Percolate | 2021

First Wave

Kelsie Acton | Residency

Kelsie is a neurodivergent dancer and choreographer. Originally from Treaty Six Territory in Canada, her disability and integrated dance work has been presented by CRIPSiE, Nextfest and Expanse. She participated in the inaugural UCLA Dancing Disability Lab.

“This residency will explore movement developed from my unique sensory processing of my vestibular system. I will experiment with integrated audio and sensory description attempting to connect how my movement looks to how it feels.“

More on the artist’s work: Kelsie Acton

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Symoné | UTOPIAN (t&c’s apply)

Symoné is a queer multidisciplinary circus and performance artist based in the U.K. Her work shifts between cabaret, club and theatre work, fusing her movement based skills, such as high heel roller skates with hula hoops, pole dance, and voguing. As a self taught movement artist, Symoné’s work stems from her roots from underground party and queer party culture. At the moment, her work thematically explores human consciousness, celebration and ritual.

Symoné is currently researching for her new theatre production, UTOPIAN (t&c’s apply). During her artistic residency at Siobhan Davies Dance studios she will be developing choreographic hoop dance scenes, voguing scenes, and pole dance. In addition, she has been experimenting with combining hoop dance alongside vogue femme and would will be further exploring these fused movement practices.

More on the artist’s work: Symoné

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dance art journal | Dance writing: New modes, musings, understandings

dance art journal is an online dance writing collective which gives voice to artists working in the independent dance and performance art sector. We are committed to documenting the whole story, to maximise the reach of independent artists. Formed of seven writers, we create content that puts independent artists at the forefront; writing reviews and interviews, holding events, producing zines and creating social media campaigns to support and promote artists’ work.

DAJ’s research will culminate in an online (in-person is tbc) dance writing workshop encouraging participants from all creative backgrounds to see and write about dance in ways true to them. DAJ sees dance writing as far from prescriptive; we hope to guide participants through a series of tasks so they may uncover the different ways of exploring how dance is written and words danced. We will create a safe, inclusive environment where participants, with or without dance and writing experience, can explore creative expression through words.

More on the artist’s work: dance art journal

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PC*DC | PC*DC In D’House!

PC*DC is an older adult dance company hailing from Hackney, East London. Known for their irrepressible energy they serve moves that groove coupled with dance fashion looks cobbled together from the best bits and bobs. Lil’ sis to Duckie’s The Posh Club they dance with a big heart and welcome all to get down n’ shake up. Resident dance company of The Posh Club Hackney, PC*DC have beguiled audiences across the home counties, taking in Sadlers Wells and and 1000 queer revelers at Duckie’s Gay Shame along the way.

PC*DC In D’House! – 9 dancehall flamingos have been hibernating alone for a year slowly working on their plumage. Now through the medium of virtual socials a flock is formed. Stretching their hot pink wings, cocking their yellow legs they begin to dream, to dance, reform, regroup. Babes, it’s time. Let’s go ruffle some feathers n get our flamboyance ON!

More on their work: PC*DC

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Second Wave

Catherine Long | The body keeps the score (mark II)

Catherine is a multi-disciplinary artist with a background in contemporary dance. Her practice uses painting, mark-making, dance, video and sculpture to explore the materiality of the body from a feminist perspective. This interest in corporeality extends to the qualities of materials and how movement and gesture interact with them. Catherine’s current work is made in response to personal experience of osteoarthritis, multiple surgeries and breast cancer treatment in her early to mid 30s.

This residency will explore the relationship between somatic dance practices and large-scale mark-making as strategies to help physical and mental recovery and make visible processes of healing. A central enquiry is how does one renegotiate balance when muscles, tendons, ligaments have been pulled out of sync and damaged? When the body’s response to trauma is a constant loop of injury, pain, gradual strengthening, back to injury and starting again. 

More on the artist’s work: Catherine Long

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RUT | R U THERE? (working title)

RUT is a fluid community of artists, athletes and movement therapists woven together through Joseph Bond, Sia Gbamoi and Olivia Norris. Their distinct backgrounds, embodied knowledge and collaborative approaches to movement-led language and navigating public space are taken up as tools to rupture, queer and smudge masculine binaries. Their work manifests pleasure in the face of panic; exercising acts of care against conflict, they nurture tenderness during turbulent times.

“During our Percolate residency, RUT will commune with collaborators, mentors and mentees to pool research toward movement therapy, sports methodologies and queer theory. Through coaching and playing with the Hackney Rebels — an inclusive basketball team prioritising women, non-binary and trans people — we’ve explored how bodies across the gender spectrum complicate notions of masculinity in public space. Throughout the residency, RUT will collaborate with an audio describer to nourish slippages and (mis)translation, whilst interrogating language around gender, intimacy and bodily movement.“

More on the collectives work: Olivia Norris / Sia Gbamoi / Joseph Bond

Supported by Arts Council England

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whatsthebigmistry | Bodies, Vessels and Tribal rights to Saturday Nights

Mistry straddles dance, performance, visual art, live and online working locally across the U.K and internationally. 

whatsthebigmistry

• Makes provocations and adds discourse in the field of mental health, invisible dis/ability, Identity, Global majority (POC), Queer and Feminist politics.
• Investigates sensory/non-word based vocabularies and their capacity to enact something that word based language cannot do. Examining the polysemic potentials.
• Explores possibilities and choreographies between bodies, objects, architecture, investigating scores of sound and gesture.

A congregation of people, space, proximity, collectively moving, gesturing, vocalising, synchronising to beats, patterns and experiencing euphoria incited by the body’s own chemicals or supplemented ones (drugs/herbs).

Rave or a Shamanic/ religious ritual?

Why, In this long enduring season of Pandemic stasis have people congregated in explosions of Raves? Not in public ‘protest’ against governance but ‘for fun’.

Are we spiling over in a tsunami of grief and a deep rooted programming for change?

More on the artist’s work: whatsthebigmistry

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Rukeya | Residency

Rukeya is an artist working across Dance/Live Art since 2012. Her work spans stage performance & digital-work and has focused on themes like estrangement, queer muslim sexualities, mental health and trans self-defence. Their current practice centres the well-being and survival of the queer, trans, sick and disabled BPOC communities they’re part of. They’ve been working with a web of interconnected bodywork & mutual aid practices rooted in somatic healing, disability justice & care work.

“I’ll be using this residency to shift my Dance practice to align with the care + support work I’ve been engaged with during the C-19 pandemic – I want to create a more held and resourced relationship between the two. I’ll build upon the mutual aid practices I’ve been working with since 2019, to develop care-work frameworks through somatic and choreographic practices & will explore ways to archive crip solidarity & care labour.“

More on the artist’s work: Rukeya

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