SCREENDANCE || 11 minutes

The strange days of 2020 have put many of us close to extreme endings and binary feelings. We connect to our past as a source of comfort, resource, nostalgia and melancholy. We connect to the future as a place of hope, new beginnings, incertitude and fear. Distance Measures became a place to explore and drift away. So far, so close. So far, there were only a few places we could venture to dance and capture video, very close to home.

I remember, as a child, skimming the cream off the surface of the milk, just collected from the farm. We did just that with these videos sketches - when weeks of confinement came as the first pause in more than a decade creating dance projects. We skimmed elements that came to the surface. Quickly, intuitively, in that semi-improvised way that we like. Using obvious elements of costumes and props from recent works (Merlin, Revolver,... ). Using elements of movement, with a refreshed sense of what they meant. Now reframed (literally), re-contextualised, sometimes clarified with a new sense of relativity, emergency and simplicity.

This is not so much about quality and crafting. It is more about where we have been, where we are now, and - suspended in time as if in a spider web - where we will go next, with a certain dose of impatience, irony, curiosity and fear.

 

The creation and performance of this work is a commission by Liz Roche Company
for the Symposium Modes of Capture in the context of Dublin Dance Festival 2020. Produced by Tipperary Dance Platform with funding from the Arts Council Dance Artists in Residency scheme.