Text into movement (with library as setting / props)
Mobile Library text response
The premise is to express text through movement, with the setting being a pull along mobile library. The focus is text into expressive dance. Potentially to perform at Eisteddfod in Abergavenny July 2016 on stage with mobile library. So it involves lighting, sound (music to be developed potentially) and of course the dancers and chosen text. The local library are delighted on the prospect of taking the library to an audience elsewhere. This fits with my motivations of wanting to raise the profile of libraries.
A project I have been trying to get off the starting blocks for months now – it’s now or never! I have decided to focus on this alone for a couple of weeks because there is so much to get my head around. And it takes a while to get into the flow of it. I have (possibly a destructive tendency) to have too many things going at once. Like the way I read books – often 7 on the go at once. A personal thing of note on this subject is that I didn’t read voluntarily until age 12.
Finding suitable dance/performance company to work with is my current biggest challenge.
My options:
A performance company that works internationally, based in my town.
College dance/performance students.
Ballet company
Perform it myself with training (stage fright – don’t think I could!)
Find other performance / dance artist…
This project is captivating to me because it is bringing together aspects of my practice in a very new process to me. The subjects and core is mine, but the result is very different – a much faster tempo and potential for change and development. I am handling the textual and physical worlds (which I have separated to consider), libraries as a threatened cultural habitat and a container of texts. Using gesture in an ephemeral way in performance is new. I have had an interest in dance for a long time (ballet in particular), but it has always been as a hobby, with friends and as a celebration – like many people, but I have not brought it into my own practice in any way. Dance has that instant gratification of movement and spontaneity, which painting, drawing and making is slower to reveal.
This is much riskier than anything else I’ve shown. Previously, (apart from the Little Museum of Ludlow) I have known what my work looks like before showing it at an exhibition.
Currently research areas :
Library:
Libraries as places of shared knowledge.
Research reasons for people visiting libraries (find existing research in the form of stats)
Articles on why people love libraries
Performances in libraries.
Text:
Text in physical form
Text into 4 dimensions
Text into gesture in dance.
Reading:
Transformational process of reading…
Reading print v’s digital (surveys looking at readers preferences)
Artists:
Artists changing words into visual form.
Artists who work with library theme.
Other artists working with library themes
A library as a medium
I am currently reading ‘Border Country’ by Raymond Williams as the Eisteddfod are promoting it and I may work with it for the performance and ‘Performance Art – from futurism to the present’ by RoseLee Goldberg (Thames and Hudson).
