LICA Making A Splash
A dance-theatre piece developed under a research award residency at Lancaster University has been selected for performance at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
"The Saturated Moment", a response in movement, sound and light to Virginia Woolf's novel "The Waves" was created by choreographer Nigel Stewart (LICA), dancer Domnique Bulgin, and composer Lisa Whistlecroft (PALATINE/LICA). It was premiered at the Laban for the 21st Century conference in Bratislava in October last year, and performed at the Chisenhale Dance Space and the Nuffield Theatre at Lancaster University last autumn.
It will be presented as part of Royal Opera House "Firsts" on 20 and 21 November this year at the Linbury Studio at the ROH.
In Woolf’s novel, each character is a cluster of images and turns of phrase that register particular impressions of the natural world. This dance piece reveals the physical basis for those impressions, creating patterns of live action and recorded sound that distinguish between the six characters but also, in the manner of the novel, dissolve those characters into each other as a single event is seen cubistically from a number of different perspectives.
Altogether, the piece suggests an understanding of time in which each person’s present moment is ‘saturated’ by impressions of the wider world that others have experienced in the past and future.
A composer from LICA, Dr Martin Iddon has also been chosen for the shortlist for 2008 announced by the spnm (Society for the Promotion of New Music). Each year spnm runs an open Call for Works, from which it selects a shortlist of new works deemed worthy of professional performances. spnm then promotes the composers of these works for three years, programming the works throughout its nationwide season of events. The 2008 list of 28 composers includes Dr Iddon (LICA), for his piece "...à son dernier soupir".
And Lisa Whistlecroft, the Deputy Director of PALATINE at LICA, has had her early piece "Work for the Railways" selected as part of VELOCITY, a new festival of digital art and culture along the coastal rail route around Morecambe Bay from Lancaster to Barrow-in-Furness. VELOCITY's artworks, performances, games, podcasts, films, workshops and art installations follow the coastline, showing this beautiful setting in a new, creative light. The festival runs from 11 October to 30 November