Dudendance report

Dudendance Huntly Dance Artists-in-Residence April – October 2002 Self-Evaluation Dudendance and Deveron Arts

Dudendance Deveron Arts Residency Evaluation Dudendance were invited by Deveron arts to undertake a six month “dance artist in residence project” in Huntly. We were asked to submit a proposal of ideas that would fit in with the Deveron Arts “town as venue” philosophy. Dudendance proposed working in the medium of film and combining this with dance to produce short video works with local school children. We also suggested running an intensive two week summer school to develop more in depth work with the children (see evaluation) and also to run classes for adults related to our up- coming tango project “Café Bohemios”.

Settling in This was the first time we had undertaken such a residency and for such a length of time. Adapting to a more rural environment (in terms of amenities etc..) was not really an issue with us as Clea grew up in a small village and Paul had lived in Saint Albans, Hertfordshire for many years previously.

In the beginning the problems we had were connected to what was expected of us from Deveron Arts clashing with what was expected of us as far as the school work was concerned. When approaching the two primary schools it became clear that due to their lack of staff in terms of the “arts” (particularly dance), what we had to offer could have easily led to us acting as substitute teachers within the schools. We had meetings with Claudia and then with the schools to determine exactly how much work to undertake without jeopardizing artistic integrity within the project. We realized that Deveron Arts was very much interested in the merging of our artistic abilities within the rural town environment. After negotiating with the schools we decided on a once a week hobbies class for the Gordon primary school and arranged for workshops in dance at the Gordon Senior Schools as well as giving an intensive three day workshop at Drumblade Primary school.

The settling in time took about six weeks. As well as the negotiating with the schools, much of our time was spent looking for accommodation. It seems there is a shortage of cheap rented accommodation within Huntly. Luckily this was solved by us moving into Battlehill Lodge in mid May where we stayed the whole residency.

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Artistic Benefits / Development of Dudendance in Huntly School Projects The work within the schools was restrictive in terms of the amount of time we actually had to develop work with the children. The school timetable meant the most appropriate time for us was a Friday afternoon hobby class where children “choose” to participate in one of several hobbies on offer. This was a positive point for us as we felt the children who attended were very excited by the prospects of making a film. The work was rewarding in terms of working with the children, getting to know them and their ideas, but for us, working within the school system, and the limitations the timetable imposed meant that this sometimes felt more like a “job” than a fulfilling artistic experience. There was also too little time for filming which cut the film-making “process” for the children.

As we wanted to make something out of the footage we managed to put more of our creative talents into editing the projects which took up almost the same amount of time as working within the schools. This was the first time we had used an ibook and we learnt a lot about the possibilities of editing.

On the whole the experience was very rewarding for the children and it was great to see, especially boys loose their inhibitions about moving and “playing” together. It brought home to us how important imaginative play acting is and we felt rewarded by the fact that we managed to tap into the children’s imaginations and get them into a film-making work process as an extension of playing together. We felt generally that the children were freer in terms of their expressive potential and as our “collaborators” when we worked outside the school grounds, especially when filming on location and during the summer school. The schools work was valuable in gaining the children’s interest and we got a lot out of editing the material, both in artistic and technical terms.

Summer School The summer school was a different story. From the onset we put a lot of our own dance theatre improvisation ideas to the children, who took up the work with great enthusiasm and imagination. This was really inspiring for us and after the first few days we could no longer relate to the children as “children”.They became collaborators and I felt they were able to relax into a very sophisticated work process without us having to be literal or explanatory as to the outcome of what we were aiming for. The children went through a process of improvising, inventing, working with animation ideas and inventing surreal sequences with imagined characters and objects. The end of the summer school was a little fraught as we needed at least another week to allow the children enough time to get into the filming part. This will be addressed in the future with the next summer school planned as a three week project. The resulting film / animation now feel like a Dudendance work with the children as collaborators. This experience showed us there is another possibility for our work to exist with and for a younger audience.

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Café Bohemios The work in schools ran parallel to work we were developing for an SAC funded project (Dudendance received project funding from International Projects in Scotland). “Café Bohemios” was managed by Dudendance administrator Jean Cameron, who co-coordinated venues in the north east and helped with publicity and marketing. Claudia helped market the project locally and also with designing the poster. Café Bohemios was a part workshop- part performance that toured the North east to five venues at the end of the residency period.

