The two artists create an exchange of images, of place and of bodies. Without words, images shift from corners of hallways, to walking in the streets of London and Finland, to skies, to marks in snow echoing patterns in tree branches. The images seem to respond to each other in the moment, perhaps drawing from the context of the longer relationship and collaboration between the artists.
This conversation was produced as part of What Now 2013, in partnership with Siobhan Davies Studios and Artsadmin, supported by Arts Council England. The festival was curated by Frank Bock with assistant curator Luke Pell, with the intention to ‘draw attention to how bodies already exist in collective relationships…there is critical agency in the way that we direct ‘togetherness’ in the current time.’
Gaby Agis is one of the pioneers of collaborative performance in Britain, working with leading artists of her generation from other disciplines in galleries, museums and theatres. She founded Gaby Agis & Company in 1985 and the artists she has worked with are Turner Prize nominee Isaac Julien, sculptors Kate Blacker and Cornelia Parker, composers David Sylvian and Gavin Bryars, architects Muf, and the director Atom Eyogan.
For nearly twenty years Gaby has taught both Introductory and Ongoing SRT worldwide. Gaby enjoys teaching a wide range of students from long-term professional dancers to those new to dance. As well as teaching widely in dance institutions, Gaby has collaborated with students of architecture, theatre and the visual arts, and continues to be inspired by the possibilities that SRT brings to different communities. In 2010-11 Gaby was a faculty member on the certification programmes of SRT teacher trainings at both the Introductory and Ongoing levels. As a choreographer and dancer she finds SRT intrinsic to her creative process. Over the past thirty years she has created dance in many different environments from hospitals to opera houses to train stations to galleries.
Titta Court is based in North Finland by the Bothnian Bay in Tornio. She works very actively as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. She has worked as a professional dance artist since year 1991 after graduating from Theatre Academy Dance Department, Helsinki.
Many of her works are instantly composed in the moment of performing and they are very much inspired by the space and situation they are performed in. She has done many performances outside traditional performance spaces like on streets, parks, different public spaces, factories, private homes and old people’s houses. She has performed in many festivals, for instance Dance Festival Barents in Hammerfest, Body Navigation in St.Petersburg, Summer Dancing in Coventry, Kuopio Tanssii ja Soi in Kuopio, Lonely In The Rain in Joensuu and Fullmoon Festival in Pyhäjärvi. She is known from her original dance works like solo production called Nylon made and performed in Nanso Group’s stocking factory in Tornio and Elli- The Cross Art Documentary in what she danced with disabled woman Elli Närhi. In 2011 she was certified as a teacher in Skinner Releasing Technique.
Adapted from bios submitted in 2013.
