TwoFold: Festival of Duet Performance

a festival of duet performances
March & May 2017 @Chisenhale Dance

Notes from Karen Christopher:
My company, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects, was established in 2009, and the first phase of our work was a six-year project, The Difference Between Home and Poem: a series of duets. Each project in this series was jointly made, directed and performed by myself and another artist, with each duet functioning as research into methods of collaboration without a single director. TwoFold is an opportunity to mark the conclusion of the series by sharing all the projects made, alongside duet collaborations by other artists, a symposium on issues around working in pairs, and workshops.

Twofold is a festival of duet work, including:

Twofold: the Particularities of Working in Pairs
a 2-day symposium at Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre

Alongside academic research from practice-based and non-practice-based contexts, duet performances in development will be presented via Birkbeck’s partnership with Camden People’s Theatre.

and

TwoFold
a festival of duet performance at Chisenhale Dance Space

Taking place over two months and across three weeks the festival presents works from my duet series: three studio projects (So Below, Control Signal and the London premiere of miles & miles), shown as part of double bills, partnered with four duet projects programmed through CDS (Being Together, Jacket Dance, How to keep our friends from drowning, and Black Holes), and two programmes of duet lectures/talks.  Additionally, an outdoor duet performance (Seven Falls), will take place on 27 May and will include guest performers. Two public workshops will be offered, one during March and one in May in advance of the presentation of Seven Falls (with participants appearing as guests in the outdoor performance).

I am devoted to the investigation and strengthening of collaborative methods of performance making, and because of our focus on communication and method, the style of the work and the form it takes varies from project to project.

The partnership of two people carries a significant power. It may be related to the fact that every one of us is alive due to a partnership between cells from two different people. With society’s current focus on the fluidity of gender and sexuality, and the rising use of the word binary as a pejorative, it feels important to examine the duo or the significance of working in pairs quite apart from gender issues in order to sort what might be underlying the intimacy of the one-to-one.

 WEEK 1: MARCH


9 MARCH:
So Below / Being Together

Artists: Gerard Bell, Karen Christopher, R. Justin Hunt, Johanna Linsley

10 MARCH:
miles & miles / Jacket Dance

Artists: Karen Christopher, Sophie Grodin, Dan Watson, Matthew Winston

6 & 7 MARCH:
Workshop

11 MARCH:
Lectures

Artists: Karen Christopher, Lucy Cash, Rajni Shah

WEEK 2: MARCH


 

 

16 MARCH:
miles & miles / How to keep our friends from drowning

Artists: Karen Christopher, Sophie Grodin, Eirini Kartsaki, Joe Kelleher

17 MARCH:
Control Signal /How to keep our friends from drowning

Artists: Karen Christopher, Sophie Grodin, Eirini Kartsaki, Joe Kelleher

18 MARCH:
Lectures

Artists: Chris Goode, Karen Christopher, Rajni Shah

WEEK 3: MAY


 27 MAY:
Seven Falls

Artists: Karen Christopher, Teresa Brayshaw

 

FREE WORKSHOP IN ADVANCE OF PERFORMANCE

 

 

TwoFold is a co-production of Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects & Chisenhale Dance Space with generous support from Arts Council England.