Dances on Street Corners
a performance on some local street corners by Virginia Farman
Photo Cecile Winial
The title of Virginia Farman’s new solo work; Dances on Street Corners, presents a metaphor for exploration into how choreography can be used to capture the relationship between prescribed, and un-prescribed images within the context of live out door dance performance.
In Dances on Street Corners, the performer, audience and the site, are immersed in a non-verbal discourse that unfolds over the course of a short journey through an area of urban landscape. Whilst the urban in general acts as backdrop to the work, specific sites are chosen for set ‘scenes’ to take place on. These sites are picked for their quality of (post gentrified) decay, or chaos; Wastelands, transitional zones; such as traffic islands, doorways, corners, busy pavement, functional intersections, and no-mans’ lands, frame and interact with the invisible narratives of the performance, that immerses performer and the audience into both the content and context of the dance.
Virginia Farman, Virginia Farman is a freelance choreographer , artists and researcher with an established practice in choreographing and creating large scale outdoor performance work and site specific projects that incorporate professional practice with community participation in relation to location. Her research is part of the University of Chichester research portfolio, and pioneers good practice for choreographic work in non- theatre settings. Originally part of DIVAS dance company, under the direction of Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie, Farman has also made dance work for film (winning the Place prize for a new dance film 1999) and theatre. Her choreographic work incorporates contemporary dance techniques with a strong visual aesthetic, humour and irony, blending dance vocabulary with an expressive performance style. Between 2000 -2002 she spent extensive time in Japan studying and collaborating with contemporary Butoh practitioners; in particular Atsushi Takenouchi, and musician Hiroko Komyia. Recent works include; Everyday Hero and The Mass Touring show made with Bicycle Ballet (www.bicycleballet.co.uk), and Dances on Street Corners ; a solo work that forms part of her doctoral research into a practice based investigation of choreographic compositional practices for non-theatre settings.
Date and Times Location
Tuesday 17th January 2017 13.00pm – 15.00
meet at The Ellen Terry Building, Coventry University CV15RW
Prices and Booking
£12 Full price (ft employed/workshop paid by organisation or institution), £9 Independent Artist (pt employed and or freelance artist), £6 Concession (in full time education and/ or unemployed)
To book your place please click here
*prices do not include booking fee
This performance will be followed by a conversation with Virginia about her work. This will take place at the Institute for Creative Enterprise