Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
University of Chichester
Bicycle Ballet portfolio including mass touring show and Everyday Hero
Bicycle Ballet Portfolio
These 2 inter-related projects extend the original Bicycle Ballet (2006) large-scale outdoor performance research, into community and integrated dance practices whilst considering choreographic and performance processes as agent to effect perceptions of the hierarchical relationship between: author, performer and audience; untrained or performers with disabilities and trained dancers; the individual, the mass and the social corpus, in public space.
1. The Mass touring show (2010-12) explores the adaptation of a score into a participatory, project, for 8 communities and with 200 participants.
The research aims include
1. How is a “vernacular” interpretation of a pre-established score realised through a process of re-creation across diverse communities.
2. What role does individual interpretation and differentiation play when working with a set score towards performance?
The research resulted in choreographic variations that reflected the concerns of the participants and left a legacy of continuing participation among the groups. Mass Touring Show formed part of the National Cultural Olympiad in Manchester, Skegness, Preston, Enfield, Hadleigh , Hastings , UK; Roubaix, France.
2. Everyday Hero (2013) extends imagery of the bicycle as (Modernist) icon generated in Bicycle Ballet, 2006, into a production for a cast and audiences with visual impairment. The research, establishes “outsider” collaborative practices for non-theatre based choreography and shares research concerns 1 and 2 above. In addition, the research also pursued;
• a theatrical form uniting audio description and choreographic languages into a coherent aesthetic.
• a narrative form that is accessible to audiences with visual impairment and to those without
• accessible strategies and devices for choreography and performance for performers with visual impairments.
• autonomous and authentic representations of dancing bodies with disability.
The project is introduced by a touch tour and has been performed at disabled arts and international street art, festivals (see portfolio for full list).
