A symposium on using performance practice to learn how to grieve which in turn can teach us how to live. In the wake of loss, contemporary culture that struggles to negotiate mortality can leave the bereaved alienated and confused. Performance practice, rich with tools to work with our bodies and lives, can be a way of restoring meaning in the present. Bringing together experts in bereavement care, dance, and other relevant professions we will consider how performance can be a catalyst and vessel for emotional recovery through presentation, performance, film and discussion.
Fridays program will include:
John Fox and Sue Gill ( previously of Welfare State International ) will give an illustrated talk about their new company Dead Good Guides which they formed in 2006 and which picks up where Welfare State International left off. Mary O’Donnell Fulkerson, will look at the place of the religious and spiritual in performance work that includes bereavement. For the past two decades she has been exploring Gnosticism in her life and visionary work. Mary has visited 22 countries with her own choreography, solo and group works. She has initiated dance programs at the University of Rochester, Dartington College of Arts, and co-directed programs for the SNDO, Amsterdam, and the EDDC Arnhem. Jo Clifford will also be presenting and the evening will include film screenings and performative presentations.
Saturday’s program will include:
Patricia Repar founder and director of Arts-in-Medicine at University of New Mexico (US) a program of clinical service, research, and education. She will present her work in this area with a particular focus on bereavement. Rosemary Lee, will talk about walking the tightrope between community and high art in dance. Her choreography is one of the best examples of a practice that located itself successfully beyond the limited terms concert dance and community dance. Robert Pacitti, will look at the socio-political as it interfaces with art, bereavement and life. His critical theatre practice explicitly navigates the socio political with elegant lack of dogma. Gill Addison will speak about cultural text as memorial in relation to Derek Jarman’s film Blue, and Joan Didion’s film A Year of Magical Thinking. Doran George will speak about The Mourner’s Dance his research project as part of the Interface Residency at Chisenhale Dance Space. Ray Jacobs will also be presenting. There will be further film screenings, followed by discussions with filmmakers.
Doran George’s experimental dance/live art practice focuses on the physical, emotional, interpersonal, and cultural body in recovery. His performance work has been funded, commissioned and presented internationally. He regularly curates cutting-edge performance and events on critical practice such as “Vital Signs: symposium on interfaces between disability politics and contemporary art.” He has danced for Mary O’ Donnell Fulkerson (Germany) Arlette George (UK), Bock and Vincenzi (UK), Mark Tompkins (France), Oracle Dance (UK) and Yvonne Meier (US.) Doran is widely published, and has taught at NYU, Chelsea School of Art, the University of Southern California Los Angeles, and the University of Marseille.
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