With/Gyda Simon Whitehead & Kirstie Simson In this next iteration of Practicing Places, alongside collective studio practice we will spend time in the local Afon Cych and Dulais river catchment. Journeying upriver this time to explore the wider ecology of the valley and its mythical landscapes, we will immerse ourselves with the river’s course and its ecosystems. Learning ways to be in correspondence with its ongoing-ness, responding to its life forms and movements, we will lead practices Read More
performance
Stitching performance…24 February 2023. 1-6pm (photos)
Thanks to dance artists Neil Callaghan, Saffy Setohy & Joanna Young for their generous contributions to this event and to all those who came along and took part. The stitching and re-activation of the gloves eventually formed a strange and wonderful blanket/shroud/caul, which we moved with/in with those assembled. A motile, generative thing it will now have future lives as choreographic object/actant. Photos by Jack Wrigley
Stitching soft matter – The Book!
Stitching soft matter is an artist book featuring performances of touch, drawing, sewing, photography, pandemic touch journals, pull-out scores and a short essay on touch touching itself. This project continued throughout the pandemic and the book has become a place to share all the materials and relationships developed during this time. It feels good to have something to share and hand to people in the physical world… Book launch on 31 January at ARC, University of Read More
Re-pair 1.03.21
Re-pair As a way of experimenting with how dance can re-pair itself, this project asks 6 dancers from different parts of the world to pair with each other in order to re-think the analogue in the digital. Each dancer will be sent a score, emerging from the stitched gloves that I am making for the soft matter project (http://simonwhitehead.net/2020/05/07/soft-matter-process/) and asked to improvise with the objects that they will then share with the dancer they are paired with. Read More
Pneuma
The Pneûma Project is a collaboration between dance artist Miranda Tufnell, visual artist David Ward and musician Sylvia Hallett with myself and dance artists Eeva- Maria Mutka and Cai Tomos, and musician Jonah Brody. The Pneûma Project is centred on the breath, on wind and spirit. More information:http://www.mirandatufnell.co.uk/pnemu.html I am delighted to be involved in this iteration of the work and to perform in Miranda’s work again for the first time since 1993! We began in Read More
Dance Lawn project
Since May 2019 I’ve been collaborating with visual artist Jacques Nimki to develop and grow a scented herbaceous dance lawn at Plas Glyn-y-Weddw in Llanbedrog, north Wales. As part of my year-long residency with the gallery I was keen to find a way to reinstate the dance hall that existed on the site until the 1950’s. The hall here was well known for it’s dances and the beautiful sprung floor. When the hall was dismantled, Billy Read More