Block Universe and Tate invite a selection of artists, curators and writers to reflect on contemporary choreographic practice. Responding to the term 'post-dance', coined at the MDT conference in Stockholm (2015), the event considers the implications of an expanded notion of choreography.
Our contributors will be asked to issue provocations and responses that consider choreography in artistic practice. Exploring questions around liveness and the embodied labour of dance, join us in discussing what this means for an expanded understanding of contemporary dance and movement-related practices. Invited to present provocations are artists’ Malik Nashad Sharpe, Paul Maheke, Florence Peake & Eve Stainton from the perspective of their collaboration and academic Amanda Øiestad Nilsen. The event will be chaired by Curator of Nottingham Contemporary, Cedric Fauq. Louise O'Kelly, Founding Director of Block Universe and Danjel Andersson Director of MDT Stockholm will introduce the event.
There will be space for group discussion with the audience during the event. Following the event join us for a performance hosted by CAJ COLLAB in the East Room. CAJ COLLAB is a collaborative platform that invites two artists from different disciplines who have never worked together before to create a piece of performance in one day. For more information on this event visit here.
About Block Universe
Block Universe is London's leading international performance art festival and commissioning body. Bringing together cutting-edge performance art at the cross-section of contemporary visual art, dance and music, the festival celebrates its 5 year anniversary this year, from 18 May - 2 June 2019. Held in major institutions and venues across London, previous partners include The Store X 180 The Strand, the ICA, Sadler's Wells, Royal Academy of Arts, the British Museum, Somerset House and The Showroom amongst other unique offsite locations. For more information please visit www.blockuniverse.co.uk.
Biographies
Amanda Oistad Nielsen
Amanda is a writer, playwright and post-dance activist. She has a bachelor's degree in theater science from the University of Bergen and a master's degree in dramaturgy from Aarhus University. She works freelance as a producer, playwright and critic. Her Master's thesis focused on post-dance.
Danjel Andersson
Danjel has a background as critic, editor, dramaturg and festival director. Currently both director of MDT in Stockholm and director of Dansehallerne in Copenhagen. (From August 1st only in Copenhagen.)
Eve Stainton
Eve Stainton is an artist working with movement, the process of creating performance, and digital collage making. Her practice often takes the shape of queer and very intimate collaborations enquiring into/ exploiting the influx of desire and vulnerability as a form of protest in response to restrictive normative attitudes.
Florence Peake
Florence Peake is a London based artist. She makes solo and group performance works intertwined with an extensive visual art practice. Presenting work internationally and across the UK in galleries, theatres and outdoors, she is known for an approach which is at once sensual and witty, expressive and rigorous, political and intimate.
Malik Nashad Sharpe
Malik Nashad Sharpe is a choreographer and dancer making performances under their aliases Marikiscrycrycry and DANCEw/YUNGMARIK!! Their work operates with an expansive choreographic proposition that utilises dance and live action as a modality that excavates various ontologies at/around Blackness and [G/END/ER]Queerness.
Paul Maheke
Paul Maheke (b. 1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France) lives and works in London, UK. He completed an MA Art Practice from École nationale supérieure d'arts de Cergy (2011) and was an Associate of Open School East's Programme of Study, London, UK (2015), with a focus on dance and through a varied and often collaborative body of work comprising performance, installation, sound and video. Maheke considers the potential of the body as an archive in order to examine how memory and identity is formed and constituted.