Blue Elephant Theatre, Camberwell

Blue Cloud Scratch is an exciting new dance scratch night, showcasing works in progress from a diverse range of choreographers, and is curated by Blue Elephant Theatre and Cloud Dance Festival. Blue Cloud Scratch aims to encourage and provide emerging dance artists with opportunities to present their works in progress and receive feedback from audiences and peers.

For more about the Blue Cloud Scratch and Cloud Dance Festival, click here.

Ruby Embley & Yanaëlle Thiran - Et si Cécile …

Et si Cécile … imagines Chaminade’s early days as a composer, with a playful take on her struggle to establish herself in this male-dominated field. The duet draws from our experiences of creative processes and gender politics and explores two sides of the 19th Century woman’s personality – powerless but passionate, determined to pursue an artistic career, regardless of societal expectations.

Ruby Embley and Yanaëlle Thiran are London-based freelance dance artists who have been working together since 2014. They graduated from London Contemporary Dance School in 2015 and subsequently took a one-year choreography course at Siobhan Davies Dance. Yanaëlle joined MoveMe Dance in March 2017. Since June, MoveMe and Elizabeth House have been supporting them in the creation of this new duet.

Supported by Bert Roman/MoveMe Dance and Elizabeth House Community Centre.

Dancers: Ruby Embley & Yanaëlle Thiran

Kuan-Yu Chen & Marie Chabert - The Clapping Piece

The piece invites the audience to be aware of the impact of their presence in the theatrical context.
A funny and light dance theatre duet challenges the roles ‘performers/observers’ in an unusual way.
Questioning who is being watched and who's giving inspiration? Can the performance exist without the audience and vice versa?

Kuan-Yu Chen (Taiwan) and Marie Chabert (France) are independent dance artists with international collaborating experiences who recently started sharing artistic ideas together.
They are interested in audience interaction and reaction, improvisation score, site-specific, challenging conventions and provoking some laughter.

Performers: Kuan-Yu Chen and Marie Chabert
Image Credit: Ollie Smallwood

Natalia Iwaniec - Birdland

Stabilization and the lack of stabilization. My life to a certain degree became nomadic. It is hard for me to stay in one place and difficult for me to settle. I am constantly looking for something: for home, for love, for work, for friends, for dance, for freedom. Life is a journey and you get to decide how you will travel. You can travel alone or with others, you can travel to find answers, to find home or to escape home. I am constantly searching for my promised land.

Natalia Iwaniec was born in Poland and is now a freelance dancer and teacher. She finished her Master’s in Theatre in Cracov and completed her degree in Dance at the Dance College in Wrocław in Poland. As a dancer she has collaborated with such choreographers as Yasmeen Godder, Iwona Olszowska, Ella Ben-Aharon, Rhiannon Faith and others. Natalia became a qualified teacher of Gaga in August 2012. Since then she has travelled all over Europe and Israel to teach Gaga. She also choreographs, recently creating the piece The Link for dance students in STW in Poznan, Poland and FORMal in residency in Scenario Pubblico in Sicily. Natalia is a co-founder and member of NaNa Collective, based in London. Natalia premiered her solo work Birdland in July during Budapest’s International Dance Week.

Briar Adams/Hack Ballet - Grace

Grace is part of a new work by Hack Ballet, choreographed by Briar Adams.

Dancers: Briar Adams, Marie Seehy & Mikulas Urbanek

Blue Cloud Scratch is an exciting new dance scratch night, showcasing works in progress from a diverse range of choreographers, and is curated by Blue Elephant Theatre and Cloud Dance Festival. Blue Cloud Scratch aims to encourage and provide emerging dance artists with opportunities to present their works in progress and receive feedback from audiences and peers.

For more about the Blue Cloud Scratch and Cloud Dance Festival, click here.

Inconnu (Unknown)

Choreographer- David Murley
Dancer - Briar Adams
Photography - Jane Hobson

In its Research and Development phase, Inconnu (Unknown) embarks on the journey of an individual’s mental breakdown. Often, the task of getting out of bed can be a triumph. The piece toys with the struggle of mental collapse and the ongoing thread of a deep-rooted sense of internal self-preservation and survival.

Former dancer of The Royal Opera, English National Opera, Grange Park Opera, The Dallas Opera and Glyndebourne Festival, and Touring Operas. David also worked in film, children’s theatre and was Artistic Director Of his own dance company, MurleyDance, for four years. He has also previously choreographed for London Studio Centre.

Bridie Gane - One Hit Wonder

One Hit Wonder is a solo show that delves into the history of women in entertainment. Bridie intends to channel the lives and personas of unconventional women that entertained the masses, reflecting on current views of females on and off stage. One Hit Wonder, which has already been shared as a draft at Dance Base's Spring Showcase and Buzzcut (2017), will be a nostalgic, riotous and retro-subversive solo that celebrates that unique wonder of women who perform.

