Abercych, West Wales

This summer’s workshop with Simon Whitehead and Kirstie Simson follows on from inspiring and connective experiences during the last two Practicing Places in Pembrokeshire, West Wales.

Kirstie and Simon weave & share their practices through these days, in the village hall in Abercych and surrounding landscapes.

Kirstie  :  Moving Bodies | Empty Spaces

An Exploration of Freedom through Dance Improvisation

There is deep inspiration and rigour in a practice of improvisation that posits vulnerability at its heart. Developing the skills to be able to care for, engage, respect and respond to that state of vulnerability in oneself and others gives life to improvisation that is powerful and transformative.

This is the work that Kirstie engenders through facilitated exercises, open time for play and exploration, movement scores, observations and discussion. Much of the work is experienced through partnering and connection with others, balanced with solo time for processing and reflection.

Kirstie’s art form is her life practice, and she shares insights gleaned from thirty-two years experience of living dance improvisation. Kirstie draws from her knowledge of contact improvisation, dance techniques, the Alexander technique, Aikido, meditation and her extensive experience of improvisation in performance. Her work explores the huge potential of the body’s response to the primal urge to move, inspired by the energy released through human interaction, physical challenge and a daring to go beyond inherent ideas of limitation. Her current questioning pertains to the relevance of artistic practice in today’s troubled world.

Simon  :  Tangle

Moving from the premise that we are all active in processes of place-making, Simon will propose a number of ways to collaborate tenderly within a tangle of places, atmospheres, materials, humans and other beings. There will be opportunities to work solo and collectively both in and through the different terrains of the valley of Cwm Cych: the river, a field, a woodland, a water fall; as well as the nearby Pembrokeshire coast. We will also approach the nighttime; using scores and exercises that take us through dusk into the darkness to move and work together.

Over the last 17 years Simon has located much of his practice in the valley close to his home. Walking and encountering places, objects and events, he responds physically, making performances on foot, often fleeting, ephemeral and playful. At present he is working on 2channel, a collaborative project with sound artist Barnaby Oliver, working through their local rivers in Abercych, west Wales and Melbourne, Australia. A conversation between artists and friends living at distance, whilst disclosing a river’s everywhereness.

www.simonwhitehead.net

http://www.untitledstates.net

This year there will be an opportunity to share participants’ performance practices.We will be searching for creative ways to do this over a couple of evening events.

Cost: £350 (non residential, includes supper on first day)

Contact Stirling for booking info & accommodation list: rstirlingsteward@gmail.com

WORKSHOP NOW FULL… SEPARATE POST SOON DETAILING COMMUNITY DAY that Susan will contribute to on Sunday 30th June.

Susan is an inspiring and emotionally courageous movement practitioner, also now also working as a interfaith hospice chaplain.

Bigger than the Body 

24th to 29th June 2019

Abercych, Pembrokeshire, Wales

As movers, we will begin with the bare bones that support the form of Authentic Movement; connection to self, sensation, imagination, memory and perception. We will also be deepening our experience of what it is to hold the space, both within us as well as outside our physical bodies as we witness one another. At first glance, we are often most aware of what occupies the space, the people, walls, floor and so on, and less aware of the space that is surrounding and infusing everything.

In our seemingly concrete world, it is unusual to register the fact that what appears as ‘object’ is predominately ‘space’. To recognize that space does not belong to anyone yet fills ALL, can provide us with an experience of space as connective tissue – the unifying element between the visible and invisible, form and essence – that which is holding us. Through time an intimacy grows, a balance between ‘knowing’ and ‘not knowing’, ‘seeing’ and ‘sensing’ that can bring us to the threshold of grace.

£350 (non-residential – low cost accommodation available locally)

For more info & to book contact Stirling: 01239 841488/rstirlingsteward@gmail.com

Places limited to 14

Susan Schell has been teaching and performing from a foundation deeply planted in the practice of improvisational forms for over 40 years. In the early 80’s she studied in-depth the practice of Authentic Movement with Janet Adler. Since then, she has been exploring, developing and teaching on-going classes, intensives and retreats in the US and abroad. In 2012 she completed a two year interfaith chaplaincy program and now, in addition to dancing, she also serves as a hospice chaplain.

