CALL-OUT FOR PARTICIPANTS
Thinking Dance
7-17 July 2014
Leeds Metropolitan University and Yorkshire Dance in association with the Northern School of
Contemporary Dance and Phoenix Dance Theatre are embarking upon an ambitious two-week
programme of dance research, culminating in a one-day symposium on Friday 18 July.
Between Monday 7 – Thursday 17 July we are looking for dancers for a variety of different
research projects. Please see the artist call-out below.
This is a unique opportunity to be part of a stimulating two-week programme which encourages new
discourse around current cultural trends, landscapes and practices in contemporary dance and
choreography.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rosanna Irvine: Perception Frames – call-out for dancers to work with Tendings, a piece
that has been written and never been performed
Monday 14 to Wednesday 16 July
9.30am – 5.00pm
Thursday 17 July
9:30am – 6.30pm
Tendings is part of Perception Frames: written pieces, a collection of choreographic scores for
practice and performance, which is published in book form. Perception Frames contains 22 short
practice scores and two longer scores: Availability (a relatively ‘open’ score) and Tendings (a highly
specific score). Tendings (for 5-15 performers) is an orchestration of the practice frames – a work
in potential. We will give it its ‘first life’ during the research week.
The score is improvisational in that it works with non-set movement, but it is highly specific in the
ways that it frames performers’ attention – to the extent that it operates as a kind of choreography.
It is a choreography that privileges decisions arising in the moment of action through each
performer’s heightened state of giving attention in perception.
If you have strong movement skills, are open to working with non-set movement and value ‘thinking’
as much as moving, then please get in touch. Dance and performance artists with an interest in
conceptually orientated, physical, and improvisational approaches to performance making may be
particularly interested.
The work will be shared with other Thinking Dance participants on the Thursday afternoon.
There is also the possibility that the work will be shared in the early evening on Thursday 17 July at
the reception event for the symposium Questioning the Contemporary in 21st Century
British Dance Practices.
For more information on Rosanna Irvine’s work see www.rosanna-irvine.co.uk
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Matthew Reason: Watching Dance across Disability – call out for disabled dance
practitioners
Thursday 10 July
9:30am – 5.00pm
Dance and disability is an exciting area of performance practice that invites questions about the
limits and potential of the human body and about the (in)visibility of disability in the arts. This pilot
project aims to explore how audiences watch dance by disabled performers by working with
practitioners and spectators to consider questions of authenticity, intention, empathy, embodiment
and evaluation. We are looking for disabled dance practitioners of different levels of experience to
work with us to explore audiences through a collaborative and reflective process.
Matthew Reason’s work engages with audiences, theatre for children, liveness, performance
documentation and reflective practice. He has authored two books. Documentation, Disappearance
and the Representation of Live Performance; The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children’s
Experience of Theatre. In 2012 he co-edited Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Contexts
(Intellect). This book was part of a three year AHRC funded project titled Watching Dance:
Kinesthetic Empathy that explored dance audiences through the use of neuroscience and qualitative
audience research and was a collaboration between the universities of Manchester, York St John,
Glasgow and Imperial College London.
He has also been published in journals such as New Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research,
Dance Research Journal, Studies in Theatre and Performance and elsewhere. He has received
research funding from the AHRC, Scottish Executive Education Department and the Society for
Theatre Research. Matthew Reason teaches on the BA Theatre programme and on MA programmes
in Creative Practice. He is currently supervising PhD students in the areas of site specific theatre,
theatre and mental health and storytelling.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To express your interest in participating in either project, please send a paragraph about your
background and experiences and why you are interested in the project to
artisticintern@yorkshiredance.com by Monday 16 June.
Full Programme
In addition to the research programme we have out together two weeks’ worth of classes – Gaga,
Release and Graham as well as lunchtime provocations, salons and a sharing of the research. The
programme is open to artists, scholars, practitioners and students to attend. To find out more visit
www.yorkshiredance.com