Work in Progress:

THE UNSEEN THREAD

Concept/composition/drums – Edward Ware
Choreography/butoh dance – Josephine Grundy
Viola – Paul Cortese

https://entradium.com/events/the-unseen-thread

The work exists in response to the human need to process our mortality; to acknowledge that somehow, we need to ‘live death’, to move through
that darkness as it were, and in so doing, connect to other ever-present forces in the universe that impact all of being – the seen and the unseen – the living, the dead and the not yet born.
Shrines to the ancestors, memories of departed souls; what are the threads that run through the earth, deep in the foundation of humanity’s collective DNA, the commonality that defies categorisation and can sustain a species under threat – a threat of its own making?
By engaging with the diverse traditions of Japanese Butoh and Fang reliquary art ‘The Unseen Thread’ brings audiences into a paradoxical field of awareness; one which resists fixity but yet is a constant presence in life. “We all carry darkness somewhere’ (Dark Ballet – a film by Taichi Kimura), be it the ‘darkness’ Butoh explores in taboo subjects, primal impulses and raw untapped emotions – or the ‘darkness’ of the world of the ancestors, forces that the nomadic Fang carry with them whilst acknowledging their reach into the present through the manifest energies and purpose of their reliquary art.

LES MONTAGNES MYSTIQUES

Created in resonance with the composition of the same name by Vincent Laubeuf for the festival En Chair et en Son (Paris, Dec 2024). My intention is to continue to explore this piece working around the themes of place, origin, cartography, reference points and our human need for connection to our roots.

Paysage sonore, paysage du corps ancré à ses origines, transformé par son vécu, par ses expériences sensorielles et gravitationnelles.
Passage durant lequel le corps devient le paysage qu’il traverse, incorporant ses évènements géologiques et climatologiques, sa cadence particulière.
Rituel qui invite le corps socialisé et la musique issue de la technologie à se trouver et à se perdre, pour enfin se retrouver à l’endroit précis où le monde naturel et le monde spirituel se confondent.

WOOD FOR THE TREES

Collaboration with performer and composer Mila von Chobiak.
In Wood for the Trees we are interested in reflecting, experimenting and working in a non-hierarchical manner. This applies as much to the process of creation between the two artists as to the plane of the material which is being worked with. The dancer becomes one with organic matter, searching for a transformation, and the sound detaches itself from this action to then evolve towards a discourse that feeds back to the performer.
Is it possible to generate a discussion, a dialogue, in which the body doesn’t dominate over the object or vice versa? In which sound doesn’t dominate over performance? Is it possible to work in such a way as to not let any plane dominate over any other?
Perhaps we can situate ourselves differently in relation to our body, our voice, our environment, allow organic matter to speak for itself.
An important aspect of butoh practice is ‘becoming’, which entails, literally, an act of metamorphosis. It invites us to transcend our habitual form, to trans-form, be a chair, be wood, be an instrument, be matter in movement… and perhaps something will change in our way of transiting through the world.

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