Bridie Gane is a British choreographer and performer, creating independent solo and group work of a unique, retro theatricality. After training at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Bridie moved to Berlin to pursue her interest in choreography. Her first solo choreography, BIM BAM BUM (2013) won several awards including the Audience Prize and the title of the Best German Dance Solo at the Euro Scene Leipzig Competition. Bridie recently moved to Glasgow, where she is now based.

Konstantina Skalionta - Land(e)scape

Choreography/ Performance: Konstantina Skalionta

‘How long we have to go I am not sure...what I am sure is...that we need to keep on walking..’ A journey through accumulated memories and emotions unlocked through the act of walking.

Konstantina Skalionta has been making performances in an attempt to explore the human condition. She has collaborated with various fine artists such as Laura Elias and Bea Bonafini in bringing visual arts and dance together.Her work has been presented in various festivals in UK and Cyprus, amongst them Resolution 2016,2015,2014, Fiver Fridays (Chisenhale Dance Space), Women of Mass Destructon 2 (Rich Mix), 15th Cyprus Contemporary Dance Platform (Rialto).

Thank you to Alice Laidler (dancer) who was part of the creative process for the duet version of this performance

Shivaangee Agrawal - This Junction

Mentoring by Choreographers Mayuri Boonham and Yachao Zhu.
Music by Ben Pearson.

I encountered life on those streets as an outsider. As I walked, I was sensitive to both the overwhelming visceral experience and the theft of my personal agency. I began to yield to the streets, and they unfolded for me. It became more difficult to distinguish the ugly from the beautiful, my reality from theirs. This is about fighting for space and finding my place amongst the native inhabitants of this urban chaos.

Shivaangee Agrawal is a Bharatanatyam dancer by training, currently studying contemporary technique, choreography and choreology at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Drawing on various artistic experiences from Tokyo to Bangalore, she aspires to exploit the nascent potential of Bharatanatyam to be a contemporary movement practice.

Lucidez Dance - Grief

Choreography, performance and costume: Lucia Schweigert
Music: Richard Wagner

Grief is a natural response to the death of a loved one or a loved life. It is a human ritual and this work is a dance about how it’s necessary and helpful to grieve when you have to deal with a seemingly unbearable situation.

Lucia Schweigert is a German-Chilean dance artist intrigued by female, cultural and national identity. She works as a dancer and choreographer and she is the co-founder of Kaleidoscopic Arts. Her work has been presented at Chisenhale Dance, Cityscapes, Dance Film Festival UK and CrisisArt Festival among others.

Tora Hed - Between Horses

Choreography/ Performance: Tora Hed

Between Horses is an ongoing solo project that Tora started in 2016. The work explores the physical memory that’s left after an action. In this piece Tora has been acknowledging what happens to the space where repetitions and echoings accrue.

Tora Hed is an independent choreographer and dancer, based in Leeds. She graduated from Northern School of Contemporary Dance 2015 and received the Carolyn Woolridge Outstanding Performance Award. Tora was successfully chosen to take part in Exit Visa 2016 at The Place. Over the past two years Tora has made works from solo to extended pieces and collaborated with other dance, music and film makers.

Kane John Mills - Remnants (a Triple Bill)

Choreography/ Performance: Kane John Mills

The individual works’ titles are The Mask You Wear, It keeps me up at night. & Divulge.

The Mask You Wear is heavily influenced by Kane’s long-term health conditions, delving into the façade that people create in order to maintain a false but more idealistic perception of themselves. What happens once you no longer have it in you to sustain this front?

It keeps me up at night. examines an imagined thought process that could occur if someone you knew went missing.

Divulge shares honest & dishonest things that no longer have to stay unsaid.

Recent NSCD graduate Kane John Mills is a Plymouth-born emerging choreographer and dance, theatre and installation artist. He has twice been the recipient of PDSW’s Young Choreographer’s Award, enabling him to create two works with mentorship and funding. He is also passionate about psychology, writing and proofreading/editing and aims to have his own inclusive company in the future.

Promotional Image for ‘The Mask You Wear’ taken by Matt Austin Photography.

J7s Dance Company is a professional dance company based in London. Founded by Italian choreographer Giulia Iurza, the company is particularly interested in the connection between mind and body. Striving to create pieces that psychologically push both dancers and audience, they begin by taking aspects from everyday life and use them as the stimulus to generate movement.

Join J7s at the Blue Elephant to share the journey the company takes in the studio to create their work. The night will feature pieces at different stages of their development, including Shikishin Funi, which premiered at The Place as part of Resolution, and their new work experimenting and collaborating with the composer Mau Loseto again. It will finish off with a Q&A session with Giulia Iurza.

“Iurza has a talent…and I cannot wait to see her next show. Truly one to watch.”
Sunday Express (Shikishin Funi)

Reviews

“As a performance, it was immensely moving.”

The Spy in the Stalls