NOW 23 presents Serafine1369 IV
NOW is again at The Yard with a month-long programme for the right here and Now. Since 2014, NOW has supported, nurtured and showcased new concepts in theatre, supporting over 60 artists whose work has been introduced internationally. NOW 23 arrives with an thrilling line-up of Yard commissions and premieres together with IV from SERAFINE1369 (AKA Jamila Johnson-Small beforehand working as Final Yearz Fascinating Negro), which runs April 25-28 at 8pm
IV brings collectively our bodies in motion and stillness, in gentle and in darkness, and a talking clock, to create a collection of tableaux and moments of dancing with full abandonment. Every minute, on the minute, they transfer…
SERAFINE1369 has created a choreographic machine, a piece of free dancing rising by tight construction, a system of motion and stillness, a meditative play between instinctive rhythms and strict timing. Dancers Darcy Jane Wallace, Steph McMann and Natifah White be a part of SERAFINE1369 onstage.
IV is about to the soundtrack, made by long-term collaborator Josh Anio Grigg, of a breaking storm, a circling, fragmenting, contracting and increasing, not-straightforward motion of time.
Says SERAFINE1369: “I’ve been fascinated by scale and dealing with ‘micro-movement’ for a very long time; a somatic apply that’s about making an attempt to hint the start of a motion, earlier than it turns into seen.
Company is a crucial theme for me, as people inside social programs, positioned in marked our bodies that carry social which means and associated entry to sources and connection, as dancers for a choreographer, as dancers for cash, as our bodies in time. I’m curious concerning the philosophical thought of destiny as providing some form of reduction from countless labour – the labour of creating selections. This work is about creating a bigger system – zooming out in addition to zooming in.
I’ve been working with the counting of time (minutes) as a rhythmic mattress for numerous works during the last 3+ years, calling in concepts of time that form our lives and our bodies as being a human development, loaded with (persevering with) histories of colonialism, guided by efforts in the direction of financial accumulation, labour extraction and different types of management. But additionally, functioning as a relaxing gadget, bringing familiarity and regularity to the construction of the work.
Coming by the pandemic, I believe there may be a lot extra anxiousness, a heightened sense of management and surveillance. I’m fascinated by making work that offers with these tensions. Work that’s in some way soothing, spacious, clear however nonetheless intriguing, asking the viewers to be current, sensing and implicated within the shifting internet of relations.
I’m trying to join once more with what excites me about dancing, and it’s this expertise of watching somebody be completely themselves, of their uniqueness and particularity and the way that may be an actual magical and liberating factor to witness. This work invitations folks to decelerate, to tune in, to be with the small print, to observe the motion from a spot between sharp and delicate focus. A lot is so excessive definition, shiny, slick, clear and I’m fascinated by bringing the blur, a softening, the periphery.”
Header picture by Maria Gracia Velazquez.