Mostly I’m thinking about what it can mean to be with someone. To giving attention to each particular process with a person and seeing where it goes. Taking proper time to listen. Bringing a focus to the body perhaps. Being responsive to possibilities, trusting in the idea of possibility that connections can and will come. Something could go further than might appear possible at first. But it’s here in these spaces, in these places of discovery with someone that I like to be. It’s scary too and it’s hard to explain what might happen. Time and again I struggle to describe it. But I keep asking myself the questions around how and why, and who I am through all of this, and it keeps me here.

letter to the cottage (sent 8.3.17)

Thank you fire, chair, bed, blanket, hot water bottle, window

Chord from the light, reminder of a distant home

Preparing to leave

Casting a net over moments caught

Supermarket café, choreography of shoppers through the panoramic aperture between two spaces

Stirling in the moonlight – Timeless

Teddy folded, squashed inside the coils of cable, pushed hard under the chest

Daring to touch each other

Water pouring out of the land – hands carrying

Late night man thinking about his funeral

‘Lambing is as close to birth as you can get’

Cold feet on stone, reposition sitting reposition sitting

The Witness Tree – horses, outlaws, night into day

Horseshoe curves in the road.  Valleys rolling. Medieval Castle, stonewalls stacked layered, angles over angles. Tower circle, winding staircase. Up down just me. No visitors inside these damp walls. Just me

Motorbike in pieces, over sloping grass

Hair splayed out in sundials

Guitar rock loud from the graffiti hole – Mouth and body mimicking sound

Black notes, colony of ants, pouring into the grand piano

Leaving a life behind – starting a new

Talking to people

Tremor of emotion – his every word

Love love for the animals

Reading to a child, missing mine

The gift of gingerbread

Time is what we have

And invitations to a possible other place

If only I could reach you

Thank you to all who created a most wonderful summer Twmpath in Abercych on 30th June… Mervyn Bradley, Joanna Young, Ray Jacobs, Julie Murphy, Ceri Jones, Ceri Rhys Matthews, Elsa Davies, Rhowan Alleyne and Delme, Jo Shapland, Simon Whitehead, Helen, Nicola, Matt Penfold, and all the dancers!

Documentation of the residencies of Anushiye Yarnell (September 2015), Cai Tomos  (March 2015) and Neil Callaghan (June 2014) can be found on the Maynard site:

http://www.may-nard.org/2-penrhiw-residencies/anushiye-yarnell-residency-september-2015

Here are some of her early musings about the chance to be back in Abercych:

Thoughts on Abercych – 15 September, after talking to Stirling

 There was a distinct sense of community when I came to Abercych in 2015 to give some kind of performance/sharing of my work. I noticed in what must have been built up over many years, a vibrant atmosphere with great attention given to those present to absorb what was on offer in their own personal ways. A place where people seemed committed and open to talking to eachother, to understanding, thoughtful around what it might mean to talk about place, community, home, whilst listening, making space for questions and carefully finding ways to put the body into those conversations too. 

In my work with different communities I’ve become increasingly aware and perhaps more able to articulate what is important about this for me. It’s not an easy straightforward process to meet a person, someone I don’t have a relationship with already and gently find out about them, take them on some kind of a journey and invite them in different ways to trust in a process and to surrender to it. I often find that small interventions; shifting a physical instruction from a seated conversation to be on their feet, asking someone to reflect on a question from a different place in the room, asking someone to stop speaking but perhaps continue to tell me something about their relationship to the space physically – there are all kinds of ways to try and enter into a practical process with someone, which I hope aren’t glaring, formal and intimidating. I’m learning more how to describe what is important to me; explorations around form and structure, strategies up my sleeve to push something further, shape interactions in ways that are unique to me, to the encounter I’m in and not about simply reproducing known pathways.

