A conversation about Invisible Dances
Online via Zoom
11am to 12noon, Tuesday 14 September
Online via Zoom
Join us for a morning of conversation with Elisabeth Schilling in the middle of their Invisible Dances tour of Scotland. Fresh from live dates in Shetland, Elisabeth will be in conversation with dance artist Kathryn Gordon about how this work manifested itself during the pandemic as a way to promote participatory, yet safe, art to inspire and connect people all over the world who found themselves in mutual solitude.
The Invisible Dances is a global initiative inspired by the restrictions put upon theatres and cultural workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Respecting all local guidelines, the concept invites dance artists to meet for an unannounced performance at night. They make their way dancing through the city followed by so-called tracers who visualise the dance with natural materials or environmentally friendly and biodegradable chalk spray that washes away with the next rain.
During the session Elisabeth will share some images and film footage of the work and there will be time to ask questions and open out to a conversation around the process.
This event will take place on Zoom and can be booked by emailing sara@theworkroom.org.uk.
ACCESS
This session will be auto captioned by Otter.AI, BSL interpreatation can be requested by emailing sara@theworkroom.org.uk by 7 September.
Left side image: Niamh O’Loughlin and Antonia Hamilton performing Invisible Dances St. Andrews, organized in partnership with The Byre Theatre | Credit: still from video by Duncan Nicoll
Invisible Dances - St Andrews from Elisabeth Schilling on Vimeo.
A Poem By Róisín O’Brien
While you were asleep, while you were elsewhere and sounds were hushed, the dancers appeared. The foxes saw them.
Rough sleepers noticed the disturbance.
Lit by the orange glow of streetlamps punctured by ambulance blue, they slowly gathered.
Standing at a distance, they looked to each other and began.
Joints softly recalibrated, cold arms reached upwards, and small mountain ranges of gravel and plastic were scratched into being by darting feet.
As they moved, bright lines flowed on the ground behind them.
These drawings are the memories of a dance that was never theirs: it is yours.
Yours to see, follow, and dance along, finding your own journey.
If someone had told you at the beginning of the year that everything would stop, that we would barely leave our homes, that we would not see our families – would you have believed them?
Can you imagine that in another world, these dancers appeared from behind a red curtain? Here they came to you at night.
