Modern Art Oxford – Intonation

I went to Oxford with David to attend the Modern Art of Oxford Exhibition. My task was to create movement and to describe words written by Susan Norwood (Director of Modern Art at the Exhibition) to represent what these words meant, and to make up solo dances to describe the images in which these words appeared to me.

Danny Smith was one of the artists and we used some of his work to make movement patterns from his drawings. We also worked with Frances who is from Anjali, and we created a duet with her based on some of Susan’s words. Also, Ruth from Anjali worked with Hayley of Beserk Dance Group to create dance movements from sculptures and words.

Some of the images that we looked at were of tall sculptures with big or small faces. This is what we did at the exhibition of modern arts. One problem was when I tried to link duets to make it travel from one place to another, they did not really transfer through properly. Susan planned it through with the rest of us choreographers  except that it didn’t always go according to what she planned. We didn’t really achieve what I set out to do in every case. In one case when we were all standing beside different sculptures, I wanted to reposition the solos to create a pathway from one place to another so that I could link the sculptures with my dance, but it was not always successful.

I really enjoyed the week working in Oxford with other people and it was a successful week overall. I enjoyed creating the solos that we did in between each of the sculptures. And it was great working with Fran on the duets that we did together. I did kind of suggest ideas of what Susan planned but she did ignore some of my plans of creating work around sculptures. What did work was when we were in a room with small sculptures and I was able to create this sense of movement between rooms. Susan was a very nice lady and I enjoyed working with her. I did say that I enjoyed the working process around the modern arts museum it was great fun.

The best thing for me was that I learned some new skills working in a different environment, and David was great. He helped me to write up my notes on what we did and to express my thoughts on each stage of the work. David drew some sketches of what we did and we noted the movements which the sculptures inspired in our thoughts. It is quite difficult to express and link some of the sculptures in movement because sculptures are still and dance is movement, but we tried to do so.