Plainsong (2009- )

Plainsong is a live duet between performer Nikki Tomlinson and cellist Hannah Marshall. It is a structured improvisation, with each performance building on the memory of the last while responding to its new site/situation. Versions been shown in black-box theatres, studio/gallery spaces and outdoors.

The movement in Plainsong is almost entirely in profile to the audience, shunting backwards and forwards as though the body is scanning the space, never quite stopping, but looping like a swimmer from wall to wall. Similarly the sound is based on the simple lines of plainchant, but with occasional syncopated sections - the sound is improvised live along with the movement, within a structure that allows us to be more or less influenced by each other, or deliberately counter each other.

Plainsong draws on the structure and sense of timing in Juan Uslé's abstract grid-like painting, Soñé que revelabas (Inquieto) (2006), I dreamed that you were revealed. 'Inquieto' means restless, also passionate. Uslé painted this work while wired up to a heart-calibrator, and literally painted in time to his own heartbeat. There is a sense in the painting of a gradual emergence; with the physicality of the painter very present.

Another source is Goya's Water Carrier, an image of a peasant woman which is at once defiant, bountiful and elemental. It carries a sense of the dignity of labour and a kind of earthy simplicity of a repeated and necessary task. Again I am not trying to represent the painting in a direct way but have been influenced by its essence.

Plainsong shifts between earthiness, joy, sensuality, atonement and buoyancy and explores the sculptural potential of simple movement, and the material resonance and tension between the bodies of the dancer, musician and cello.

"such mesmerising time and attention, the resonance between the strings and your body, resonance through the space and light but also across time and memory. I was absorbed and moved" Theron Schmidt

"a beautiful performance, it was just simple and time disappeared" Mildred Rimbaud

Plainsong was developed at La Caldera (Barcelona), and through mentoring with Rosemary Butcher on Independent Dance's Critical Pathways project. Versions of it have been shown at Siobhan Davies Studios, the Arcola Theatre, on Hackney Marshes and during Moving Architecture at Clarence Mews.

Stills from video shot by Carrie Mueller

MovingArchitecture weekend 17 - 19 July

Plainsong at MovingArchitecture 3
Images by Joe Green

MovingArchitecture 3 is curated by Caroline Salem and Ed Frith, at their live-work space 40 Clarence Mews in Hackney.
New works created for the architect-designed house, studio and garden by Jo Dyer, Katsura Isobe, Karin Fisher-Potisk, Caroline Salem, Ed Frith, Nikki Tomlinson

Friday 17 July : 4pm, 6.30pm
Saturday 18 July : 1pm, 4pm
Sunday 19 July : 1pm, 4pm

Places are limited, to book please contact :
insideoutside@movingarchitecture.com
or call Ed Frith or Caroline Salem :
0208 986 6008

Contribution to catalogue, food and drinks: £10

Heni Hale, Karin Fisher-Potisk, Nikki Tomlinson : new works at Arcola's Studio K on 9 July

Three distinctive pieces by choreographer-performers Henrietta Hale, Karin Fisher-Potisk and Nikki Tomlinson. The evening is an experiment in bringing together this work for the first time in the new context of Arcola’s Studio K.

Plainsong by Nikki Tomlinson with Hannah Marshall
Safe/Unsafe by Heni Hale
she becomes her by Karin Fisher-Potisk

Arcola Theatre
27 Arcola St
London
E8 2DJ

Thursday 9 July
8.30pm

Tickets : £10
Box office : 020 7503 1646
www.arcolatheatre.com

Plainsong at Siobhan Davies Studios 5 June

Plainsong will be shown at Siobhan Davies Studios on Friday 5 June.
This evening is part of Critical Pathways, through which Independent Dance have provided a framework for choreographers and artists working with the body/movement; access to regular group critique and dialogue, shared studio space and on-going mentoring with Rosemary Butcher.

On 5 June we'll be testing and talking about ideas that have emerged during this lab. We are: Luisa D'Ambrosio, Janine Harrington, Karin Fisher-Potisk, Lizzy Le Quesne, Vangelis Legakis, Katie Keeble, Nikki Tomlinson.

Friday 5 June
7pm
FREE - not ticketed, all welcome.

Siobhan Davies Studios
St Georges Rd
SE1

Folk Dance (2007-8, 40mins)

Folk Dance is a performance installation for an audience of between two and six, influenced by the circularity, harmony, simplicity and ritual associated with folk traditions. It is a mix of live and recorded dances, a series of super8 films featuring friends dancing to Lie to Me by Tom Waits, a video projection of sheep on the South Downs and a live performance threading between these images and influences. Much of the movement happens within arms' reach of the audience, who sit within the gallery or studio space.

Developed at La Caldera (Barcelona), Pen Pynfarch (Wales) and Clarence Mews (London) and with the participation of Sebastian Baczkiewicz, Liz Drown and Frances Scott.
Video stills below by Roger Lapuente, super8 stills by Nikki Tomlinson

Staithe (2007, 6mins)

Staithe is a distillation of a 3-year performance project, saw/sore/soar, looking at memory, habitual patterns and the nature of change. Made on Burnham Overy beach in Norfolk in 2005, here it is re-cut by film-maker Lucy Cash as a single-screen video. Earlier versions involved a dialogue between live and recorded material, with the performer dancing live with a projection of a 20-minute version of the film.
saw/sore/soar was shown in London at: The Place, Hoxton Hall, Hackney Empire, and at Sensitive Skin Festival (Nottingham); Spring Collection at The Point (Eastleigh); San Francisco Fringe Festival; Masdanza (Gran Canaria).
Staithe has previously been shown in London at the Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance symposium at Goldsmiths; Falling Wide's Outsider Dancing programme at Toynbee Studios; the Chisenhale Biennale curated by Richard Layzell and Alana Jelinek at Chisenhale Studios.

