‘It obviously follows that the essence of dance is virtual movement, more than actual movement.
Let's say, virtual movement as the secret slowness of actual movement.’
Alain Badiou
The Secret Slowness of Movement is an invitation to slow dance, or slow be. A refuge for quiet contemplation, a healing space, a dance floor for anonymous embodied slowness. A space where visitors can move, relax, explore or just be, a refuge amidst the buzz of a busy festival.
In The Secret Slowness I'm interested in setting up a space for a choreography to emerge out of the visitor's actions, allowing for dance to make itself without me dictating it: a slow dance with a partner or friend, a private explore, a child's sprint across the floor, a sleep... My proposition is to open up a dance floor for visitors to take refuge, and perhaps inhabit the world differently for a while.
It is part of an on-going investigation into the creation of participatory dance installation work, first explored in Dance Dark Dance. My desire to create spaces that facilitate a deep kinaesthetic experience first emerged during a period of prolonged injury and debilitating chronic pain throughout which I remained unable to dance -or move much at all- for several years. It also comes from the pleasure I find in experiencing the world through slowed downed movement, and a desire to make this available to others.
What people have said:
‘Should be free on the NHS’ (participant)
Like taking a little dimensional shift. Somewhere between meditation and after-party, there was something beautifully unselfconscious and dreamlike about the experience. It felt like an invitation to feel my nerves and heartbeat and muscles in the way that normally only happens as the sun comes up at the end of a party. Time moves differently here.
Tanuja Amarasuriya (Theatre Bristol)
A surprisingly profound encounter. Part installation, part meditation, part ritual, part post-party. This is a delicately orchestrated gift of a piece. A generous, unusual, beautiful thing. In its design there’s a kind of play of interior and exterior worlds - of private and public: An indoor lawn. A theatrical dawn/dusk. And in that hinterland we can be whatever, It’s an invitation to just… well, what did I do? Slept, laughed, danced, cried, listened, watched and wished I could stay for longer. And I'm a cynic...
Kate Yedigaroff (MAYK/MAYFEST)
London Dance
‘I didn't know how much I needed this until I got here'
Photo: Paul Blakemore
Created for Mayfest 2015 with generous support from Arts Council England
and Theatre Bristol.
Presented at Dance Umbrella 2016.
