Tag Archives: Megan Griffiths

Staff changes

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This season we say goodbye to 2 of our dancers who have been with us for 4 years.  Mike will be moving on to concentrate on his role as a choreographer and personal trainer, we wish him well in his new ventures and very much hope that we see him on a regular basis. Assistant to the company director, Megan Griffiths, will also be leaving us after 4 years. Megan will be moving on to diversify her performing skills and will also be sorely missed by the company.  She will be fondly remembered by us all.

Natasha Wade Image Paul Trask

Natasha Wade
Image Paul Trask

We welcome Natasha Wade to the company as from September: she has been a friend of the company for the past year, attending our Professional Performance Development course and also spending time taking class with us.  Her biog will appear soon on our company page. She is a beautiful dancer and will bring a new sparkle to our team.

Busy bees

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_PRT7600And so to a tiny lul in the FFIN DANCE calendar.
The Easter dance faktry festival and intensives (April 24th/25th) were amongst our most successful in terms of participation, audience figures and quality since we started these activities back in 2008.  Lots of happy dancers young and older and happy parents and friends, it was a great event.

Then on to London.  On Tuesday I travelled up to Trinity Laban to join Megan and Catrin who have been working with Gary Lambert on a new duet for our Still Standing Tour.  The work ‘Being’ was being shown as a private sharing in a low-key, informal setting which was truly beautiful.  Gary invited the onlookers to enter the space and move around to watch the dancers from all angles and to get up close and personal.  Some great feedback and also an invite to show the work at a gallery in the future.  We will be showing the duet in our home theatre, The Met on May 15th and other venues on the tour.

IMG_3706 IMG_3715 IMG_3700

 

 

 

 

This year saw our first group of students entered for A Level Dance through our ffin dance faktry.  They had their practical moderation on Thursday and all did really well, we are hoping for some excellent results, just the written exam now in June, so fingers crossed for them.

still standing poster

 

A few days catching up in the office now awaits after a day off to recharge my batteries, I very much hope to see you at one of the tour venues.

Please follow our blogs as we journey and do keep in touch

sue lewis

 

The madness kicking in ..

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The Move Image Paul Trask

The Move
Image Paul Trask

Once again the Ffin Dance Faktry Festival is fast approaching and we have all been working tirelessly preparing for not only the 2014 Easter Dance Faktry Festival but also the A-Level Dance qualification with the FFIN DANCE Outreach and Education programme.

This year the festival has seemed to sneak up on us and there is only a matter of days until the madness of festival week kicks in. Members of all the County Dance groups have been rehearsing for the show, especially both the Blaenau Gwent County Youth Dance Companies who will be performing their new work at the festival this year. At Move (senior county company) we have had a chance to prepare our new work “Perseid” at a number of events that FFIN DANCE has been invited to show their work at this season  This has been a great opportunity for the other youth dancers and myself to really show what youth dancers are capable of achieving.

This year’s show is destined to be the most successful yet and I am very excited to be able to perform once again in one of the local theatres in the county. This year’s faktry festival is especially exciting for me as the senior dancer of The Move as we will be working alongside FFIN DANCE company dancers Catrin and Megan at the Easter Dance Faktry Intensives which is a high-energy series of technical master classes. This once again, has been one of the busiest times of the calendar for The Move and for the Faktry. Let’s hope we survive the week !!

Louis Norman, Senior Dancer The Move

Being with Gary Lambert

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IMG_0667Whilst I have been keeping the dance faktry wheels turning in Wales, our Associate Choreographer, Gary Lambert, has been working with company dancers Megan and Catrin in London.  They’ve been creating a new duet which will première later this month (date to be confirmed next week)

Gary’s been working with the dancers in a very different way, creating work which has a distinct   flavour of his time spent in the States last summer.
“It’s a generic response to being in the universe” Gary told me this morning, in what I can only describe to you as a marvellously inspiring phone call: “it’s not choreographed as such, it’s a real response seen through the eyes and emotions of the 2 dancers”

The result is a work that may suggest unique responses and narratives to the audience.  Gary will now be filming the dancers thoughts and reactions during the process of the work.  It’s been fast and often very intense, emotionally draining sometimes too.  Catrin has found it to be like a retrospective glance at her friendship with Megan, they’ve been dancing together for 10 years now since they were teenagers together in Wales.
“It’s a bit like growing up” she says “the duet is very sensitive, and it’s been a great privilege working with Gary in the studio in such an intense way”

You can take a look at the piece here, shot in rehearsal

Being will be first shown in a private sharing later this month and will come to Wales on Thursday May 15th at our home theatre, The Met in Abertillery.

We would love you to join us …

sue lewis

Pleased as punch

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Earl of WessexThe company opened the Still Standing season on Tuesday at Coleg Y Cymoedd, Nantgarw in Cardiff, and the show met and exceeded all of my expectations with a marvellous performance and excellent audience.

