Output details

Between - dance work

As a collaborative partnership Caroline Broadhead (artist) and I (choreographer) were interested to test the edges between intimate dialogues, to include touch, and the spectacular image.

This work follows a number of installation works made since 2004, all of which have been intimate in scale, working with a refined and reduced language. Between calls for a fresh appreciation of dance as a sensorial visual space that implicates the viewer, testing the use of gesture within a shared space and drawing attention to the visual crafting. Questions of moral action, privacy and responsibility become active and formative elements within the work. The work therefore asserts new knowledge in dance production, and contributes to the emerging genre of dance installation.

The making of the work drew on many sources including photographer Rut Blees Luxumburg, and video artist Tacita Dean. The shared focus of these artists is how to draw the viewers' attention to what appears to be an empty space, or image, and the importance of lingering experiences of time. As such the research centred on how to work with material bareness and the drawing of attention. Each moment was suggested as a transformation that resisted showing itself, and this resistance created a heightened atmosphere of expectation. This was set against the use of precious yet lightweight materials such as gold leaf on the skin to emphasise the visceral nature of potential, and finally actual contact between performer and viewer. My ambition was for the experience of heat between one person and another, and a perceived yearning for direct and intimate contact, to be elements of the work.

Between was produced by Trinity Laban and funded by Arts Council England and Central St Martin's School of Art.