It’s a very important part of my wider practice to be in dialogue with these kinds of situations/parameters. To ask questions about what it means to be in relationship to others and community through doing, in ways that are not linear, or previously defined, but making a space for something to happen, be shared, considered and perhaps experienced in unexpected ways by others witnessing. Risk is a part of that, in order for risk to exist there has to be safety, responsibility and care. I suppose this is what I’m always in some way working towards. Becoming surer of the value of these processes at the same time holding on to the need to keep letting go myself. I think it works because I am vulnerable too, I am not the expert and never pretend to be, I have to listen very hard and want to! so a set of modes are being activated, negotiated, and adapted from person to person, with the aim of awakening visibility on life, on ourselves, triggering imaginative and felt spaces to open up between people. 

In October 2013 Siriol Joyner (Cymru) & Nibia Pastrana Santiago (Puerto Rico) spent 10 days in residence at 2 Penrhiw exploring their dance making practice together here and in the surround area.

“Roedd 2 Penrhiw yn fwthyn clyd a chroesawgar i’n cynnal yn ystod ein preswyliad yn Abercych. 

Gerllaw mae neuadd pentref oedd yn stiwdio ddawns wledig a hyfryd iawn. Aethom i ddawnsio ar lan y môr ac i ganol cwm Cych,  buom yn darllen ac ysgrifennu yn y bwthyn ac yn cerdded ar hyd y Dulais. Rhoddodd 2 Penrhiw le a chyd-destun hynod Gymreig i gynnal ymweliad cyntaf Nibia i Gymru a chawsom gefnogaeth arbennig gan Stirling, Simon a’u teulu yn ystod ein deg diwrnod yn y pentref. Cyfnod o wreiddio prosiect a pherthynas newydd- cyfnod arbennig sy’n sylfaen  i ragor o waith yn Puerto Rico yn ystod 2015.”

“2 Penrhiw is such a warm and welcoming place, the cottage was a wonderful base and sanctuary for us during our ten day residency of working and exploring in the Cych and Teifi Valleys. The village hall nearby served as a beautiful rural studio for our dance practice. We also danced on the beach, in cwm Cych, we read and wrote in the cottage and walked along the Dulais river. Our residency at 2 Penrhiw offered a distinctively Welsh context for Nibia’s first visit to Wales and we received a very special sense of support from Stirling, Simon and their family. An extraordinary time of rooting this new collaboration and research which we hope to develop in Puerto Rico during 2015.” Siriol

For video of work in progress shown in Aberych Hall see: http://www.may-nard.org/2-penrhiw-residencies

For images see http://nibiapastrana.4ormat.com/aguaviva

Água Viva

Hydref 11-21 October 2013

“unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life” JJ

Dŵr

Water

Água

Here.

Sleep like a stone

Sing like a shark

Our tongues are golden.

Dawnsio

Double Act

RED heaters

wombs and placentas

“the oblique life is very intimate. I shall say no more about this intimacy so as not to harm thinking-feeling with dry words. To leave the obliqueness in its own uninhabited independence.”

INTUITION

Nora paints the apples with purple nail polish

“What I do by involuntary instinct cannot be described.”

Sglefren fôr

The sea doesn’t wait.

“but now I want the plasma- I want to eat straight from the placenta”

I don’t want to be a vessel

To be a vessel

To dance with water in the mouth

To sing like the Dulais. Llais Dulais.

“hear me with your whole body”

The texture of water changing from crystalline to saliva.

Thick and warm.

Ocean.

“I can stand it because I’m strong: I ate my own placenta.”

“There is no pattern to follow and the pattern itself doesn’t even exist: I am born”.

Ash

Ash

This is soft.

If fire could burn choreography, i would be ashes.

Forgotten, invisible, emancipated.
I gather: wood. yawning forms. saliva.
Fire tears oxygen away from time: the swollen joints of structures float away. let it BURN. BURN. BURN.
And, please water the pestilence tomorrow.

