Emily Nicholl Waiting for Weight (working title) R&D

Waiting for Weight is for meeting slowly. Considering the weight we place on others and the weight we tread on natural surroundings, it asks how we support the weight for and of each other in a way which celebrates interdependency whilst acknowledging the solo, the pair, the collective.

It’s for taking, what might feel like radical, time to re-find a circus practice softly through pandemic, chronic illness and injury, asking what is it to offer stability and what is it to fly after this time on uneven ground.

It’s for asking what the detail of a partnership or hand to hand practice sounds like and feels like. What might recording this soundscape bring to the choreographic process, as a means of audio description and embodied observation. Through conversations with Ellen Renton it explores these ideas of sound and exchange and what collaborations between lived experiences of visual impairment and of seeing can bring to a deeper understanding of intimacy, weight sharing and communication. This notion of embodied observation continues a strand of Emily’s photographic work developed recently in collaboration with Laura Fisher.

It leads on from the work and conversations between Nathan Johnson and Emily Nicholl and invites circus artist Freya Stokka, architect Sepideh Karami, poet Ellen Renton and other collaborators into the space at different times, with mentoring from Tina Koch.

The project as a whole supports reflections into collaborative, logistical and physical practice which aims to hold anarchist, inclusive and mutual aid values at a the core of exploring producing, structuring and collaborating methods.

Supported by The Work Room and Puppet Animation Scotland’s Creative Fund.