On Saturday June 23rd 2018 I took part in the premiere of Rosanna Irvine’s Breath Pieces at Tramway, Glasgow. We had been working together on a section over the previous months, ‘material and transitions’ a vocal sound piece or ‘duet’. Irvine had also worked with three other dancer-performers on other sections of the work. The company of five spent a week working in the space at Tramway to develop the live event, which combined drawing, speech, breath, dance, movement, actions and blowing bubbles and deflating balloons. We had an attentive and supporting audience for the first public showing, and I look forward to touring the work to other venues in the future. More details of the project and the ideas we were working with can be found at the Breath Pieces website.
Tag: voice
‘threaded insert’ for Projectivisms, Cardiff on 18 May 2018
On Friday May 18th I will present ‘threaded insert’ at the symposium, Projectivisms: way-making the contemporary projective. Organised by Wanda O’Connor, the programme includes performances, papers, workshops and readings.
The structural inheritance of the projective has given way to new experiments of shape, juxtaposition and as yet unnamed forces. What now eclipses or brings forward this important formal work?
Events take place at Cardiff University’s Glamorgan Building and are open to the public.
working on ‘breath pieces’ with Rosanna Irvine
Over the past few weeks I have been meeting with Rosanna Irvine to develop an element for the performance project Breath Pieces. This aspect of the project will premiere at Tramway in Glasgow on Saturday 23rd June.
Breath Pieces draws on Eastern breath practices – including martial arts and yoga – to investigate the material and energetic qualities of breath. Conceived as an expanded choreographic project, it operates across art forms in the creation of multiple pieces. In each piece the actuality of the breathing breath is the driving force for the visceral emerging of kinetic, sonic and visual imagery. The event at Tramway brings together many of the pieces in an immersive performance experience. Each piece is distinct though at times overlapping or interacting with other pieces. Audience is mobile. Breath is everywhere.
The work is part of an ongoing research project Breath Pieces by Rosanna Irvine.
More information and booking via the Tramway website
‘Voice Recognition: A Play’ at Listening to Literature, Exeter University, July 28th
I will present a version of ‘Voice Recognition: A Play’ at Listening to Literature: A One Day Symposium on Soundscapes, which will take place at The Queen’s Building, University of Exeter on Friday July 28th 2017.
Link for Registration via Eventbrite.
How do we hear literature, and how do we write about hearing? How is music represented in literature, or literature represented in music? This one day symposium aims to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines to discuss cultural perceptions of literary soundscapes, the difficulty of capturing sound in text, and the way text is expressed in sound.
‘subject to gesture’ at Gramophone Ray Gun 6, Liverpool, April 27
I will 
present a new work, a collaboration with composer/performer Benjamin D. Duvall as part of Gramophone Ray Gun 6 at Everyman Bistro in Liverpool on Thursday April 27th. The event is organised by Mark Greenwood, and will also feature work from Patricia Farrell and from James Davies.
The collaboration, ‘subject to gesture’, combines live reading and manipulation of the voice feed via a mixer and two treated electric guitars, a drum and other objects. Dock Road Press will publish a pamphlet version of the text and a diagram of the audio set up.
The note to the text reads:
‘Subject to Gesture’ was written in part using found material from a number of sources and being open to the political and cultural mood of Spring 2017. It exists alongside a collaborative work for performance developed between writer Mark Leahy and composer/performer Benjamin D. Duvall. The pair were introduced by Mark Greenwood, who suggested that they might work together and offered them a slot in the Gramophone Ray Gun series at The Bistro, Liverpool Everyman. The live work was premiered at Gramophone Ray Gun, on Thursday 27th April 2017.