Opening nights are notoriously edgy and can very often veer off into unchartered waters, but this one was a cracker!
The venue is one which we visited last season, and despite not being a traditional theatre setting, really shows contemporary dance very well in terms of shape and pattern.  It’s up close and very personal which works well with our rep this season; particularly well I think with Catrin Lewis’s ‘Stand Up Straight’, a piece which explores the physicality of Vertigo.
We’ve spent a lot of time in the studio this season perfecting timing for ensemble work, and it has paid off – ‘Synapsequence’ was superb.  Created by Gary Lambert in 2012 for the company, there are a number of very tricky double duets which require precision and accuracy as well as superior technique, so the dancers are really on edge.  Pleased to say they rose to the occasion.

My new work, ‘Fractal’, was aired for the first time on opening night, it actually opened the show being the first piece on the bill.  It relies heavily on musicality and the dancer’s technical ability to carry it through or it can look a bit wan.  The lighting that Mark Read and I created is very simple and grows and decays with the musical episodes, giving the audience a sense of regeneration and development interspersed with resting periods.
Pleased to say that the FFIN A Level students noticed this without prompting!

So première over and Megan and Catrin will be continuing their London sessions with Gary who is making a new duet for first viewing in May 2014
Effie and Mike working on some other projects and I am Wales based running the dance faktry and our youth volunteers project New Ground.  Four of our senior youth dancers with the dance faktry will be performing my work for the Earl of Wessex this coming Monday at the dedication service of Diamond Jubilee Square at St Michael’s Church Abertillery, a real honour for us all.
Next up is Easter Intensives and the Easter Dance Faktry Festival in April, then back on the road again.

Never a dull moment, hope you can catch us at a venue near you very soon …

Give a little something back

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FFIN DANCE Fractal Image Paul Trask

FFIN DANCE
Fractal
Image Paul Trask

Hello to all you Ffin followers!
I hope you’re all well and looking forward to seeing us perform our triple bill at Coleg Y Cymoedd on the 11th March.
Just a few things to check in on this early Saturday morning. As I trek down from the city to the valley to teach The Move 21 starter class I suddenly realise it was indeed where I started at such a young age.
The Beaufort Theatre is my home theatre and also had the pleasure of giving me my very first job as a teenager working front of house.

Being asked by artistic director Sue to provide technique and masterclasses to dancers (old and new from the past 21 years) feels extremely special to me. The skills that I gained through Laban and previous projects can now be passed on to the dancers accordingly!

Regarding the company repertoire from May onwards, Megan and I will be replacing Synapsequence with a duet, which is currently in progress. Devised by Gary Lambert and initiated by theories and studies he is continuously analysing from his time spent in America, we witnessed the start of what is going to be something very honest and concentrated!
Not to spoil the development of the piece too much as it’s completely fresh and intimate for the three of us. However, footage of the tasks we undertook this week left us fulfilled and anxious to the “being” nature of the movement vocabulary.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend – see you at Nantgarw Campus next week for our first show of the Still Standing Tour

Cat. x

 

Being – a quick catch-up for sharing

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IMG_3150So far so good!!
Catrin and I have so far spent two wonderful rehearsals with Gary improvising following some ‘rules’ that Gary has set

He’s filmed quite a bit of the improvisations and from these we will pick out the bits that are ‘good’ to create phrases. Similar to how I structured ‘Megan’s corner’ in Degrees of Freedom, my solo by Gary last season.
It’s a very interesting process to get inside of Gary’s mind. He said that this is often how he makes material and phrases but he now has a process that he can follow to generate the material.

I think he’s looking to set more ‘rules’ for the improvs in order to get different moods/material.

It was quite funny how often Cat and myself were unaware of what the other was doing but would often pick up on the language of material that the other was doing.

The piece is going to be about ‘being’. Gary doesn’t believe in the term movement for movements sake, as dance is an experience both for the audience and the dancer. He describes it a lot more eloquently than that but that is the gist of what I have gathered!

Really looking forward to continuing with the work, keep dropping by, it’s going to be great.

Meg

Rambling

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FFIN DANCE Still Standing Tour Image Paul Trask

FFIN DANCE
Still Standing Tour
Image Paul Trask

Well what a week it has been! It’s been so lovely to be back in the studio with the Ffin family.

