ART meets contemporary dance. This pretty much sums up what you can expect until Friday as the Flatfoot Dance Company and artSPACE Gallery join forces.
Basically, Durban’s Flatfoot Dance Company invites visual artists and dancers to be part of a unique and innovative residency at artSPACE Gallery. A press release states that the gallery will be a creative hub for dancers and fine art artists as the week will involve sessions during which artists can watch and engage with dancers in their daily rehearsals and the programme, including a specific session where dancers will focus on portraiture.
Durban artists will have the opportunity to paint, draw and create around the dancers as they rehearse, dance and assemble choreography. Flatfoot dancers will continue with their normal day schedules and open their daily work process.
Owner of the gallery, Karen Bradtke, says: “There will be some dancing in the gallery with some drawings and portraits of the dancers’ movement. There might be more sketches than actual finished drawings. It’s more about being able to come in as artists and work using the dancers as models. Any artist who wants to come in is welcome.”
Explaining the relationship between the gallery and the dance company, Bradtke reveals: “We’re opening the space to other arts and visual arts. We’re also using this space for workshops and so on. But for this showcase with Flatfoot, it’s somewhat different from a dance show and the reason why we like the Flatfoot Dance Company is that they are artists who use dance as a means to express themselves.”
As for the dance performance on Friday, it is entitled Days Like These which is Flatfoot’s most recent full-length dance theatre work, reframed, re-imagined and re-crafted for the gallery space.
The press release further states that the performance offers a tender dance journey into the sacred of everyday memories. Using verbatim theatre and documentary style theatre-making methods, choreographer Lliane Loots and film-maker Karen Logan’s dance theatre work uses the life stories of the dancers as a way of us – the audience – truly trying to remember what makes us human.
l The showcase ends Friday at artSPACE Gallery with Days Like These on Friday. R100 a day for each artist, R350 for the week. R100 for the evening portraiture session on Wednesday. R50 for the Friday event (if part of the artist residency, there will be a 50% discount). For information and bookings for the art residency, call 031 312 0793 or e-mail [email protected].