#lab time

Back in the lab! After artifacts come in from the field and get washed/cleaned up and organized by type in their respective contexts, we log each one into the catalogue. Each artifact receives a number, class, and description. This is a tedious but crucial part of processing, and it makes later analysis possible.

Lab:time -  MAKE//SHIFT company

MAKE//SHIFT company won Lab:time funding in early 2017 for their application for Insomniac’s Fable – a story on the theme of dreams within dreams cast against an eclectic soundtrack, with specially commissioned woodcuts as projections. The show is a wordless, narrative contemporary circus piece combining circus, dance and visual arts which aims to be an intimate piece about the realities - or unrealities - of love.

MAKE//SHIFT’s core members are Emma Lister, a ballet dancer and Sakari Mannisto, a juggler, circus artist and founding Artistic Director of Agit-Cirk and the Silence Festival.

They describe where the idea for the show came from:

The genesis of this project was our interest in the art of printmaking, specifically the techniques involved in woodcuts; where the relationship between a carved wooden block with ink applied, and the paper upon which it impresses a mirror image can be seen as a metaphor for two people’s perception of one event. Everyone is the protagonist in their own narrative and invariably people carry different memories and different interpretations from encounters. Around these ideas we constructed a narrative that’s somewhere between Vertigo and Inception, loosely inspired by the Renaissance book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

The larger working group consisted of artists from the UK and Finland: visual artist Angela Annesley, sound designer Tuomas Norvio, light designer Eero Auvinen, and choreography and movement assistant Ludovic Ondiviela (Royal Ballet, choreographer of the Gandini Juggling piece 4 x 4 Ephemeral Architectures).

Amongst other things, the team tested out various ways of making a nightmarish juggling scene, in which objects don’t behave the way they ought to: We tried to make juggling balls out of wet sponges, the aim was to try how that works technically and see how the liquid extracts while juggling. This experiment was also a success and will be seen in the final performance, it will be a part of a longer scene with multiple different juggling items changing shapes…In the end water would be replaced with a coloured thicker substance.

In conclusion, the team found ‘Lab:Time in the [Creation] studio was very helpful and useful to the progress of the piece. Having a calm space with good dance floor and mirrors is essential for the creative work.’

The finished show premiered at Manillatehdas, Turku, Finland.

That she’d arrive at the corner of your eye like the ghost of herself going silent into the wind...

Catriona Johnston, aerial performer and dancer, won a Lab:time grant in November 2016 for her proposal BETH (The Dream), where she proposed to develop aerial dance for both film and live performances. The stimuli for the application were the poem Bowland Beth by David Harsent about the flight and death of the Hen Harrier by that name, and the present extreme conditions faced by Syrian refugees.

This was to be researched in a creative team with choreographer Catherine Seymour, filmmaker David Lefeber and composer Morgan Hayes.

Choreographer Catherine Seymour said after the research and development time in the Creation Studio:

Lab:time has blown open any preconceptions I may have had about choreographing for trapeze in the most positive way.

Due to the nature of our work it was important, when not being deliberately birdlike, to express as natural and human a quality as possible and we discovered through improvisation that working with the trapeze almost unnaturally close to the floor seemed to express more clearly and movingly the strength, vulnerability and humanity of the dancer. It was almost as if being caught between the air and the floor meant there was nowhere to hide, and a desired naturalness resulted from overcoming the unique physical challenges this presented.

We were able to invite into our process 16 year old aerial performer/dancer Ruby, who attends National Centre for Circus Arts youth classes. She participated as an equal and vital member of the team and was mentored on trapeze by Catriona. The skill and openness she brought to the process, despite her youth, meant it was possible to explore (albeit briefly) the possibilities for duets both in the air, and working aerially and in floor based dance at the same time.

From David Lefeber, filmmaker:

For those of us who had not worked with trapeze artists before, we were able to discover and explore the expressive potential inherent in the art, the musical engagement, and, very specifically for our project, character development along the path of a narrative framework, and the dramatic potential towards our poetic intentions.

And from composer Morgan Hayes:

Creatively I think the biggest gain from my point of view was being able to look at the film-footage David made as we were working. My head (and Kate's the clarinetist) tended to be buried in the score of the non improvised pieces so I only had a vague sense of how music and movement meshed. The footage tended to confound my expectations in a way which was very instructive.

Their future plans include an intimate film which, instead of a literal depiction of the Syrian refugee experience, moves ‘back into the power and subtlety of the poem’. Thus the music and the two trapeze performers would be the main focus in simple locations such as the native moors of the Hen Harrier. Therefore they have opened a dialogue with the RSPB in the hope of filming external footage of the birds and performers in situ.

