LIFE CLASS – PROJECT
Life Class draws upon the Tea Dance to celebrate our greatest, most memorable, most requested role – ourselves, and asks how we ended up playing the part … in this scene … with these lines … and wonders – who’s this playing opposite? Conceived and first performed before the pandemic as a theatre piece, co-created with senior social dancers, the project responded to the challenges of making live performance during Covid by working across media and art-forms, to produce not only community-based live events, but also a video installation and a spoken work.
We are currently developing Life Class for Blackpool. Please do get in touch if you would like further details.
LIFE CLASS – PERFORMANCE
Beginning with the most simple of set-ups, two performers on stage facing one another in front of an audience, Life Class ends with the most complex expression one person will ever make to another – I love you. Through poetic text and detailed choreography, this performance explores how our response to the call of the other determines who we are: how it makes us us, and ends with a celebratory dance involving all the audience.
YOU ARE PRESENT TO ME NOW (A DIPTYCH) – VIDEO INSTALLATION
This digital film takes original text from the performance and reworks it to present a stand-alone artwork, that continues the face-to-face roots of the original, now presented on two screens. It was first exhibited as part of Bodies in Flight’s Flesh & Text, PR1 Gallery (Preston, March 2022); then at Leeds Arts University (June 2022).
LIFE CLASS, A DIALOGUE – SPOKEN WORK
Through the intimacy of this binaural recording, the listener finds themselves inbetween two lovers whose relationship has spanned several decades and is now ending in distrust, recrimination and regret. Amongst this bitterness, the lovers imagine a future when death will part them, and to their own surprise, unexpectedly return to the excitement of that encounter across the dance floor all those years ago when their eyes met for the very first time.
PLEASE NOTE: this spoken work is recorded in binaural stereo. To experience the full soundscape, listen on headphones and turn off auto-captioning.