Caroline Bowditch
 (b.Melbourne 1971) majored in performing arts for her Education degree (1990); has been dancing in mixed ability companies for 15 years; since arriving in the UK in 2002 Caroline has been mentored by Adam Benjamin, CandoCo and Yael Flexer (Bedlam Dance). She participated in several residencies with CandoCo; was a participant in The Dancers Project 2005 (The Place); was one of five disabled choreographers undergoing training on the Cultural Shift project 2005 (East London Dance); was one of 22 artists invited to be part of Colina 2006 (Collaboration in Arts) where she choreographed a new piece ‘Staircase’ which involved sending choreographic directions to 8 dancers via text message throughout the piece. She was commissioned to produce a site specific piece for Trafalgar Square as part of the Liberty Festival (September 2006) In Spring 2007 she toured and performed, nationally and internationally, with Scottish Dance Theatre (Spring 2007 tour). She has just been awarded a Wellcome Trust Arts Award to create a new solo piece called ‘proband’. She is a founder member of Weave Movement Theatre (Melbourne) and The FATHoM Project (Newcastle).		  

 

 

 

- a duet collaboration between -
Caroline Bowditch and Fiona Wright



Caroline Bowditch and Fiona Wright are two choreographers, (one Australian, one British; one disabled, one non-disabled), currently working together on intriguing explorations that dance on the borders of mainstream assumptions about the implicit and explicit image of ‘the dancer’ and the different potentials for our bodies to be seen as knowing, skilful and passionate. With more than fifteen years of independent solo and collaborative performance-making and directing between them in national and international programmes and festivals of Dance, Live Art and Community Arts, these artists are committed to an intelligent experimentation that is rooted in the bodily experience.

Over the last 3 years girl jonah have been developing their own movement aesthetic which explores the detail and the difference in our movements. Our bodies sharing the choreography; the fascinations with the possibilities for our individual movements and raises questions about what is revealed between us as we move together. We feel that our work has raised the visability of disabled artists without being named as an ‘integrated’ dance project.

Work by girl jonah was included in both BDE and Dance Umbrella in 2006.

New work, She was a knife thrower’s assistant, will premiere at the Dubin Dance Festival in May 2008.

contact: info@girljonah.org

 

 



- Current work available by girl jonah -

~

this two

Devised and performed by Caroline Bowditch and Fiona Wright

bodies dancing
bodies dancing different dances
different bodies dancing the same dances differently

this two is a highly unusual and gently provocative duet performance. A delicate contemplation of our views of the dancing body, offering the audience questions about particular and personalised ways of moving and being moved.

25 minutes approximately

Performed at British Dance Edition, Leeds, 2006, Dancing the World, Newcastle, 2006, Dance Umbrella, London 2006

~

She was a knife thrower’s assistant

Two bodies being the same person.
Two bodies playing the same character.

Solo dances at the same time.

Singing different songs at the same time. Looking for a voice.
Finding a voice. Looking for a song.

Putting your words in my mouth.

Different bodies doing the same dance differently.

Looking for a story in a choreography of waiting.

We are both she, we are both the lead character.

When I dance I feel like you. Is this what it feels
like to be you?

Keeping your nerve. Never flinching.

Stand there, no, not there, there. Whatever you do,
don't move.

30-35 minutes approximately

This new work is to be premiered at The Dublin Dance Festival, May 2008

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DVDs of both pieces are available on request
Camera and edit by Becky Edmunds

 

 

Header image: Matthew Andrews

 

Supported by


  
 

Fiona Wright
 (b. London 1966) is currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne and has been making performances since the late 1980s when she trained in Visual and Performing Arts in Brighton. She has become known for her solo work, developing movement-based performance through choreography, voice and installation, presenting both Nationally and Internationally through commissions and funding grants in both Independent Dance and Live Art contexts. Recent work includes several close-up, short performances created for a solo spectator, presented as durational works in various sites – back-stage dressing rooms, a kitchen, galleries and a ship’s cabin - at venues and festivals, the most recent piece being salt drawing (Serralves Museum for Contemporary Arts, Oporto and Sensitive Skin/Bonington Gallery, Nottingham 2004; Navigate Festival/Baltic 2005; Gresol Art, Girona 2006). This included explorations of documentation through writing and a collaboration with video maker Becky
Edmunds and has continued in other projects, such as a performance lecture series Other Versions of an Uncertain Body, connected to a PhD study at Nottingham Trent University (2005) with performances including Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and conferences such as PARIP at Bristol and Leeds Universities. Her current solo project is a new one-woman show On Lying, funded by Arts Council England and presented as an early version at OPENPORT Festival, Chicago and subsequently at Battersea Arts Centre and the Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle in the UK in 2007 before further development and touring of the work in 2008. Freelance research includes dramaturgy (with Simone Aughterlony, Zurich and Kate McIntosh, Brussels) and publications - articles for journals such as Performance Research and a small book, amino essays: twenty short performance papers (2004) – also as visiting writer for the COLINA Lab project at Dance City, Newcastle and also as participant artist at the Lab
in Tallinn, Estonia, 2007. She also works as a lecturer, connected especially with the Contemporary Arts course at Nottingham Trent University (1994-2001) and as subject leader of Dance and Visual Art at Brighton University (2002-2003). She is regularly invited to teach, most recently on the Dance degree course at Northumbria University, the Performance department at University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the Contemporary Theatre Practice course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow and as Visiting Artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the Fall Semester 2007.