Igor & Moreno, Idiot-Syncrasy at Yorkshire Dance, 2013 © Sara Teresa

www.yorkshiredance.com

Yorkshire Dance’s 8-month project

supporting six artists with an interest

in developing their dramaturgical practice

Jamaal Burkmar

Gavin Coward

Non-Applicables (Sian Myers & Fenella Ryan)

Carlos Pons Guerra

Grace Surman

Sophie Unwin

Jamaal Burkmar

The idea that I will work

on is two-fold. It is a

continuation of my piece

Ocean; I want to continue

to develop the spirit and energy that was

involved. The overall theme and drive from

that piece is important and I don’t want to

lose that. I want to incorporate this theme

with a new idea involving the shapes that

orchestra conductors make, circus

ringleaders and captains on the field of

play. I want the dancers to act as these

types of characters, conducting and

orchestrating the piece as it moves on.

I have begun to craft movement and

construct geometric pathways, and

organised a 3-week research period in

which I developed the idea and structured

sections in order to come back and

develop a piece.

Dramaturgy became important to me

when I saw Fabulous Beast’s Rite of

Spring / Petrushka. The imagery and the

story enthralled me, and I aim eventually

to achieve something similar.

Gavin Coward

A Symphony Of Fear

“a life lived in fear is a life

half lived” Spanish proverb

The idea is simply about

fears. Personal, political, emotional; fears

we all experience as human beings living in

this world. Fears of love, fears of getting

old, fears of the unknown, fears of who we

are, fears of success, of failures, of death, of

the past, the present and the future. I want

to create a solo performance that is like a

mini-movie, a series of moving images and

story boards.

Yorkshire Dance has chosen

six artists to take part in Sketch,

an 8-month development

opportunity for dance makers

with an interest in developing

their dramaturgical practice.

Sketch will enable artists to research and

develop a new dance idea with a focus on

dramaturgical practice.

They will be supported by international

dramaturg Peggy Olislaegers, with

support through the reflective process

from strategic planning facilitator and

producer Richard Sobey. The project

will culminate in early February 2015.

Sketch will support these artists with:

• Intensive workshops with international

dramaturg (Oct 2014 & Feb 2015)

• Minimum of two weeks of studio space

at Yorkshire Dance for research and

development

• Peer to peer learning and feedback

• A fee to cover costs of both time in the

studio and of attending the workshops

• Public sharing or performance of

research as part of Friday Firsts

The selection of the six was undertaken

by a panel including expertise external to

Yorkshire Dance and we are delighted to

be working with artists new to us as well

as continuing to support some of those

we have already worked with.

www.yorkshiredance.com/sketch

I want it to have a strange, beautiful,

melancholy, cartoon-like animation quality.

A silent movie feel, with raw physicality,

gestures and mime. I would like it to

incorporate lots of words, that appear on

signs throughout the piece (reminiscent of

the 1965 Bob Dylan video Subterranean

Homesick Blues). The words appear on

me, on my T-shirt, books and props. I will

use objects that relate to various fears,

acting as symbolic metaphors. All objects,

props and costumes are locked away in

something, some sort of box, trunk, case?

I reveal them throughout the piece.

I will be like a old-fashioned traveler,

slightly dishevelled, slightly unhinged,

an old-school entertainer.

Non-Applicables

(Sian Myers

& Fenella Ryan)

We will develop a

performative, interactive

supper club, riffing on the theme of ‘the

perfect dinner party’.

Our idea is to create a live set which leads

the audience through a series of domestic

spaces. With the Non Applicables adopting

the role of hostesses, each event explores

the expectations and etiquette of a dinner

party through a choreographed,

participatory eating performance.

We have researched many guides on how

to be a ‘perfect’ host and to throw a

successful dinner party, from past and

modern-day resources. We want to turn

this on its head and alter the audience’s

experience of this ‘perfect’ dining context

through the use of text, body language and

movement. This essentially will be a

performance on ‘how not to throw a

perfect dinner party’.

For the final performance we intend to

collaborate with East-London supper club

duo Tuck to create a unique dining

experience integrated with the live

performance.

Carlos Pons Guerra

I will research sexual

cruising – a practice that

lends itself to performance

and opens an array of

avenues for investigation – its history, its

psychology, its excitement, the tragedy, its

consequences.

What are the characters adopted by the

men who practise cruising? What are their

stories? What are its visual / physical codes

of communication? What would happen if

it were women who were cruising, and

why isn’t it popular amongst them? How

can the audience feel a sense of anonymity

when engaged in a form of intimate

performance? How can the spectator be

let in on the psychology or narrative of

the performer’s character, through dance?

The research will be influenced by the

work of erotic cartoonist Tom of Finland,

and his historical depictions of the men

who practised cruising.

Framing the work will be my continuous

fascination towards romanticism, and in

particular, the ballet Giselle. I would like to

relate the notion of lost women, the Wili –

condemned to ghostly eternity by the

betrayal of their male lovers – to the many

men who fell prey to the darker and tragic

consequences of cruising and the gay

male image.

www.yorkshiredance.com

Sophie Unwin

Through the Juncture

Fellows commission my

first solo endeavour, The

Chronicles of Joy, was

born. I had already started to research the

theory of happiness, inspired by Bertrand

Russell’s The Conquest Of Happiness,

Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy

When You Could Be Normal, and

questions I was asking myself about my

own pursuit of ‘happiness’. The

Chronicles of Joy is a one woman show,

a performance lecture about happiness

from the perspective of Joy, a character

whose straight-talking, candid and frantic

personality is still under development.

I want to focus my efforts on both the

research of, and physical element of, the

solo, interrogating the movement language

I have already started working with.

Outside the studio I will conduct

interviews and read about happiness in

relation to philosophy, psychology and

religion.

After ‘scratching’ the work earlier this

year, I am eager to dissect and deepen the

existing material; I feel I have a deeper

understanding of the work and its content,

enabling me to return to it with a fresh

approach to it and its development.

I am interested in the dramaturg’s role, and

the invaluable experience that working

with an artistic eye can offer an early-

career artist.

Grace Surman

I was recently awarded an

artist’s residency with

Bodysurf Scotland to work

with an ecologist, to

explore an exchange that may lead to the

science and the art moving towards a

symbiotic relationship.

I start from the very basic question: How

might I explore some aspects of ecology

and share its significance with a wider

audience? The desire to understand these

‘primitive’ needs from within my arts

practice have a deep interest for me, and

this opportunity is the perfect opening of

that investigation.

I would like to unpick the language that

surrounds science, but of course not the

ideas themselves:

Inter-species collaboration / dialogue =

putting my pet in the show

Generational interconnectivity = putting

my baby in the show

Process = this is taking a really long time

I’m interested in considering, and

contesting, the artist’s place as translator

in the context of environmental and

ecological; to share challenging scientific

ideas and models, to see them in ways that

are thought-provoking, entertaining and

enlightening – and reviewing how

sentimentality is ingrained in this subject

matter.