As Effie has mentioned in her blog, we have been rehearsing for our ‘Still Standing’ tour. It looks set to be a cracker!
We began the week refreshing ‘Synapsequence’ choreographed by our associate choreographer Gary Lambert. I have thoroughly enjoyed slipping back into the piece. It feels like a comfortable pair of shoes you haven’t worn for a long time.
Relearning it has bought back all the memories and fun I had whilst creating it way back in 2012. I’ve found it fascinating the way that my body can remember not only the movement content and structure but also the way my ears are automatically listening for musical cues and my eyes for visual ones.
‘Synapsequence’ is one of my favourite pieces to perform. There is nothing to hide behind and you have to constantly push yourself to keep the piece fresh and to stay true to the material.
This phrase is something that I’ve been pondering about…’staying true to the material’ what does that even mean?  I have been rehearsing and running this piece all week and the material is inherent in my body. However, am I staying true to it? Most of the time when I run the piece I no longer need to think about what comes next or how I should dance this bit or that bit but I wonder if by doing so I loose a sense of where the material has come from thus loosing the identity that made that piece of material what it is? Slightly hard to explain but I’ve been having this internal chatter with myself throughout the weekend.
We moved onto Cat’s piece ‘Stand up Straight’ next. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with this one. I love the physicality and dynamic of it but can’t say I’m a massive fan of making myself dizzy and then having to fall over safely, without loosing that edge you have if you did fall, and lifting and being lifted when you’re not quite on balance. It’s hard work and often leaves me in a bit of a weird head space.
It was lovely to begin work on Sue’s piece for the company ‘Fractal’. We made this back in October and as is often the case with Sue’s work we worked closely with the musical score. This was similar to ‘Synapsequence’ in the sense that the material came back to us pretty quickly except one frustrating part of my solo (which resulted in a little mini diva strop and several attempts to slow motion myself on our video reference). Apart from that, things have been plain sailing.
It’s interesting to see how my ear has found new things to listen for in my solo music. I have made some dynamic changes to parts of my solos as they weren’t quite sitting right for me. As well as these changes I’ve also changed some of my accent points, rhythmic patterns and the way that I approach some of the material. You may not be able to notice the difference physically but it helps me to be able to perform it better.
It looks set to be a great show and the company and myself would love for you to come and share our work at Nantgarw Campus, Coleg Y Cymoedd on 11th March…
Thanks for reading
Meg

My eventful trip to Trinity Laban

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New work Catrin Lewis

New work Catrin Lewis

May 9th 10.40 am arrived on train to find someone sitting in my reserved seat, who obviously had no idea about reservations, quiet carriage etiquette or general manners whilst eating (maybe she wasn’t taught as a child to keep mouth closed whilst chewing). Phone charger breaks.  Good start I thought.

Train 30 minutes late into Paddington, central London packed. La,la,la.  Return journey eventful!  Stuck in Edgware Road missed train from Paddington by 2 minutes.  No phone battery, no train. Eventually got back to Newport at 2am station locked, lift turns up 2.20 am.  Arrived back at Hobbits cold, wet, hungry and truly exhilarated.  Read on…

 

I don’t usually bring too much of my home and family life into my blogs, but here is an exception.
I had the privilege of watching my daughter Catrin’s final piece of choreography yesterday which was being assessed as part of her Dance course at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.  She has made the piece on company dancer Megan Griffiths together with BA3 dancers Lily Turner, Russell Fine,Heli-Maria Latola and Gordan Raeburn who did a valiant job with some pretty gritty movement phrases.  It was spectacular!  An excellent piece of choreography including good structural device and relevant movement content to the subject of Vertigo.  Great lighting too under the watchful eye of the genius Faye Patterson.

Audience reaction was good, we all felt that we could have watched another 10 minutes, even though Catrin said they couldn’t have given any more, the dancers disagreed with her!  A piece which is certainly going to be developed at some point in time.

Another privilege was to watch Julian Lewis’ rehearsal as I couldn’t get to his showing today.  Some excellent performances from his dancers and a refreshing dance idea developed into a mature and complex new work called Surrealist Entity.

So many more mature and established choreographers showing work on the current dance scene could have learned a few things from the refreshing and simplistic approach to work by these young choreographers.  No endless passages of simply filling in the musical structure, thoughtful linear structure and design collaboration with no pretentious lip service.  Let’s see more of this!

So, exhausted and frazzled I arrived home to Wales, but so very glad I had made that journey to experience first hand the joys of new art in the throes of its creation.  Thank you.

Jumbling and Juggling….

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FFIN DANCE Photo Simon Scott 2012

FFIN DANCE
Photo Simon Scott 2012

Wow, so we’re already nearing the end of this rehearsal period ready to get the Inspired tour on the road – the time has flown by. What has really struck me during this rehearsal period is how much we have had to keep juggling all of our balls in the air – it’s been a consummate effort for both minds and bodies switching between class, Missing Pages, Axiom Tangent and back again – hence the lack of blogging activity! Meg has to cope with rehearsing Degrees of Freedom on top of all of this and I really respect the sterling job she is doing (although how she is managing is beyond me – I get home of an evening and am completely physically and mentally spent as it is!).

What is incredibly evident though, in terms of being most economical and productive with time, is how much we all have to pull together as team. As Gary pointed out today, we all need to work to our own strengths and attribute different roles between ourselves – it is this sense of sharing out the workload which allows us to function.

Having learnt the mechanics of the duets for Axiom Tangent last week, we have begun setting spatial relationships and timing this week. Picking up the counts was seeming like a big ask at first but it highlighted the importance for us to trust Gary with the counting and get on with the dancing ourselves, allowing the nature of repetition to help the counts to settle and pick out important ‘marker points’ to count from.

Outside of the studio, I have been sharing lifts with Adam this week and for me this has been a really conducive part of the process. During our journey, we have just enough time to get in the mind-set to tackle the day ahead or reflect on how it has gone, bringing a sense closure to the day. It is so useful to share this discussion with someone who is going through the same process and gives us a moment to allay some of each other’s concerns. Big thanks to Adam on this front.

I am very humbled to be working with Sue, Gary, Mike, Meg and Adam – here’s to teamwork and pushing on through with rehearsals – very excited with how everything is coming together.

Effie 🙂