Throughout the residency period Dudendance taught Tango workshops in the Huntly “Ex-servicemen’s club”. We discovered the club as an unusual space with a good dance floor, full of local characters and interesting in terms of its atmosphere. We ran a once weekly class that was well attended by people from Huntly and the surroundings, some people coming from as far as Aberdeen and Forres. This class proved a good way to connect to people and build an interest for Café Bohemios.

The class attracted the attention of the local press and we also performed part of the show for the Jubilee celebrations in the Stewarts Hall.

Dudendance was joined by guests from Argentina (Fabiana Galante, Sandro Nunziato and Tina Ehrenhaus) .Once the guest artists had arrived from Argentina (Sept.18th) we began a three week rehearsal process that took part in both the Ex servicemen’s club and at Battlehill Lodge as well as teaching workshops locally and in Aberdeenshire.

The show opened in Huntly on Oct. 9th and was well attended by a mix of people that had attended the workshops and had been attracted by local advertising. The show then toured other eight venues in Scotland (of them two more were in Huntly: Scott’s Hospital and a tango dinner at the Castle Hotel).

The idea of the show was to recreate a “milonga” atmosphere (the Argentine equivalent of a ceilidh), the evening began with a workshop, followed by a half hour tango cabaret and finally a chance for everyone to take to the dance floor and dance with the cast.

This was the first time Dudendance has undertaken a participatory event on such a scale. The project proved rewarding from building on an audience –relationship. At the end of each night we had the feeling of getting to know everyone in the room through the contact we had with people in the workshop and on the dance floor. The structure of the evening created a breakdown of the traditional audience / performer relationship and seemed to be very enjoyable for the people taking part. Dudendance see this kind of work as one branch of their artistic output and hopes, in the future to interest the same audience to come to their more artistically challenging work.

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Clea’s comments The result of the summer school and the overall experience of the residency has led to us proposing a two year lottery project to carry on the work with the children and also to develop our film work within Aberdeenshire.

I haven’t missed working in Glasgow once and have been inspired by the place, the spaces, the light and the variety of environments within Aberdeenshire. I found the people of Huntly conservative with a small c but open to new ideas and experiences.

Many people were curious as to what exactly we were up to and we had a good feedback from all the events we staged during the residency. Making contact with local artists was also positive and felt better than the competitive edge attributed to working in a city. I felt it would be a very positive move to be based rurally, especially in a small town like Huntly which is within driving distance to Aberdeen and other nice towns like Elgin and Nairn. The “space” for working, physically and psychologically is also matched by the challenge of working for new audiences. In this case we found people less elitist and culturally “ghettoized” than in the city. This was freeing and gave us a sense of place.

In terms of our relationship to Deveron Arts we managed to build an ideas base for future work and spent a lot of time discussing the consequences of making work in a place like Huntly. During the last months of our residency I spent a lot of time on a lottery application that would allow us to develop work started in the residency.

Claudia was very helpful with advice and we learnt a lot about the way funders operate from discussions with her.

The residency overall was a new life experience and has prompted us into thinking of relocating to Aberdeenshire. The only regret I have is not having time to draw. I found the trees around Battlehill woods really inspiring and would love to have time in the future to carry on with my visual art practice and connect more to the environment.

If we were to be successful with the lottery application I would also like to continue with our film and performance work and think about producing this “site specifically” in spaces around Huntly.

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Paul’s comments The work done with the children during the residency has at times felt connected physically and emotionally to the place itself. Being in the shadow of the castle and surrounded locally by many others, bloodthirsty history is never far away. As a child I can remember having very vivid imaginings about living in a real castle even though I grew up in a very urban place.

Beginning the Summer School with fairy tales seems very appropriate considering the surrounding landscape. The romantic notion of rugged hills and overgrown ruins is evident in the picture postcard images if much of Scotland generally. The physical makeup of the place is of course bound up with its history. If some of this history consists of murder and witch hunts then what legacy does this leave?

Using Horror as a starting point with much of the work we did with children proved very fruitful.

The idea of making a film did elicit a very positive response from the children. Having Horror as a theme allowed them to very quickly engage their imaginations and begin to role play characters and situations they mostly all shared a similar fascination with.