Dance Like Nobody is Looking

Staithe (2007, 6mins) is being screened in Lucy Thane's Dance like Nobody is Looking programme, which includes work by Marina de Quay, Javier Ortega, Quintana Valero, Antonio Harris, Catherine Wheeler. There is more info on Staithe further down this page.

Thursday 5 March 2009
from 8pm
FREE

Unit 73a Regent Studios
8 Andrews Road
off Broadway
London
E8 4QN

Critical Pathways

At the moment I am developing Plainsong at Caroline Salem's space at Clarence Mews in Hackney, and also at Siobhan Davies Studios within the context of 'Critical Pathways'. Led by Rosemary Butcher, this gives choreographers access to regular group critique, dialogue, and discussion around their own work and approach, as well as shared access to studio space to develop ideas.

The Critical Pathways group facilitated by Rosemary Butcher and Gill Clarke through Independent Dance are:
Temitope Ajose Cutting, Luisa D'Ambrosio, Charlotte Darbyshire, Augusto Corrieri, Karin Fisher-Potisk, Janine Harrington, Katie Keeble, Lizzy Le Quesne, Vangelis Legakis.
You can find out more about the Critical Pathways project on Janine Harrington's blog Common Things To Talk About.

Bird (2006-7, 25mins)

Bird, a site-specific piece choreographed and performed with Lucy Cash, was made in response to the tactile architecture of Clarence Mews studio in London, with its unusual overhead view onto the floorspace. Bird used simple abstract movements drawn from disparate sources including aerial photography, ballet, geometry and Josef Albers' Cables. It was also influenced by some of Rebecca Horn’s work, her notion of futile machines for example, with the performers attracting and repelling each other, drawn like magnets to each other and to the audience looking down on the space from above. For InsideOutside, curated by choregrapher Caroline Salem and architect Ed Frith for Architecture Week 2007, Bird took the form of a moving installation, with each audience experiencing a different version of the piece.
"There was an irrational desire to jump down to you..very powerful on a dreamlike level." (Emily Young, filmmaker)
Photography below by Ole Birkeland.

22 Sandringham Road

All are very welcome to 22 Sandringham Road, an unthemed group show of work by: Ole Birkeland, Simone Boux, Lucy Cash, Frances Scott, Nikki Tomlinson, Amzie Viladot.
Drawing, film, installation, photography, performance to camera.

13 - 14 & 19 - 21 September 2008
Open midday - 6pm and outside of these times by appointment 22sandringham@googlemail.com

Venue:
22 Sandringham Road
Hackney
London
E8 2LP

Directions: Sandringham Road is opposite the Rio Cinema on Kingsland Rd
Travel: Buses 67, 149, 243, 76, 38, 30, 242. Train: Dalston Overground

Selected other work

Friday Night is Music Night (2005, 45mins)
A one-to-one performance made for a friend inspired by his love of the long-running radio show Friday Night is Music Night, using songs stolen from his collection - Bond themes by James Barry, Nick Cave's Into My Arms, Grandaddy's Now it's On, The Who's Baba O'Reilly. A roundabout way of giving him a record player, via vodka cocktails and pillows stuffed with glitter.

Cast (2004, 25mins)
Improvisation at Chisenhale around simple score of playing with changes in light and shadow in the space at dusk.

Pictures and Fingerprints (2003, 20mins)
Performer in Josephine Dyer's group work based on the autobiographical story of a Kosovan woman seeking asylum in London, shown at The Place's Resolution season in 2004.

House of Kurtz (2002, durational)
Performed as cellist in a site-specific piece by Athina Vahla, House of Kurtz at the Shipwright's Palace in Deptford, based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
http://onesquareyard.com/localExamples/houseOfKurtz/#

Home (2001, 5mins)
A short solo made under the direction of Claire Whistler for the opening of Mile End Park Pavilion.

Solo 5.1(2001, 15mins)
Performed at the Barn Theatre, Rose Bruford College in an evening of short works curated by Daniel Vais

Solo 4.1 (2000, 5mins)
Performed at street festival Fetes de Lumiére in Paris

Previous performance work as dancer in devised pieces by; The Five Andrews at Trinity Buoy Wharf; Emily Burns at Morley College; Jessica Lerner at Deptford Albany; Claire Keating at the 291 Gallery: as cellist with the band Lark.
Over the past few years I have been fortunate to study in workshop/labs with Raimund Hoghe, Jennifer Monson, KJ Holmes, Kate Brown, Athina Vahla, Rosemary Butcher, Giovanni Felicioni, Miranda Tufnell, Gaby Agis, Rachel Vonmoos, Trisha Bauman, Ko Murobushi, Rosemary Brandt.

Review of Slow Moves Rich Tales, an evening at San Francisco Fringe of four solos made and performed by Florence Peake, Polly Hudson, Sally Dean, Nikki Tomlinson.
http://www.sffringe.org/fringe05/05reviews/sally.html

Review of Still, It Matters, an evening curated by Rajni Shah at Hoxton Hall, of work by Rotozaza, Rajni Shah, Nikki Tomlinson