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 mild and in darkness, and a talking clock, to create a sequence 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 unfastened dancing rising by way of 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 ready 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 serious about scale and dealing with ‘micro-movement’ for a very long time; a somatic apply that’s about trying 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 type of reduction from infinite labour – the labour of constructing decisions. 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 varied works over the past 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 in addition, functioning as a relaxing machine, bringing familiarity and regularity to the construction of the work.
Coming by way of the pandemic, I believe there’s a lot extra anxiousness, a heightened sense of management and surveillance. I’m serious about making work that offers with these tensions. Work that’s someway soothing, spacious, clear however nonetheless intriguing, asking the viewers to be current, sensing and implicated within the shifting internet of relations.
I’m seeking to join once more with what excites me about dancing, and it’s this expertise of watching somebody be totally themselves, of their uniqueness and particularity and the way that may be an actual magical and liberating factor to witness. This work invitations individuals to decelerate, to tune in, to be with the small print, to look at the motion from a spot between sharp and comfortable focus. A lot is so excessive definition, shiny, slick, clear and I’m serious about bringing the blur, a softening, the periphery.”
Header picture by Maria Gracia Velazquez.