Allowing them to play within the groups created situations and actions sometimes inaccessible to us as the narratives developed often became convoluted. However their intense involvement in creating these complex stories often resulted in a more unselfconscious role when it came to filming. To some extent, particularly with the schools projects our task became one of documenting these individual stories trying to interpret their individual narratives through the actions of the children.

When it came to the filming this combination of unselfconscious role play and attempting to represent the<story> the situation created a sense of urgency that was carried through to some of the finished films.

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Deveron Arts Experience Background The core of for Deveron Art’s philosophy is to work with everybody in the community: school children, elderly people, super market shoppers, ordinary people and anyone who might become interested in the arts through direct involvement and participation.

For Deveron Arts the town is the venue, - where discrete events take place in existing spaces, rather then any specified building. A discriminating artistic program, a commitment to work with the community, cultivation of diverse international contacts are the most important mechanisms of the program of Deveron Arts. Huntly as a town is conceived not only as a venue and a place for artists to live, work, exhibit and perform, but also as a centre for communication and the exchange of ideas for all involved: the community, the artist and Deveron Arts as the arts administrator.

Deveron Arts takes a wide view of what constitutes the arts, by embracing culture as a whole. We do this work mainly through the implementation of dedicated short- and long-term artist in residence programmes of various artistic disciplines.

Importance is laid on the tri-partheid of the collaboration between artists, community and Deveron Arts itself as arts administrator.

Claudia’s Comments Until recently Deveron Arts been run on an entirely voluntary basis. Our programme was based on one short residency per year.

At the beginning of this year we decided to ‘professionalise’ ourselves and grow. This meant, more resources are necessary both in terms of money and administration. As a result we are now having more then one residency per year and also longer one’s.

The town is the venue is a new concept, unconventional in relation to most other art programmes in Scotland and elsewhere. For us the major difficulty we face is to communicate our expectations to others. Not the least because we are still in an experimental stage where we are trying out what works and what not. In a sense we don’t know exactly ourselves. To fulfill our objectives however, we need the artists to understand and collaborate in full. A continuous dialogue is therefore vital.

Having Dudendance with us for a period of seven months was a very positive experience. The company fulfilled all aspects of our objectives which are: • •

increasing audiences by developing our the town is the venue model; where new audiences are reached through unconventional venues, while promoting artistic excellence

All the projects Dudendance undertook were working in this direction. In particular the summer school provided us with an ideal example of how work with children does not necessarily need to jeopardize artistic excellence and challenge. The opposite was the case. The films as an output leave us with a legacy that we will be able to base our work on for the years to come.

Similarly, Café Bohemios is an excellent example of how working with people in the community can have innovative artistic outcomes, and this in an unconventional venue like the Ex-Servicemen’s Club.

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The other positive aspect was the touring. When working in a place like Huntly, which is far away from any urban center, it is difficult to show that we are doing good work that is worth paying attention to. CafĂŠ Bohemios helped us to put both Deveron Arts, but also Huntly on the map. For the first time we were able to premier a show in the town, which was then toured to other venues throughout Scotland.

Dudendance were chosen by a selection team made of Deveron Arts members and the then Dancer Officer of Aberdeenshire Council. From a self-critical point of view it is important to note, that we can not make assumptions. Every artist is different and has different needs. Having had dancers for the first time we needed to learn, that they might need more then just a gym. While we had a chance to meet Clea and Paul before they came to live here, we need in the future to address much clearer the necessary support required in order to start the residency full steam right from the beginning.

Last but not least, I think it is important to say, that having Clea and Paul here was a very good thing in itself. Them walking around the town, known as being the dancers in residence, the many discussions we had and the dynamism they created. The international component â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Fabiana, Sandro and Tina from Argentina added to this experience for all of us here in Huntly.

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Thanks Thanks above all to the community of Huntly without whom this project would not have been possible.

This residency project was made financially possible through two grants by Awards for All and the Carnegie UK Trust.

Café Bohemios was made possible through an international grant by the Scottish Arts Council.

Deveron Arts is a partner in the On The Edge Programme of Gray’s School of Arts, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen (www.ontheedgeresearch.org).

The organization is corefunded by the Esméé Fairbairn Foundation and the Rural Challenge Fund.

ED THE CARNEGIE UNITED KINGDOM TRUST Incorporated by Royal Charter 1917 9