FFIN DANCE and the dance faktry is gearing up for a weekend packed full of dance activity.

It all kicks off this evening at Six Bells Community Centre where I will be leading a seminar on training 12 youth volunteers from Blaenau Gwent.  These youth volunteers aged between 16 and 25 will be forming New Ground, which will be delivering dance activity and workshops to the community in Six Bells, Abertillery in South Wales.  New Ground will become a small company attached to the dance faktry outreach unit for FFIN DANCE

Then on to Merthyr, to the newly opened, purpose built theatre in the centre of the town, which delivers a full theatre programme bilingually in Welsh and English.  Workshops there at 10am and 1pm, and a performance of Connections at 6pm.  A funny time you may say for a dance performance on a Saturday evening, but it’s especially planned to encourage families to engage in the workshops, do a spot of shopping and leisure, then stay around and watch the show.  Brilliant!

No rest on Sunday either…. from 2-5pm we pick back up in Six Bells to begin dance workshops for children in the village.  This will continue in the Easter holidays and the children will perform their new work created by Megan, company dancer, in our Easter Dance Faktry Festival on 13th April.

Few days to recharge the batteries, complete some end of project reports, fit in some family and friends time, pack the tour bus, and off to Holyhead for 4 days on Thursday.

But more about that later….

Image by Paul Trask

sue lewis

“I loved the dancers’ relationship with the music, the stage never looked empty.  I didn’t see the relationship between the 5 dances and the walking patterns, I loved the walking and really enjoyed the silence but I didn’t see that the walking was the pathway that you had danced.  In a way it didn’t matter to me but if that was the intention, then for me it didn’t read.

The structure of the piece was very strong and worked with the collaboration between the composer and choreographer. You could see that time had been spent in the studio with both collaborators and the dancers to produce what was in the end a beauftiful connection and conversation between music and dance”

Liam Riddick

So with a brilliant opening night under our belts, we move on to Cardiff this week.  The Laban opening was such a special one for us all, as we were treated like royalty.  Well, Gary Lambert is dance royalty isn’t he?

Just about unpacked the travelling kit and now we’re off again, this time to the Richard Burton Theatre at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff.  Set in the beautiful grounds of Cardiff Castle, this brand new theatre opened its doors for the first time in 2011.  I saw NYDW perform there in the summer and was wowed by the space (and the performance of course!)

Jenny Jackson the composer for Five Dances, will be giving a pre-performance talk to music students on the subject of composition for dance, and Platform 4 will again be performing live in the evening.  A real pleasure for the audience.

Steve Denton, once a lecturer in the college, designed our costumes for Synapsequence, choreographed by Gary Lambert, so another nice link with the college.

Very much looking forward to performing in this wonderful new theatre in the capital city of Wales.  Please book your tickets in advance by following this link, see you tomorrow…

sue lewis

Thought to write a few lines as a conclusion to our period spent in the studio making work for Connections 2012.
The whole process has been surreal: I have always desired for the company to have a score written especially for us, and when Jenny Jackson approached us it was perfect timing.

We spent time with Jenny and Platform 4 musicians (Tom, Chris and Tom) in June 2011 and after that the score was finalised by Jenny, resulting in Five Dances.  Intense studio time followed in the autumn and I created a piece with the dancers which has been refreshingly challenging having a score to follow to which we can refer for dynamics and phrasing as well as structure and rhythm.  I hope you’ll agree that the work is pretty amazing.  Platform 4 share the stage with us and are an integral part of the work.

I have admired the performance and choreographic work by Gary Lambert for many years now, recently being wowed by a student work at Trinity Laban which Gary had made.  Again, a few e mails later and we were talking about the possibility of Gary making work for FFIN DANCE.  I think that you can guess how amazing our studio time with Gary and his composer Ronen has been from our blogs!

And now the time has come to share it all with you!  Hoping to see you at one (or more) of our tour venues.  We always hang around after the show, we’d love to have a chat with you.
See you soon

sue lewis

Hello All,

I hope that you have enjoyed reading our blogs over the past three weeks of rehearsals. You may have noticed that we have all been quite quiet during the past week, this is due mainly to us working flat out to ensure that the Connections tour is the best that it can be.

The past week we have spent the time, cleaning, polishing, rehearsing and doing some more cleaning and polishing (of the material not the studio!).

It was important for us to spend a lot of time working on Five Dances this week. When we were creating the material for Five Dances way back in June we worked so closely with the musicians that it was essential that we had time to re visit the details that the musicians had given us. We have worked very closely with the score, not only with the different rhythms/patterning of the scores but also with how the notes have been played, how the breath is used, how the chords have been struck amongst various other things. By the last run of the piece yesterday these things are now consistently happening and add an extra layer to the material.

We also worked a lot on Gary’s piece ‘Synapsequence’. Again we had the privilege of working with Ronen, our composer, in the studio. He throughly spoiled us so we’ve worked on really nailing the musical cues that he has set for us. Everytime we run the piece I find something new in it. Now knowing the piece so well I can really start to have fun when doing the piece. As we are such a small company it is important that we each give it our full energy everytime we run it so that it can continue to grow and reach new places.

Steve Denton, our costume designer, came in on Friday to deliver our costumes for Synapsequence. All of the dancers instantly loved them and when we ran the piece in them for the first time we all felt that finally the piece had all come together.

We have a few days off before our performance at Bonnie Bird Theatre. I know that during this time all the dancers will be working through notes/musical cues/maintaining fitness/ squeezing in some rest so that we are in tip top shape for Thursday.

We all feel that both pieces have reached that point where we need to let an audience view them so that we can begin our tour journey. Quite a combination of nerves and excitement in a dancer’s life I think. We feel that the programme is a well balanced one that will challenge the audience but we hope that you find it enjoyable too!

