Digitally Charged: my first online festival

(Version française ci-dessous)

Yanaëlle Thiran and Lydia Swift performing ‘Question in Motion’ (2019) at Longfield Hall. Photo: Carys Bulmer

Dear friends and audiences,

You are warmly invited to an online performance of my work Your Questions in Motion next Saturday 18th July from 5:30 – 6 pm via Zoom. The performance is free to attend. However, you must register here to access it.

You can watch this performance from the comfort of your home and, if you’re feeling inspired, you will also have the option to participate in the work by dropping a question in the Zoom chat. Dancers Carol Visa Kumar, Deepraj Singh, Madison Burgess and Sam Reeves will respond live by putting your questions in motion. Any donations you could make would be hugely appreciated by myself and the other young artists involved in this digital festival.

You may remember that I started developing this performance concept with another dancer, Lydia Swift, in 2019 (see photo above). We were supported by Whitechapel Gallery, Siobhan Davies Dance’s Young Artists Collective and The Artist Asylum. Thanks to Tramshed and their Digitally Charged festival, the project is now embracing the digital world. Don’t miss your chance to connect with it. I hope to see you on Zoom!

Chers amis, chère amies et cher public,

J’ai le plaisir de vous inviter à une représentation en ligne de ma nouvelle pièce Your Questions in Motion (“Vos Questions en Mouvement”) ce samedi 18 juillet de 18h30 à 19h (heure centrale européenne) via Zoom.

La représentation est gratuite, mais vous devez vous inscrire ici pour y avoir accès. Si vous le pouvez, je vous encourage à faire un don, qui sera hautement appréciés par les jeunes artistes programmés comme moi dans ce festival digital. Pensez au prix que vous mettriez normalement dans une place de spectacle, et introduisez ce montant au moment de réserver.

Pour la toute première fois, vous aurez l’occasion d’assister à une représentation de mon travail chorégraphique en direct, tout en restant chez vous ! Vous aurez aussi la possibilité de participer au spectacle en envoyant une question dans la messagerie Zoom, si vous avez de l’inspiration. Les danseurs Carol Visa Kumar, Deepraj Singh, Madison Burgess et Sam Reeves s’en inspireront pour mettre vos questions en mouvement.

Dancers Madison Burgess, Deepraj Singh, Sam Reeves and Carol Visa Kumar in rehearsals via Zoom (2020)

Saviez-vous que j’avais commencé à développer le concept de ce spectacle avec une autre danseuse, Lydia Swift, au printemps 2019 ? Nous avions bénéficié du soutien de la galerie d’art de Whitechapel, du Collectif de Jeunes Artistes de Siobhan Davies Dance, et de l’association The Artist Asylum. Grâce à Tramshed et à leur festival Digitally Charged, le projet vogue maintenant dans un monde digital, pour venir à vous, mon public francophone, sans que vous deviez vous déplacer ! Ne manquez pas cette occasion. Rendez-vous sur Zoom !

CALL OUT: PERFORMER NEEDED FOR A DANCE FILM

Friday 3rd July 2020

I’m looking for 1 dancer who would like to co-create and perform in a 10-minute solo dance film. The film will explore themes of self-image, mirrors and identity by playing with contrasts between surface and interiority, flatness and three-dimensionality, nature and man-made structures, etc. It will be shot outdoors in Jeppe Hein’s installation Mirror Labyrinth:

Mirror Labyrinth

Personal specifications: If these themes resonate with you, I would love to hear from you! Maybe mirrors affected your self-esteem during dance training, or you have been thinking about identity and representation through the Black Lives Matter movement. Ideally, I would like to work with a black dance artist, because I’m interested in hearing from members of the black community on these issues. The opportunity would be best suited if you are a recent graduate or emerging dance artist based in East London (or able to travel to Stratford safely).

Dates and location: We will schedule rehearsals and filming sessions on dates and times that suit you. They will take place in Victory Park (London E20) between the 1st and 31st August.

Fee: This project is part of my MA in choreography and has a very limited budget. However, you will receive a £200 fee at the end of the project and get solo footage for your portfolio.

