Alex Cecchetti with Pauline Simon, Conversation of the Arrows, Grand Union (6.30pm & 8.15pm)
Conversation of the arrows is a duet featuring artist Alex Cecchetti and dancer Pauline Simone amongst Dance Room Cecchetti’s new installation at Grand Union. You could describe the performance as is a choreography for sorcerer’s apprentices, in which a dancer and a word-crafter fall into the trap of representation. They are doomed to chase each other represented as dogs, arrows, birds, stones, stars and more. For a moment, Cecchetti’s sculptures become the spells that the apprentices cast against each other and the scenario for their labyrinthic roaming.
Alex Cecchetti is an artist, writer and choreographer based in Paris. His practice often returns to the duality of representation and concealment; how objects can be rendered in speech and how speech itself is made visible. Cecchetti has exhibited internationally having solo exhibitions at Kunstraum, London, 2015, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, Lithuania, 2012 and Jue de Paume, Paris, 201 and solo performances at Serpentine Galleries, London, 2015, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2014, MAXXI museum, Rome, 2012.
Hagar Tenenbaum, Abstraction end and things like that, Nicholson School of Dance (7.30pm)
This was the first solo performance in the UK by the Brussels based choreographer and dancer Hagar Tenenbaum.
In Abstraction end and things like that, hand gestures, speech and gaze are distinct channels, which synchronise and resist each other at different moments. Tenenbaum’s movements are both receptive to and independent of her spoken observations, narratives and memories.
The artist writes “I cut and paste words, I break and adhere them, while a pair of oversized plastic hands grabs and dances through the air, changing its consistency as meanings disappear (and re-appear) into a chasm of ruptured words. I wonder whether I should understand or feel. I’m a collector, I’m an animator, I am as much a thing as the things that use other things to make things.”
For this version of the performance Hendrik Willekens has created a new soundtrack.
Abstraction end and things like that was originally produced by wpZimmer, Antwerp and supported by STUK and BUDA.
Tenenbaum graduated from P.A.R.T.S. Research Cycle in 2014. Her pieces include: Footnote, 2011, Swimming Room, 2012, Two Weeks Notice, 2013, with Bryanna Fritz, Shatter Clatter and Other Arrangements, 2014 with Rosa Omarsdottir and Christopher Schieche. Tenenbaum has also worked with internationally acclaimed artists and choreographers Shelly Nadashi, Mette Ingvartsen and Daniel Linehan.
Nicholson School of Dance
158 Fazeley Street,
11 Minerva Works,
Digbeth, B5 5RT
These performances were part of Hand and Mind an exhibition at Grand Union curated by Vanessa Boni.
This programme was generously supported by Arts Council England, Fluxus Art Projects, The Elephant Trust, Arts and Science Festival, University of Birmingham and Nicholson School of Dance.