Hopefully we will see you this Thursday then, but if not then at another venue.

Megan

So here we are just about to start our final week of rehearsals – time has literally flown by, I can’t believe that 2 weeks have gone already, we’re on the cusp of entering March and we’ve gone from snow to some beautiful spring sunshine in the valleys – feels like someone must have accidently pressed the fast forward button while we’ve been in the studio! With it being a Sunday evening, I think it’s a good time to slow down a bit and take a moment to reflect and share what’s been going on so far while we’ve been working with Gary on creating a new piece.

Week 1 was very much a time for material generation – first individually and then in partners. From the offset we have all learnt and shared each other’s material to create a kind of universal movement vocabulary from which to draw when piecing sections together. It’s always exciting to learn other people’s material as everyone is so individual in the movement choices that they are making – the challenge comes in fulfilling another person’s material in your own body and making sure you retain their articulation and detail. From the other side, seeing how other people adapt to material which you have created is also interesting and the questions that they ask really reinforce details not only for them but yourself as well. I suppose it’s like trying to teach someone how to impersonate your handwriting – it’s something which is completely personal, innate and natural for you but trying to transfer that over to someone else is where the challenge lies!

In opposition to this idea of working with great detail and articulation, Gary has also emphasised the need for vagueness in the creative process – he says that dancers do really interesting things by chance when they don’t have all the details! Indeed, there is a moment in one of the final sections where 3 of us were asked to go straight into one phrase of material from another and we were all slightly thrown and each instinctively chose different facings for the second phrase of the material as we had not had time to establish the ‘correct’ directions before we started. By chance though, this is something that actually worked quite well so we kept it in the piece and had to go back and remember our own directional choices!

This attitude of just going ahead and doing things without feeling like you perhaps have all of the information is something that Gary has pushed for us to do both weeks not only in rehearsal but also when he has led company class – he’ll spend two minutes teaching a phrase, then give us ten minutes to dance it… rather than the other way round. That way we learn to deal with the movement in our bodies rather than getting stuck thinking about how a movement should be done in the ‘paralysis of analysis’. This has been particularly useful (for me at least) when learning another couple’s duet or contact work as it is so easy to get stuck discussing with a partner what isn’t working and why you think that is without actually physically attempting the material – the key has been to practise short snippets until they feel comfortable – after all when we perform we have to dance not talk the material!

Looking forward to getting back in the studio again tomorrow – after all time flies when you’re having fun (and working hard, of course!)

Effie

After a weekend of reflection and rest (for most of us, lol, I had to work but hey ho lol) it was great to be back in the studio even though it was slightly colder today even with our little heaters

Spent the morning refreshing two sections from ‘Five Dances’ which was great  to see how well the movement vocobulary and quality have remained within the body. Slightly sketchy but wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. Just need to spend studio time re-affirming ourselves with the music so it feels organic and to play with the different relationships between us as each section takes place.

Composer/musician Ronen Kozokaro came into the studio today, which was really exciting. We spent time refreshing each piece of material from solos, to duets and ensembles, trying changes of facings and putting them together in a rough structure for Ronen to see what we have created. He seemed really excited and eagerly disappeared with his laptop to play around with the score. I’m eager to see and hear how the music develops now this week.

We spent some time exploring the idea of falling off balance into the path of light that we have been playing with, using this to traverse across the space replacing each other, so hopefully with light we appear and disappear through the shaft of light leaving limbs entering or leaving the space.

To end the day, I spent some time with Gary developing a solo, which has been called ‘limited line’, Which sees me traveling up and down the space with the idea of moving like I was doing an adage with small little explosives bursts, whilst maintaining a relationship physically along the line, which I  tend to want to move away from and spread out. So it’s been quite the challenge, with myself exploring the use of every articulation of my vocabulary to its limit and each being as focused and precise. The counts are going to be very important so that I fullfill each phrase and will keep my not so good Maths skills to the test. Eager to carry on and take ownership.

Its going to be an exciting, hard working week and I know we are all eager to help and support each other.

Night night,

Mike

So, Lucille and I have just sat down together after our evening recap in the living room and thought we’d share a bit of how we’re finding life at Ffin in Abertillery now in our 2nd week of rehearsals. After a tough day yesterday, suddenly things have clicked into place and the work has progressed positively.

We began work on the final section of Gary’s piece today, utilising all of the material which we developed last week.

Simultaneously, we’re both becoming more familiar with the role we are learning in Five Dances with lots of help from Megan and Mike as well as input from Sue.

It is lovely to work in such a pleasant atmosphere at Ffin, having both been warmly welcomed into the company. The presence this week of musician Ronen is an added bonus to this inspiring process which Gary is leading.

Looking forward to getting the Connections tour started…for now off to rest our tired feet!

Effie and Lucille

Hello all, just a quick blog from me this morning as I observe the company rehearse their second piece “Five Dances”. As Megan and Mike revisit their solo material, Lucille embraces the musically driven material that was created before she began working with the company! A  very brave task of learning the repertoire from a video with help from Sue and company dancers. The score provides depth and direction as they skim across the studio accordingly.

Day 2 of my second week with FFIN and I have been fortunate enough to take part in all the tasks that have been set by Gary and learnt all the taught material that has later been fragmented by him. I definitely feel like the word “placement” has been taken to another level! Beginning my day with company class, followed by a cheeky coffee & using the remainder of the day to select and refine set sequences has given me a small taster into what I would like to be doing once getting my degree from Laban. Some very beautiful things happening in the studio here in Abertillery, so I hope you can all come and watch the double bill that will be going on tour as of next month, starting in the Bonnie Bird Theatre, Laban.

Caio for now. Catrin. x