Process: I would like you to be involved in choreographing, because the film should feel personally meaningful to you, who you are, and how you feel that is reflected by society. We will have conversations about what identity, mirror images and labyrinths evoke for you before improvising on site. Then, I will help you develop movement ideas and frame those for the camera.

If you can picture yourself co-creating this film with me, please get in touch! We will schedule a call to discuss initial ideas and rehearsal dates based on your availability. I look forward to hearing from you!

What has been your most enjoyable and successful collaboration to date? What does collaboration mean to you, these days or otherwise? How do dance companies and other creative teams work in quarantine? Come and reflect with us next Wednesday 6th May at 6 pm BST.

Inspired by recent conversations with Siobhan Davies Dance’s Young Artists Collective and Dance Dialogues, Company Concentric will be chairing a discussion with artists, offering a way of processing our experiences and reflecting on our artistic practice. The meeting will be facilitated by Shivaangee Agrawal, Mikaela Livadiotis and Yanaëlle Thiran and will last approximately 1 hour.

📧 Please contact me for more details and I will let you know how to join!

Next Choreography Festival, Siobhan Davies Dance (2017). Photo by Gorm Ashurst
Next Choreography Festival, Siobhan Davies Dance (2017). Photo by Gorm Ashurst

Journal d’un jeudi

Jeudi 26 mars 2020

Aujourd’hui, jeudi, je devrais donner cours de danse … mais non. Tout s’est arrêté. Tout, sauf peut-être mes recherches sur l’utilisation de l’immobilité en chorégraphie contemporaine. Les investigations philosophiques se prêtent parfaitement au confinement, car elles offrent de longues et fascinantes lectures et réflexions.

On est jeudi et je suis concentrée sur mon master, mais bien que j’adore être étudiante à temps plein, je suis trop impliquée dans ma pratique de l’enseignement de la danse que pour l’oublier complètement.

Les jeudis, ce trimestre-ci, j’ai beaucoup enseigné et appris de mes élèves. Chaque mouvement de cette vidéo a été créé par un(e) jeune danseur(-euse) de âgé(e) 10 à 16 ans, au cours de danse contemporaine du jeudi organisé par DanceWest. Aujourd’hui aurait dû être leur présentation de fin de trimestre.

Cette vidéo est le seul moyen que j’ai de partager le beau travail créatif qu’ils ont produit entre janvier et mars, inspirés par le chorégraphe britannique Russell Maliphant. C’est ma façon de leur dire bravo, à eux et à ma collègue Ella Fleetwood, qui leur a donné cours un jeudi sur deux en alternance avec moi. Merci à Mkask pour la musique – parfaite pour danser.

 

Remainder – one amongst many

Saturday 25th January 2020

Remainder is almost there! Come and see it at The Place this Tuesday 28 January at 7:30 pm. If you haven’t already, please book online now by clicking here.

Remainder by Company Concentric. Photo: Madeleine Rose Elliott
Remainder by Company Concentric. Photo: Madeleine Rose Elliott

That night, you will also see Matter of Fact Dance, Nathan Cornwell and Dominic Harrison’s work. Buy one ticket to support us all of us 😊

But why?
might you ask me.
What makes your piece so special? Isn’t it going to drown in the impressive crowd of 80 other works programmed around it?

The beginning of my answer will be that Remainder is by nature one amongst many. It’s in fact part of a series, because it’s the third piece I created for Resolution festival with my team of true friends and talented collaborators: Company Concentric. Remainder came together step by step and beat by beat, to become bigger than the sum of its parts. It is the Remainder of our restless hopes and ideas. A Remainder of my fear to not be able to count my dance phrases, turned into some of the most accurate sequences I ever made. This 20-minute piece, you see, is only a Remainder of many, many more minutes and hours of sound and movement experiments, fabric flutters, small sensations, connections, macro- and micro-compositions which appeared and evolved over the past 5 months. Whatever remains, the undivided and indivisible… maybe that’s what Remainder reveals or revolves around.

Photo: Madeleine Rose Elliott 📷
Choreography and dance performance: Yanaëlle Thiran & Shivaangee Agrawal
Music: Mikaela Livadiotis 🎹
Costumes: Akshy Marayen
Set and lighting design: Sally Somerville-Woodiwis

Supported by Pavilion Dance South West and Rosas Dance.