Aside From by Emma Campbell - Thursday 3rd June 4.30, 6.00 & 7.00 pm

...'scape by Cathy Washbrooke - Wedsnesday 2nd June, 7.30pm

Photography by Richard Washbrooke

Tracing Imprints by Vicki Smith - Thurs 3rd June 5.15 & 6.45pm

little bird listening by Jess Allen - Tues 1st June, 3-6.40pm

little bird, listening is a durational work exploring distance (in space and time) through endurance (of body and memory). It uses the rich and complex text of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets spoken continuously from memory whilst moving and performing tasks with objects. The words form a continuous sound score that is spoken in relay between the performer (live) and her mother (over mobile phone from Aberystwyth), for the length of the train journey that would reunite them (3 hours 40 minutes in Coventry).

Within this overarching structure, the work attempts to address how and where memory resides in the body-mind; how pre-occupation of the cortex with the conscious act of remembering text allows movement to arise from sub/unconscious; and how text – whether imagery or pattern – can become truly embodied through a regular practice of speaking-dancing.

The Quartets are perhaps the most famous twentieth century poems to deal with the nature of time but are also contained in the one slim volume that I mistakenly picked up age 6 and precociously read out loud to my mother from; the book in which she once wrote my lessons in grammar and punctuation and the notes for her own mother’s epitaph. Now these words form the basis for this exchange, exploring, through text about time, the distance between who we are now and who we were then, and how we transcend or distort it through the un/reliable lens of technology and memory.

So I find words I never thought to speak/In streets I never thought I should revisit/When I left my body on a distant shore

T. S Eliot | Little Gidding | Part II

Photography by Richard Washbrooke

a noise in my eye by Eleonora Siarava - Friday 4th June, 7.30 pm

Choreographer Eleonora Siarava writes about her piece a noise in my eye, which will be presented at MAke>shift on Friday 4th June...

“a noise in my eye” is a dark journey to the world of perception, a mystic place where Mathematics meet Gothic and Impressionism, time freezes and vision pulses in-between rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious. It is a group work for a “chorus” of 6 dancers which explore unfamiliar ways of embodiment in a shadowy context of restriction, transition and escape. However, the piece is a research on the application of Neuroaesthetics in dance and thus it could be characterized as “meaningless” as it basically experiments with its impact on senses, perceptual mechanisms, physical sensations and cognitive functions both of performers and audience.

Repetitive cognitive and physical patterns, constructed in a mathematical way as well as the chaos and the same time the harmony which characterize the world of Geometry and Physics create a tricky visual endless, a ground for infinite potentials to be unfolded, multiplied, diversified.

My intention as a choreographer was to challenge the way that perception and attention function by using the cognitive rest and the addiction evoked by a hypnotizing repetition in combination with the alert and the “midi-complex” unpredictability that they can cause moving patterns characterized by moderated complexity.

The construction of the moving material is inspired by the periodical circulation of the body fluids and especially the blood, as allowing preservation and recycling of body’s moving energy. The dancers balance between trapping and recycling this energy and being trapped by that.

The piece holds a close relationship with musicality and rhythmical patterns in an attempt to enhance the focus on the perceptual and moving patterns. The basic music theme is from Simeon Ten Holt’s “Canto Ostinato” which can support a hypnotic movement precise and closely linked to the music so as to create a sound endless, an eternal movement that follows a sound infinity.

Rehearsal photography by Richard Washbrooke

MAke>shift Festival Schedule

Tuesday 1st June
Durational Installation ET230 - 3-6.40pm
little bird, listening
by Jess Allen

Wednesday 2nd June
Dance Performance ET221 - 7.30pm
...'scape
Choreography by Cathy Washbrooke

Thursday 3rd June
Double Bill
Installation ET230 - 4.30pm, 6.00pm, 7.30pm
aside from
by Emma Campbell

Film ET221 - 5.15pm, 6.45pm
Tracing Imprints
by Vicki Smith

Friday 4th June
Dance Performance ET221 - 7.30pm
a noise in my eye
Choreography by Eleonora Siarava

Free Entry To All Performances (Donation Box)

Profiles of individual performances will be posted to this blog over the next few days...

Extra date! Festival extended to FRIDAY 4th June

The final schedule of who is presenting work on which day, when and where will be posted here and to our Facebook event profile over the next few days.

Watch this space!