This midsummer we are delighted to be hosting a second Fête event, following on from our Park Fête back in 2021. On that hot day (see pic!) we were able to gather outdoors after a long period of lockdown for a gentle event of performances, picnicking and drinking.
This year’s event, Fête de la Fête, takes place both indoors and out. It begins with a sharing at Siobhan Davies Studios by Candoco Dance Company, of the performance Last Shelter created for and with them by New York choreographer Jeanine Durning. Then there is a talk and Q&A offering insights into how this work was made, before we head out to the nearby park for further events.
Outdoor events include a participatory Resting Score by Linzy Na Nakorn and Raquel Meseguer Zafe, and a sharing of practice by Kat Hawkins.
Please bring a picnic if you would like to, and we’ll provide some drinks!
Fête de la Fête is part of dance it, dance it, ID’s year-long programme conceived by Heni Hale and Nikki Tomlinson which aims to support disabled, neurodivergent and d/Deaf artists as leaders. Partner organisations on different strands of the programme include Candoco Dance Company, Sadler’s Wells and Dance Umbrella. This programme is supported through public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Last Shelter by Jeanine Durning is a performance experiment exploring the enduring human desire to build something together.
Working with precise materials within variable scores, Last Shelter unfolds uniquely for each performance, ever shifting, teetering at the edge of what could be, somewhere between individual agency and collective will. With rigour and care, the dancers surrender to and grapple with time, place and fate, finding temporary balance in provisional structures and makeshift meanings.
Jeanine began her research with Candoco in much the same way she has begun most projects in the last decade, with a practice called nonstopping. At its core, nonstopping is a process of undoing through, paradoxically, nonstop doing. It works with uncensoring movement and speech as acts of freedom and imperative force and change.
Candoco is a world-leading professional dance company. Bridging the mainstream and the experimental, our bold approach and powerful collaborations create distinctive performances and far-reaching learning experiences. We celebrate different ways of seeing, of being and of making art, putting us at the forefront of conversation around dance and disability and continually expanding perceptions of #whatdancecanbe.
After the studio-based sharing of Last Shelter, there will be a talk and Q&A session where audiences can hear about how the work was created. Audiences will meet the dancers and Candoco’s Artistic Director, Charlotte Darbyshire and discover the choreographic approach, collaborative dynamics, and personal narratives that have shaped this captivating piece.
Linzy Na Nakorn and Raquel Meseguer Zafe’s Resting Score grew out of their practice of resting in public spaces, their mutual interest in collective acts of rest and in how to be in relationship with the built environment, in ways that spread the weight. They are also interested in Alison Kafer’s assertion of “disability as a site for imagining different futures” and Tricia Hersey’s “dream lessons”: active daydreaming to expand perceptions on what is, to what could be. The Resting Score invites you to participate or witness unfolding duets that use the body as resting architecture in soft and mutually easeful ways, and whisper the futures we want to call in.
Raquel’s work straddles theatre, dance, installation, performative conversations and photo-documentary. She identifies as dis-abled, and works with rest and horizontality as creative impulses. Raquel founded Unchartered Collective in 2016 to create theatrical encounters that explore the lived experience of an invisible disability like chronic pain. Her work is supported by MAYK, Unlimited and Pervasive Media Studios.
Linzy is a dancer, theatre maker, facilitator and community organiser. Working collaboratively across mediums, Linzy’s work focuses on exploring new ways of being, expanding conversations on housing, disability, outdoor engagement and collectivity. Since 2020, she has been a practitioner for Frantic Assembly, facilitating nationally and internationally. She has had a long standing relationship with multi-sensory immersive performance company Bittersuite and is a member of Bristol based artists collective INTERVAL.
Linzy and Raquel spent some time together in 2022 supported by Independent Dance’s FLOURISH programme: a space for reciprocal mentorship. Exploring their shared intersecting identities of being dual heritage and disabled, The Resting Score has come out of shared creative advocacy for a more restful world.
Kat Hawkins will be offering time-based practices that work with the concept of crip time within capitalist structures. Working with the materiality and movements offered through their assistive devices, re-sculptured medical equipment, and the surroundings of the orchard we will be located in, they will draw trajectories and temporalities that offer intrigue and desire to look, think about looking, choose not to look, and maybe look once more.
Kat Hawkins is a feminist, queer, crip artist working with movement, language, time and eroticism. They are a PhD researcher at C-DaRE partnered with Candoco Dance Company.
