Name of group/ artist:
Lila Dance Company/ Abi Mortimer
What is your project?
We were awarded a GftA (Grant for the Arts) in order to afford us creation time to make work for our premiere at The Point on March 25th 2010. This premiere will then be used to sell the show for a tour in Autumn 2010. The money went towards the creation of 2 works:
One was a commission of Italian choreographer Simona Bertozzi to make a trio on the company which she has titled Agon. This work has been made in residency at The Point, Eastleigh (who also partly funded the project) and all artists stayed in their new phase 3 building and worked in the creation space for 3 weeks in December.
The other is to rework a quartet (Abi Mortimer) premiered in January 2009 at The Place, titled Tracker.
We will also tour 2 other works in autumn. A solo by Abi Mortimer and Carrie Whitaker (on Carrie Whitaker) called Here still here, Still and a duet on Abi Mortimer and Carrie Whitaker by Yael Flexor.
Who will this appeal to and why?
The work will appeal to a range of audience members, and we hope it will inspire local young artists who have begun there career in the South East as we did 5 years ago.
How would you describe your work?
Tracker is a work which really captures Lila Dance’s evolving movement Language and is an example of where we have arrived after 5 years of developing a unique artistic voice. The work is physical and grounded and balances athleticism with sensitivity. We use a lot of floor work which has evolved out of a technique specific to the company and has been characterised as “seemingly effortless” by critics. We also use an original use of “touch” in our contact work, and are interested in capturing “action and reaction”, manipulation and intricate shifts of weight within our partnerships. We create the language through the use of imagery as inspiration and endeavour to capture “feeling states” within a physical vocabulary.
Commissioning both Simona Bertozzi and Yael Flexer has challenged our vocabulary and as a result we have work in our repertoire which have a variety of “flavours”. We are very proud to have the “stamp” of these particular choreographers within our repertoire.
How would you like people to respond?
We are proud of building a company of calibre from within our base in the South East and are keen to “mark” Lila Dance as a local company worthy of national/international exposure. In the last year Lila Dance has been a “test bed” to choreographic processes (Bertozzi, Flexer) and we hope people will see that with this experimentation we have found exciting results, which has moved the company forward. We hope we will be inspiring to many other local South East based artists who are also making work of calibre - that deserves to be seen.
Who inspires you and why?
The young people we work with because I feel it reconnects you with the joy of dance in the simplest of ways.
Siobhan Davies has always been an inspiration to me not only because she has done wonders for women in British Dance but because she works with her dancers and explores the movement material in a very unique way. I admire the way she lets go of “ego” and credits her dancers with creative authorship over the material, and the special way in which she collaborates with them in order to find a researched and in depth response to the choreographic idea.
Hofesh Shechter has also been an inspiring force. Lila Dance received mentorship from Hofesh in the first 2 years of our association with The Point and what I admire most from him is his absolute commitment to the development of a language, in lieu of “classical technique”. His work is absolutely an expression of feelings above all else, and this is what has given him such a strong identity and perhaps why so many have been “moved” by his work.
What do you feel are your greatest accomplishments?
Our association with The Point and developing relationships with other organisations including The Place and South East Dance - all of which have provided us with opportunity and motivation.
Our work with young people (MayaKaras).
Our creation of something unique.
How do we find out more?
Visit http://www.liladance.co.uk/
|
