Fran Isherwood
The point of convergence between words and movement was the subject of my collaboration with Tempered Body Dance Company on December 11th 2009. This experimental event, the first of its kind for me, but, judging by the feedback it received, not the last, was held at Chisenhale Dance Space, an important hub supporting the development of practicing dance artists, where Tempered
Steve and Selina McGregor
Body is based. A movement improvisation workshop with Ming Hei (Ronny) Wong had impressive results: a writhing mass of bodies, rolling around each other, using one another for support in movement, crawling on the floor in twos and threes; twenty-five dancers in all. Not something one sees every day. Post lunch, it was my turn to lead a workshop, in signification. Among the many topics crammed into an hour and a half were multiplicities of meaning, the Saussure matrix and the effects of personal experience on a text, all via Magritte and Roland Barthes. All this might sound a bit lofty, but we
Ticket Desk Attendant Reading Depraved Book
approached it in what I hope was a grounded way and besides opening up new avenues of approach for the dance/text transaction, we also had a lot of laughs. The dancers were an insightful bunch and their mix of ethnicities also brought to the fore the issue of different forms of alphabet as well as vocabulary. We got into the differences between Chinese and Korean ideograms, as well as letters as depiction. Choreographer Maddy Wynne-Jones explored with the dancers the ways in which words, both spoken and written, may be represented physically, and how a mutually supportive collaboration can be found between these two disciplines.
Steve McGregor
The performance that followed the workshop saw novelist and former army captain Steve McGregor read from his novel about a G.I. in Iraq whilst the dancers gave a physical interpretation of his tale. The effect was resonant and images from it (I’ve included one on this post) create a thought-provoking vignette. Fran Isherwood’s performed poetry, by contrast, had a lightness of touch and a knowing sense of humour to it, and the dancers’ behaviour changed accordingly. We were also treated to several prepared pieces, including a solo by Ming Hei Wong, in complete silence – an absence of words – that I found very striking. With the exception of a display of self-importance from one audience member, response to this improvised performance was warm. It was generally agreed at the bar afterwards that the difference between a text and a performed text – something that we’d discussed at length throughout the day – was perhaps a distinction that the audience may not readily recognise, nor perhaps should not be obliged to accommodate.
A number of people were eager to sign up for the next edition of this workshop, by dint of which it seems we may be speaking Body Language again.
Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago at 8:41 PM.
Wednesday Group
After last night’s Wednesday Critique Group, we critiquers made our way to Tayyabs in Whitechapel, for curry. The restaurant was bursting at the seams and put me in mind of a Mad Hatter’s tea party for bankers, top-hats and tea-pots exchanged for sharp suits and poppadums. The food was excellent, especially the curried pumpkin, which I’d never tried before but which alone warranted a return visit.
James and Sarah
It has been a great pleasure to work with the many writers who have
Steve's dangerously angled hat
attended the Wednesday group over the past year. In 2009 the group has grown from an offshoot of another group into something fully fledged, with its own unique identity and buzz. I’m very much looking forward to the launch of the Wednesday anthology in January next year and to the proposed writer’s retreat in the spring. Here’s to many fruitful projects and happy writings in 2010 and beyond.
Posted 9 months ago at 11:05 AM.
Nathan Penlington
Our technical challenge on this week’s show was to get a great sound from drums in a very small studio. We were riding the faders as the drums sang. Malik Tebrizli really knows how to play: using the various parts of his hands to coax a beautiful range of sounds from his drum, he drifted into that other place musicians go when they’re caught up in their music. It’s easy to see what Nihat Tsolak meant when he talked about the almost spiritual aspect of percussion. His words linked closely with those of choreographer Maddy Wynne-Jones, who several weeks ago described the natural movement every one of us has in our body. For Nihat, and I think for Malik too, that movement is a rhythm, with which they connect when they drum.
Maddy and Steve
The quantity and scale of Rosie Cooper’s projects interested me very much. She talks about her work with great earnestness and thoroughness. There is no gimmickry in what she does. I loved that she’d turned the Savoy café into a place where art could be ordered from the menu; the idea sitting in a retro joint watching men in brown coats wheel in a Brancusi is exactly my idea of a good time. At the end of Rosie’s interview I went to play one of the station idents – jingles, if you prefer – and instead the studio was filled with the voice of Peter Griffin from Family Guy talking to Meg about something completely indecent. Rosie looked to me for explanation, for which I had none. Thank God for post-production: now no-one will ever know it happened. I certainly won’t mention it.
Incidentally, I meant to ask Rosie why she’d brought a five-metre, four-socket extension cable with her to the show. It seemed a little odd, given that she had nothing to plug in, and reminded me of a man I met, once, at the top of the Empire State Building, who had a goldfish in a bag. No funfair or pet store anywhere close. “He likes to get out and about,” the man told me. My best guess, given all Rosie’s got going on, is that recording the interview was a momentary diversion from a much bigger mission, one requiring power – entirely reasonable. If she’d had a goldfish instead, I’d have started to question myself.
Malik, Rosie, Nihat
Nathan Penlington sounded to me like a good, fresh voice in poetry; not over-stylised as some younger poets can be. He has an engaging, almost confessional quality, both in subject and delivery, and I liked the inventiveness of his experiments on street lighting, as well as the poignancy of that poem’s conclusion. Following Nathan, Steve McGregor was on fine, self-assured form. His war anecdotes – including the story of the time he believed he was about to die at the hands of a suicide bomber – had me so gripped that we almost failed to get around to mentioning his writing at all. A strong guest to round off the show. Now we get to find out whether that work on the faders did the trick.
Posted 1 year ago at 8:22 PM.
And so today was the second recording of my new radio show. It went off well – I was delighted to invite onto the show Steve McGregor to talk about his time as a GI in Iraq and the novels and short stories inspired thereby. Steve’s a great talker, and puts his art across in an articulate, easy manner. He was exactly the right sort of guest for this stage in the show’s infancy – very little prompting was required to illicit an insightful interview. Singer/songwriter The River Ouse performed one of his songs live, and we broadcast a short story for the first time – one of mine – to see how it sounded. It was read by Polly Rodgers, who also guested. The prose held its own.
In the green room Steve was the life and soul of the party, enjoying centre stage and shaking hands in the way that starts with one clap between the shakees. What he hadn’t mentioned on air – because we didn’t have the time – was one of his principal influences: The Gospel of Mark, a book he rates as highly as anything by Hemingway or his hero, Fitzgerald. He also regretted that he hadn’t had time to big up the Brick Lane critique group, the influence of which he said had exerted a powerful, positive influence on his work. I have embarked on a collaborative project with McGregor and several other writers who form the kernel of the Brick Lane group. Visit Steve’s blog here.
steve mcgregor
Next week’s guests are, we hope, pinned down. Gurpreet Singh is an up-and-coming actor; Helen Bond is a memoirist and poet; and at this stage, next week’s third guest will be a something of a surprise even to the production team.
Listen to this edition of The Arts Show
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 3:43 PM.
