This year, I was awarded 10 days of time and space at Grand Studio Brussels. I brought with me ideas from a work in progress titled ‘The Gate House’.
Before heading to Belgium to spend 10 days solo, I was lucky to have 6 dancers join me in Belfast for a short research period. I was interested in lineage and the development of Belfast as a city; I have been working with real life events form my grandfather and father’s lives, and compared them to my own up bringing. This was an attempt to create a movement language that could explore masculinity.
As a city, Belfast has changed a lot over the past 3 generations and so has the people who live here. This city has a very unique POV and energy that I have been attempting to explore further. This energy currently has been surfacing as movement dialogue discussing the evolution of toxic masculinity and the way it presented itself in society through the past 3 generations.
These 10 days alone, creating new material, and exploring material created from the last research period, has allowed me to focus on my intuition and preferences as a choreographer. The piece has developed a lot and I hope to continue on that trajectory. The piece is still changing and I am enjoying finding out where it’s going. What started off as real life stories has already shifted into something less narrative driven. I still see this work being somewhat described as physical theatre and I hope to see it premier sometime in 2024.
Aside from working on this new piece, this residency also allowed for valuable time looking at me and my practice. The first time I took a solo residency, I brought with me a film maker and so this time I wanted to prove I can truly spend this time alone. My biggest takeaway is that somedays I feel more physical than I do creative or clever; I took these days objectively and allowed myself to be physical. I took off the choreographer hat and just focused on moving. Then, on the ladder, more clever days, I focused on the world I was exploring, and in what way I wanted the audience to view the dialogue that I am presenting.
I hope the next opportunity will arise, allowing the work to enter the next stage of creation and when it does, thanks to this residency, I look forward to brining the findings and experiments of this residency with me.
Michael McEvoy.
