The moon, the largest and brightest object in the night sky, has long inspired curiosity and wonder. It appears at night, the time of sleep and dreaming that sometimes seems to approach the borders of death and the afterlife. Radiating an air of mystery and magic, the moon is also associated with love and often serves as a symbol of unattainable beauty.
http://www.enotes.com/myths-legends/moon
The project will be created in real-time and stop-frame-animation format, filmed on location at night around the time of the full moon at the end of July / start of August (again dates tbc). It is my plan to make this something we can perform on site so that it may be filmed, yet fully adaptable for the stage for a performance in the Autumn.
Unfortunately due to the nature of filming outdoors and having no money for the project we have had to postpone production until this time next year, when hopefully we will have proper funding in place so that all participants can be paid and work intensively for six weeks (and with any luck the weather will hold out!). The stage adaptation will also be a site specific project held as a guided performance around the forest where filming will take place. We will keep you posted!
European House of Arts Culture Trail
FreeSpirit Dance Company has recently become happily associated with an Arts and Culture collective; the European House of Arts. European House of Arts (EHOA) supports cultural and artistic exchange between all countries by organising encounters with artists of different disciplines. The primary interest is the field of arts and culture on local, regional levels, and then connecting this to the wider national and international scene. European House of Arts believes in the methods of inter-disciplinary projects and personal encounters between the diverse ethnicities. In the art world, cultural diverstity becomes a ball of strength and a pointer towards a more tolerant future, and this reveals a wider view of how society can change. By bringing these values into the homes of ordinary people through art festivals, the smallest cells of society become the leaders of social innovation, shifting values to a higher level of freedom and peace.
The Founder Bob Bales, with Scottish and Irish roots, has lived in Germany, France, Poland, Austria and Romania and, as a musician has played in all European countries and many other places in the World. Bob’s musical adventures have taken him on stage with the best of the folk scene worldwide. As a composer his abilities can be heard in different shows like Magic of the Dance and as a performer he can be seen as an artist with his solo programme and also in different formations. It is his belief that "...art must be without restraint to ensure our future, both in the education of our children as well as in the structuring of a society we feel free to move in."
See http://www.europeanhouseofarts.org/ for a deeper understanding of the company...
On the 18th and 19th of June 2010 EHOA is staging the final festival of the 2010 Culture Trail across Europe at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre on the University campus. FSDC will be performing along side the Libby Battaglia School of Performing Arts, Fiesta Flamenco, and the Lincoln Gymnastics Club. Nikki is now the Dance Co-ordinator for the EHOA collective and aims to take the company to different festivals on next years EHOA culture trail! Come and join in and see the musicians and artists as well the dancing!
EHOA Afterthoughts...
The festival was a success, although we did not get as many people through the site as we had hoped, everyone involved had a brilliant time! The dancers from the Dance Box loved every minute of performing on the high street and outside of the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. Hopefully, next year, now that people know what the festival is all about it will be even more epic than this year. I am hoping to have a full day dedicated to dance at next year’s festival, so stay tuned for booking information if you wish to get involved!
Premier production for FSDC, performed at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre 25th March 2010.
Fade to Black is a physical study on the Dancing Epidemic of 1518. This incredible and confusing plague hit sixteenth century Strasbourg after years of religious persecution, famine, pestilence, war and a rapidly rising death toll... The citizens of Strasbourg broke out into frenzied dancing after the stress and exhaustion of their social situation became too much to bear. No-one knew why it happened the way it did, but modern medicine suggests Mass Motor Hysteria, which is a mental affliction that is channelled through the body with symptoms such as shaking, spasms, seizures and a total loss of a grip on reality. Research on the Dancing Epidemic shows that those who were caught up in the psychosis exhibited these symptoms and leaped and hopped to great heights. They danced for days on end, with little or no rest, no regard for sustenance and no reaction to the world around them. They were lost inside their own apocalypse, and most died from the extreme fatigue, those who survived rarely completely recovered. Fade To Black deals with the extreme exhaustion and has found inspiration from accounts written at the time of the physical reaction to the psychosis known as Choreomania (dance-mania). As disturbing as the affliction itself, Fade To Black is an epic journey driving through physical limitations in order to demonstrate how far the human body could be pushed.
In Natasha's biography she speaks of two productions, 'Fade To Black' being the premier production of FSDC. The first was when the company was called the Lincoln Contemporary Ballet Company and I choreographed a short work called 'Breathe' - an examination of a young woman caught up in a violent relationship with no hope of escape; until she finds solice in a friend whom turns out to be her saviour. 'Breathe' aimed to discover the emotions involved in being terrified of the person you rely on the most, the intense physical attraction of someone you feel you cant have, and then the release when you finally give in to happiness and break away from the familar pain into a new positive existence. Performed at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre May 2009. Cast: Adam Slepowronski, Phelix Cullen, Holly Arnold, Natasha Goldstein, Sarah Vaughan-Jones, Scarlett O'Connor, Natalie Reed, and Nikki Mclusky
