Dancing the invisible - Late Work
- When?
- Tuesday 1 May 2012, 19.30 to Wednesday 2 May 2012
- Where?
- Ivy Arts Centre
- Open to:
- Staff, Students, Public
- Admission price:
- £12, £10 senior citizens, University staff, £5 students
- Tickets:
- Tickets are available from the University Box Office: T: 01483 686876, E: boxoffice@surrey.ac.uk
Does the dancing have to stop as the body ages?
How does the older dancer draw on sensory memory and the imagination to make dances?
What does 'mature ballet' look like?
What IS a mature dance?
... “of all the oppressions, the one that hits dance hardest is ageism and it is the last to be explicitly addressed. "Jacky Lansley and Fergus Early in The Wise Body (2011)
Jennifer Jackson (Senior Lecturer and ballet choreographer) leads a group of mature dancers with rich careers in companies such as the Royal Ballet, Rambert and Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet in dance performance that investigates these intriguing questions.
With musicians who are skilled improvisers they will present a live music and dance event that interweaves set and improvised dances – and engages the audience in discussion about maturity, ageing and dance.
Joined by ballet expert Susie Crow and musicians Malcolm Atkins of the Oxford Improvisers Collective, Emily Burridge and Andrew Melvin this performance builds on Jackson’s research with From Here to Maturity Dance Company at the South Bank Centre, London and solo improvisation practice that she has presented at conferences (Society for Dance History Scholars Dance and Spectacle Conference 2010, Pinter Fractured Narratives Conference 2009).
Our work involves the sharing and development of professional dance practice amongst mature artists in the South East with feedback on work in progress in Oxford and Guildford from choreographer Liz Agiss and Woking Dance Festival’s Young Ambassadors. The project will develop the research material already made to create performance within a structure that integrates intergenerational feedback and experiment with staging at the University’s Ivy Arts Centre.
The Mature dance artists (aged 45-65) from diverse backgrounds, all have substantial experience of teaching, directing or choreographing alongside impressive dancing careers as independent artists and with prestigious companies.
more info
From Here to Maturity Dance
Ballet in Small Spaces (Susie Crow)
Malcolm Atkins
Emily Burridge
"As an older practitioner I observe profound shifts in the balance between the athletic and artistic dimensions of my own dance. I am interested in how this plays out in choreography and thus …how mature dance challenges the aesthetics of established dance performance, especially in ballet which is closely associated with youthful beauty and athletic virtuosity and as a means of purely technical – rather than creative - development." Jennifer Jackson