N notices the moon through the window and begins to howl. We howl together, it is a song. We are breathing together. S pulls the blue Welsh blanket towards her and over her head to make a tent. N is sitting in the opposite corner and slowly closes her eyes: they don’t see each other. S moves diagonally towards N. Leading with the butt, S is swooping all the objects on the floor.

N- What is this? You know this. (a wooden blue stick, is dropped on the floor).
S- Yeah…
N- Is not what it is, but what is does.
S- Gravity.
N- Loud object

A Video Transcript:

N: This is soft

S: Bod mwy cyfoes, being mega contemporary

N: In my next life, I don’t want to have bones

S: Blap!

N: I want to be like a

N & S: Blap! Blap, blap.

S: Like that?

N: Like your hair, more contemporary though.

S: Mega!

N & S: Mega, mega mega.

S: Sometimes people drive too fast

N: And what happens?

S: Squashed

Roadside burial

Can you see me?

N: No

S: Can you see me now?

N: No, but I can hear you

S: This is soft

Buuu uuuu huuu

N: I would name this ‘Fake death and a song”

S: What?

N I would name this ‘Fake death and a song”

S: Buuu huuu huuu huuu oooo

I think it’s untitled.

N: Temperature: Cold, Hot, Warm.

Diolch

Ahhh! Oh no! So sorry, so sorry.

S: Aw.

N: It’s these lights: they are too theatrical!

S: Pop, pop, pop

S & N: AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa

N: Aaaaaaaaaashes?

S: Yeah! Ashshhhhhhhhhhh

N: Ok!

S & N: Shhhhhh huuuu shhhhhh

N: Meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful.

Waterfall, waterfall, waterfall.

Who am I?

S: I don’t know who you are!

N: I’m you!

S: Oh!

N: The title of this section is “Constant Horizon” or ‘Recent Horizon”

S “Recent Horizon”.

10 Teitl/Titles:

1. Clarice One
2. All the blankets i can fit in my mouth.
3. Benjamin Jones was a tall man.
4. Apples without meaning.
5. Red moon
6. Dance number 31368
7. Phallic (these are good, they are very human)
8. Frontal sensation
9. Sweeping nape of neck
10. No axis , 4 blankets and this is not a healing dance

*with quotes and fragments from Água Viva by Clarice Lispector

We are delighted to announce the next round of Dance Residencies at 2 Penrhiw:

Siriol Joyner and Nibia Pastrana Santiago: 11-21 October 2013

‘We come to the residency at 2 Penrhiw with no subject, but with the intention of sharing and exchanging practices and to be together,exploring Abercych and the surrounding area. We don’t know how this “being together” will look or what the outcome of our exchange might be. We have a few starting points which include: dancing together, indoors and outdoors, drawing and walking.’

Siriol and Nibia met while taking part in the danceWEB scholarship programme at ImPulstanz festival in Vienna 2011. Siriol comes from Wales and Nidia from Puerto Rico.

Sharing Event with Siriol and Nibia, followed by Tea, discussion and films:

Sunday 20 October, 2pm meet at 2 Penrhiw, Abercych.

Neil Callaghan: 6-16 June 2014

Neil will spend 10 days at 2 Penrhiw focusing on the relationships between inside and outside, both the interior and exterior of the body and what it means for a body to be outdoors or indoors. Neil works in a variety of contexts and is particularly interested how we experience, and engage with, environments that surround us.

These Residencies are supported by The Arts Council of Wales and produced by 2Penrhiw and Maynard

]]> https://www.2penrhiw.co.uk/two/422/dance-residencies-autumn-and-spring/feed/ 0 https://www.2penrhiw.co.uk/two/413/apples-2013/ https://www.2penrhiw.co.uk/two/413/apples-2013/#comments Mon, 16 Sep 2013 10:24:52 +0000 2 Penrhiw http://www.2penrhiw.co.uk/two/?p=413 So many apples! Harvesting for juicing this week … but there’ll be lots left for pies. Join us for the feast from Penrhiw this autumn. …

So many apples! Harvesting for juicing this week … but there’ll be lots left for pies. Join us for the feast from Penrhiw this autumn.

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