Spring update #1

Honestly, why didn’t anyone tell me that the haircut I had in 2024 (pictured above) made me look like I was wearing a toupée?! Anyway, it’s still a great picture, by
Beth Olson, of a group of us thinking about fatness and contact in Portland, Oregon two years ago.

The past four weeks have been busy! Some highlights have included hosting a Live Art Social with Patrick Ziza at D6, where 15 artists working in experimental performance got together to hear about Ziza’s work and get to know each other. It was amazing to see the synergies between different people’s practices, and to see how starting with this small event might lead to a more robust community of practice.

I travelled to Coventry, where I joined choreographer and researcher Jonathan Burrows and team on their Rethinking Choreography Project at the Centre for Dance Research (where I’m also an Honorary Research Fellow).

I then went to Copenhagen to work on the new intake for the extraordinary MFA Dance and Participation at the Danish National School of Performing Arts, and then on to Glasgow to work with an amazing group of artists during my Do It Together Project, which thought about the burdens and opportunities of artistic discipline in the context of experimental performance. I also got to see lots of shows in Nene Camara’s first BUZZCUT festival!

The next Live Art Social is around the corner! I’m so excited that great artists and dear friends Toi Guy and Jesse Salaman will be hosting this one at the amazing Lubber Kitchen on 11 May. Book here!

I’m heading back to Portland for the second half of May to support Body Home Fat Dance’s KT Kusmaul and collaborators in their presentation of their new work Mass Movement. I’ll be leading a workshop, too!

In August I’m heading to ImPulsTanz as a teacher for the first time! I’m excited to share things of my two main specialisms: professional performance with non-professional participants and fatness and contact (NOT Contact Improvisation). Please come! If you’ve not been to ImPulsTanz and are a dance person, it’s worth going at least once in your life to feel the weird feelings of being in a city of dance. It’s just so huge and life-swallowing in a really interesting way.

It looks like I’m doing a lot, huh? The reality is that I’ve had soooooo many rejections in the past six months, more than ever. It’s been really tough; it’s so grinding to be always working in the subjunctive space of applications and doing so little actual stuff with people. I know it’s the context as much as anything - knowing lots of other people are having a rough time helps with the ego part. But the constant invention of possible futures that don’t come to pass is desiccating to the imagination and to relationships and to other skills and capacities. What is to become of us?