366 Days Of Kindness from Bernadette Russell on Vimeo.
Stan’s Cafe associate artist Bernadette Russell has her children’s book out. Do Nice, Be Kind, Spread Happy is a spin off from her much discussed 366 Days of Kindness project. Primarily social activism, secondarily very entertaining theatre show, tertiarilly (is that a word) a DIY manual for children and their adults, this is the undertaking that keeps on giving – literally. It’s a lovely volume. Continue reading “Kindness to Ulfah” »
For fans of the muchos we have muchos, muchos on the horizon.
First up: muchos guitars (unless guitars of feminine in which case we have muchas guitars on our hands). On Sunday 7th Frontiers Festival and Capsule combine forces to bring Rhys Chatham‘s A Secret Rose for 100 Guitars to the Town Hall. It should be pretty special for those of us who are fans of minimalist music (I’ve got both hands up here). Now being the rhythm section for a band of 100 guitars must be pretty intimidating but a glance at the publicity reveals two of Stan’s favourites are in harness together: on drums Laurence Hunt (Modified Toy Orchestra AND Pram) and on bass Sebastiano Dessanay (last seen keeping muchos recorders in check in our mini-opera The Voyage) – smokin’.
Second up, on the following day: muchos voices. 1000 strong choir gather (twice) at Millennium point for the WORLD PREMIERE and SECOND EVER performance of David Lang’s Crowd Out.
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group have been talking about this piece for years and now it is finally commissioned, happening and, in a very small way, we have our hands on some of the leavers, having been asked to keep an eye on ‘choreography’.
On Monday the brave Notorious choir in Kings Heath agreed to be guinea pigs for our choreographic ideas. We’ve never done anything very much like this but there seem like some basic principles to be observed:
- remember it’s about the music not the visuals.
- keep it simple.
- don’t do much.
- 1000 people doing anything is going to be strong.
- 1000 people doing anything too regimented is going to look like a Nuremberg Rally, so avoid that.
With the choir’s indulgence we tried the ideas out, we tweaked some, we committed them to paper and handed them over to be distributed to the remaining 49 choirs in the performance.
One of the alluring elements of the BE Festival is the links that it brokers between the visiting artists and their host city. The festival introduces seventy young theatre makers to Birmingham and it introduces a local audience to theatre from eleven countries across Europe. The audience and artists supper together, but perhaps the most powerful engagement comes through the hosting of artists by local volunteers.
BE is able to operate on a shoestring by making it easy for people to give each other gifts. The artists are not paid and have to finance their own travel but get free food and board, volunteers host the artists and in exchange meet fascinating new people and receive tickets to see all the shows on the day their guests perform. It is a positive change and your chance to help make a great thing happen. If you are interested in hosting an artist or two email Helena Scott-Hardy at Helena@befestival.org.
‘Safety In Numbers’ (2014) from sam chester on Vimeo.
This week we have had visitors. Two artists were over from Sydney on Churchill Fellowships. As well as seeing some of the cultural delights of this grand city and being introduced to a good range of arty folk they sat in with us on a bit of devising.
Craig and I were doing a bit of work plotting the next Provocation for the Warwick Commission and glad of some extra input. The fact that both Sam Chester and Sarah Vyne Vassallo are choreographers was useful as we’re trying to cook up a short gestural performance. Though their suggestions will carry an influence on our final piece, perhaps of more enduring value will be their contribution of a new term to our devising vocabulary. Where previously every speculative suggestion in the devising room had to be couched in ridiculous circumlocutory phrases such as “It probably isn’t this but I’m going to say it anyway…” or “It isn’t this but maybe it’s something like…” now the Aussies have donated the far more direct and evocative “This is probably a bomb…” we love it!
Hurray for the cultural exchange.
Today I was fortunate enough to be in on the premieres of Aakash Odedra‘s two new works Inked and Murmur. Aakash is my new dance hero. Both pieces are beautiful, he is an amazing dancer. I know so little about dance I will embarrass myself by trying to explain it any more, but if was beautiful, mysterious and hypnotic and I loved it. Inked choreographed by Damien Jalet was my favourite, for its purity and resonances as much as anything. Murmur was more ambitious, breathtaking in moments, less great in others. Throughout the only unquestionable truth is that he is an amazing dancer.
Well done International Dance Festival Birmingham for bringing these pieces to us and for enticing such an international crowd to the premiere.
Back in March Craig and I visited London to learn about the BBC Archives, today we started visiting the archive sites. We started in Perivale before moving down the road to Caversham. Continue reading “BBC Archive #2” »
My advice: always do a site visit if you can. Obviously site visits are extravagant, they cost you travel and they cost you time, they may even cost you accommodation and you may not be able to afford any of those things – in which case, don’t do a site visit – but if you can, do. Continue reading “Site Visits” »
Our agent in Canada has sent through this image of Barbara Kruger’s installation Belief & Doubt at the Hirshhorn museum in Washington DC. Whilst most there were admiring the visual impact and processing the work’s conceptual dimensions our man was in industrial espionage mode: “how on earth have they applied these vast rolls of vinyl so flawlessly?” (see third photograph down).
We thought our vinyl application was good but now the bar has been raised significantly.
Today BE Festival launched it’s 2014 programme in a small event at The REP which even my ineptitude failed to totally wreck. The big news is that the festival which was born @ A E Harris has moved to The REP and a clever twist they are solving the riddle of being at The REP and retaining the factory feel by eschewing the venue’s plush foyer, bar and restaurant and reversing the venue. Audiences will enter through the back door. They will socialize in the venue’s workshop, eat on the main stage, visit an exhibition in the paint shop and see shows in The DOOR and The STUDIO, but here they will still enter from back stage. Continue reading “BE Ready” »
On Wednesday we just missed out on breaking a world record with Washwood Heath Academy. We were attempting to topple 19,240 dominos. The current world record stands at approximately 4.5 million, so our world record would have survived briefly in 1976, but still it was an ambition and 19,240 is the number of soldiers believed to have been killed in the first day of fighting on the Somme. Continue reading “Dominos” »
