SOFT WORLDS - Movement, Poetry and Collective Imagination

SOFT WORLDS
Movement, Poetry and Collective Imagination

A pillow can be a place to rest, a partner to move with, a creature or a landscape. What sensations, images and stories might it invite?

Join dance artist Marie Chabert and artist-anthropologist Rich Thornton for a three-hour research workshop exploring pillows, movement and words. Building on our research at Rambert Playground last September, we’ll explore the materiality and imagery of these familiar objects through movement, touch and play. Discovering how their weight, softness and shape can offer ways to move and interact with one another.

Along the way, we’ll experiment with words and poetry, discovering how they might emerge from, accompany or change our dances. An invitation to follow our curiosity and see what we imagine together.

Please note unfortunately there's no wheelchair access to the building. If you have any access needs you can communicate with us prior to the event.

Bios

Rich Thornton

Rich Thornton is an artist anthropologist and theatre director who uses traditional and multimodal ethnographic methods to explore subjectivity, ethics, theatre and education. As a social anthropologist, his work involves a critical inquiry into how people navigate their cultural, political and emotional worlds, with a particular interest in how individuals make sense of who they are in the world.

For Rich, theatre is a way of being. Alongside writing, producing and performing theatre as part of his autoethnographic inquiry, he explores how the principles of participatory theatre can be used within anthropology. He also facilitates workshops using theatre tools and games to connect theories, emotions and empirical data through body-focused storytelling.

www.richthornton.com

Marie Chabert

Marie Chabert is a performer, choreographer, Contact Improviser and teacher whose work is rooted in collaboration and multidisciplinary practice. Her artistic research explores the relational dynamics of touch, space, bodies, gravity and liveness through somatic and experiential approaches. She brings text into dialogue with movement, creating interactive and site-specific performances that explore audience co-creation and make the space between performer and viewer tangible and malleable.

Her choreographic work has been presented internationally, including at Tanzfabrik Berlin, Art Omi in NY, The Place, Open Art Freiburg, Biennale de la Danse Off Lyon, Rimbun Dahan in Malaysia, Toplocentrala in Bulgaria, and Centro Nacional de la Danza in Mexico. As a performer, she has worked with artists and companies including Fin Walker, Kate Flatt, Freddie Opoku-Addaie, Retina Dance Company, Katie Green, Jean Abreu, Vera Tussing and Lionel Hoche, and has performed at the Royal Ballet and Opera.

Marie curates the Monday Contact Improvisation Jam and Women’s Touch. She is also co-founder of The Godet, a collective with Thomas Broda and Danny Kearns creating work at the intersection of dance, live music and physical theatre.

She holds a BA in Contemporary Dance from London Contemporary Dance School and an MA in Creative Practice from Trinity Laban and Independent Dance. She is a recipient of the Gill Clarke Bursary and a Leverhulme scholarship.

mariechabert.com