Audiences had another chance to see performances of choreographer Joe Moran's 'The Modulated Body', a dance piece originally commissioned by the Ordovas Gallery for their past exhibition: 'Movement and Gravity: Bacon and Rodin in dialogue'. 'The Modulated body' responds to the interplay of elegance and violence in the work of painter Francis Bacon, and Sculptor Augustine Rodin. You can read about the Ordovas exhibition in a previous blog post here, and view a video of a performance of 'The Modulated Body' at the Gallery here. The recent performances were part of a larger showcase of Moran's work entitled 'Forward', a bold choreographed collection of live performance, installation and film inhabiting spaces throughout Siobhan Davies Studios, on the 27th - 28th September. 'Forward' brought together eight distinctive works, performed by 13 exceptional dance artists, to differently navigate embodied inquiry through live performance and extends choreographic thinking beyond the body into other forms: sound, installation and film. Curation as a choreographic endeavour is a further extension of this experiment: bringing together individual art works, in different spaces and of different durations, to operate as a single changing choreographed whole. The result was a complex and charged choreographed evening that invited its audience to negotiate their own engagement of works within and beyond dance.
"I am fascinated by the multiple possibilities revealed in the experience of dance. It excites me that dance, through the moving body, can complicate or disrupt how we conceive of who, what and how we may be. Forward arises from this fascination: a fascination with the embodiment of multiple and, sometimes contradictory, states of being at once." - Joe Moran
Joe Moran is a choreographer, dancer and Artistic Director of Dance Art Foundation, an independent arts charity he founded in 2000 through which his performance and curatorial work is produced in collaboration with other agencies. Joe first worked with Siobhan Davies Dance in 2008 on the Jerwood Bank project. Since that time, he has been an Associate Artist leading participatory programmes in a range of settings. 'Forward' is co-produced by Dance Art Foundation, Dance4 and Lakeside Arts Centre in association with Siobhan Davies Dance. 'Forward' September 27th-28th Siobhan Davies Studios Words reference: 'Dance Art Foundation press release and website, Siobhan Davies Studios website. Special thanks to Erin Johnson, and the Ordovas Gallery.
