This collection gathers the talks and videos that were part of the event Memory at work: remembering Rosemary Butcher in the present tense. Held in December, 2016 at Siobhan Davies Studios, this event facilitated a shared space for remembering Rosemary and her work and featured a number of leading figures in British dance. Tracing the legacies of a key British choreographer of the 20th and 21st centuries, the material features a roundtable with artists who collaborated with Rosemary including Jonathan Burrows, Charlie Morrissey, Sue MacLennan and Rahel Vonmoos, as well as contributions from her collaborators Stefanie Sachsenmaier, Susan Melrose, and Ramsay Burt, and a film for Rosemary by Gaby Agis and Silvy Panet-Raymond. The day was organised by Kirsty Alexander, Lauren Potter and Stefanie Sachsenmaier.
Rosemary Butcher was a key figure in British dance. Profoundly influenced by her time in New York from 1970-72 where she encountered the work of The Judson Group at its height, she subsequently introduced those ideas to Britain at her 1976 ground breaking concert in London’s Serpentine Gallery. Since then, Butcher has developed her own movement language and choreographic structure. By her determination to remain an independent artist, her use of cross arts collaboration in music, visual arts, film and architecture within the choreographic process and her frequent choice of non-theatrical spaces to present her work, she has forged her own place within the European contemporary dance scene. Unlike many of her British contemporaries who see their work as Dance-Theatre, Butcher’s influence has followed the ideas and concepts of the visual arts, particularly in painting and sculpture, and has engaged with the developing philosophies within those movements.
Over four decades, leading up to her death in July 2016, British choreographer Rosemary Butcher made radical and innovative works that crossed the disciplines of choreography and visual arts. After returning to the UK from New York in the 1970s, Butcher often explored non-theatrical spaces – galleries, architectural and open sites – for presenting her works, and worked with designers, film makers and dancers, making key choreographic film works including Vanishing Point and SCAN. She staged Women and Memory in 2005 at Tate Modern, signalling the interface she had forged between visual arts and dance. left detailed and complex archives, some of which remain to be digitised and made publicly accessible.
Biography from https://rosemarybutcher.com/.
