the case, women are undermined in their roles due to their vast majority in the field of dance. Women become the silent numbers who help systems to function, but blend in like sheep to the public while men are given the role of a shepherd, standing up and out. Not only were the performing artists of ‘Body of Movement’ showing bodies of work that performed feminist politics in a representational sense; but, also these women are women, and thus performed themselves - unique females who present their own authority within a larger group that they help bring together. Not to mention the fact that this sharing incorporated artists and art-seekers of a new generation - the forth-coming, up-rising, e-merging selves of 2012.
Dance works presented in order of appearance by following choreographers/performers:
SININEN: Signing into a place by Irina Baldini and Giorgia Sciannameo
Le Petit Mort by Tuuli Hynynen and Else Tunemyr
Collection 1: smooth meat, pig memories, wardrobe. by Emelie Wångstedt and Helena Webb
O by Alexandrina Hemsley and Jamila Johnson-Small
Impression (Rosalie) by Helka Kaski and Rosalie Wahlfrid
I suggest looking up these artists. Check them out and see what they ask of their audiences.
What resonates and what I wish to leave you with is an impression from Le Petit Mort and what it asked of me; and so, now we shall all sing the first two verses of Abide with Me:
1. A - bide with me- fast falls the e - ven - tide, The dark-ness
2. Swift to its close ebbs out life’s lit- tle day, Earth’s joys grow
deep-ens- Lord, with me a - bide; When oth-er help - ers fail and
dim, its glo-ries pass a - way; Change and de- cay in all a -
com-forts flee, Help of the help-less, O a - bide with me!
round I see- O Thou who chang-est not, a - bide with me!