Catriona finished up her analysis of the project with this insight:

An artistic collaboration like ours needs time, space and concentrated effort and imagination, away from every day interruptions and distractions, somewhere safe where the facilities are purpose built and can be trusted to be reliable.

The National Centre for Circus Arts provided this, and more. We were able to interact with each other’s creative inputs, see a bigger picture unfolding, new ideas appearing continually, all the time developing a trust and understanding of each other’s modes of working, sensibilities and temperaments in a comfortable studio space with amenable and friendly staff on hand if any needs emerged.

I cannot imagine having had a more successful outcome either personally or as a team for our time at National Centre for Circus Arts in the generous Lab:Time scheme.

Lab:time - Tamzen Moulding 

Tamzen Moulding was awarded Lab:time in September to commission a large puppet – named ‘Hugo’ – and develop the way he could be integrated into Dust, a circus show.  Below she describes how the character of the puppet developed, and how the physicality of the puppet influenced the circus artists in the Lab:time.

The puppet has developed into an interesting and quirky character and become more central to the show than I had first envisaged.

Lab:time focused on how the puppet can interact with circus equipment and how he can affect performers either directly or from a distance. His large movements worked very well to control and affect a performer from a distance. His ability to grow very tall made it possible to for him to interact with performers on aerial equipment; this will add to the surreal nature of the show that I am developing.

His inquisitive side works well with both aerial equipment without performers and interacting with a juggle. This we will develop further - as he doesn’t have the ability to catch juggling equipment the idea came across as alien to him.

We also looked at how he can interrupt an act, directly by getting in the way, or by getting the performer to do something else that he wants; this came from a game where he wants people to do a specific action and the puppeteers had to decide what it was and make the performer understand.

The impressions from the audience at the Lab:time sharing were that though the puppet was fearsome when angry, he could also be endearing despite his looming appearance. He seemed young at the beginning, but as the show progressed he seemed to learn and become more mature. 

Tamzen is now looking into developing this idea into a full show, inspired by the imagery in the book The Night Circus as well as Tim Burton, Neal Gaiman, and Edward Gory. It will follow the narrative of a girl being drawn into the black and white world of the circus. In the show, the puppet is a part of the girl; he is created from her coat and umbrella which she has at the start of the show.

Follow Tamzen on Twitter @InvertedCo  

Stefano Di Renzo – Lab:time

Stefano Di Renzo was awarded Lab:time in December to find ways that clothes could be designed specifically for the purpose of being used in circus performance. 

Stefano said of the project: in these 5 days of Lab:time I was fortunate to thoroughly investigate a new idea without the pressure to immediately turn my findings into a sellable product. These opportunities are so rare in the current climate and invaluable to invent. Lab:time enabled me to take real risks and dare to try out ideas I did not know would work.

He worked with Tina Koch as the female performer and object manipulator, who agreed that the Lab:time was vital for being a ‘pressure-free space’. She said of the time they spent in the Creation Studio: these 5 days opened the door to a whole new world and I believe there is a gem of a show hidden within. 

The Lab:time was a collaboration with Tina Bicât, a costume designer who has won the Critic’s Circle Award for her work with Punchdrunk, and has written several books on various aspects of theatre practice. Stefano wrote of her contribution:  Sharing her vast experience of creating intricately crafted costumes that hide all sorts of tricks and wonderful surprises, she opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities in costume design for circus.

The aim of my project was to research the manufacturing/design needs of a costume that has the perfect properties for being manipulated as an object and explore its choreographic and theatrical possibilities. Imagine trousers, shirts, dresses, shoes and jackets that look like everyday clothing, but have been carefully designed to move well when being thrown and caught and manipulated.

By incorporating hidden magnets and weights in the perfect place in the fabric and experimenting with different shapes and materials I wanted to come up with a prototype for male and female clothing that manipulates well.

We learned a great deal about the inherent manipulation properties of different types of fabric and have been able to identify exactly what we need to make a more intricate prototype for male and female clothing.

By playing around with the clothes and doing some lead improvisations we found some exciting possibilities we hadn’t previously thought of. There is a great promise in layering clothing of different properties and incorporating hidden tricks.

Other than just manipulating the fabric there is also the possibility that the costume might turn into all sorts of circus equipment: A pair of trouser legs extending into Silks, two sleeves of a top being wound up into a slack rope…