TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU : 4 - 6 October 2018, London

In the midst of rapid change, polarisation and crises of social imagination in the UK and mainland Europe, small acts of imagination and friendship become radical interventions. Curated by Lisa Alexander, TO YOU TO YOU TO YOU is a gathering of love and dissent that seeks to connect, exchange and witness through performance and assembly, and through the action, idea or form of a love letter. Over twenty artists from the UK, Europe and beyond take part in a programme of performance over two evenings including commissioned work. There is an accompanying publication edited by Lisa Alexander being launched at LADA on 4 October.

This two-day programme at Toynbee Studios builds on Love Letters to a (Post)Europe at Bios, Athens in 2015, in which 26 artists created short works. For this programme I am revisiting and presenting FOLLY.



Friday 5 October:
Brian Catling & David Tolley / ESKA / Tim Etchells / Catherine Hoffmann / Mikhail Karikis / Claire MacDonald / Ivana Müller / Daniel Oliver / Florence Peake / Maria Sideri

Saturday 6 October:
Kate Adams / Dean Atta / Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir / Season Butler / Robin Deacon / Matthew Goulish & Lin Hixson/ Brian Lobel / Erica Scourti / Marikiscrycrycry/ Nikki Tomlinson

"Love Letters to a (Post)Europe connects artistic practice and intervention with solidarity, as a mode of visibility."
– Diana Damian Martin, Exeunt Magazine 2015

Supported using public funding by Arts Council England and by Live Art Development Agency, Artsadmin and Counterpoints Arts.
Full info at https://www.toyoutoyoutoyou.com/

Florence Peake – RITE: on this pliant body we slip our WOW! at De La Warr Pavilion (2018)

RITE by Florence Peake at Palais de Tokyo, Paris : April 2018

Performer : Susanna Recchia
Photo : Anne Tetzlaff

Florence Peake’s RITE explores the idea of the primal body as a vital force for change. RITE offers a reinterpretation of a pivotal moment in modernism’s history: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, composed in 1913 for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, the original performance is notorious for the riot it provoked at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on the first night, when theatre-goers apoplectic with anger had to be forcibly removed from the venue.

Peake transposes Stravinsky and Nijinsky’s iconic ballet to what she describes as ‘performative sculpture’. Taking ritual, sacrifice, labour, community and fertility as themes, RITE celebrates the primal power of the body as an expressive force against conservatism.

For Do Disturb//Festival 2018 at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Florence created a 3-women version of RITE, performed by Katye Coe, Iris Chan, Susanna Recchia.
Rehearsal director : Susanna Recchia
Sound : Beatrice Dillon
Producer : Nikki Tomlinson

RITE was developed in 2017 with support from the Jerwood Choreographic Research Project 2017 with partners Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Cambridge Junction, Dance4, Greenwich Dance, LIFT, London College of Fashion, Sadler's Wells, Site Gallery and Tintype Gallery and through public funding from Arts Council England. RITE was developed at Somerset House Studios and through a related residency at Cass Sculpture Foundation and West Dean College. The 3-person version premiered in April 2018 at Palais de Tokyo, Paris and the full cast version premiered at De La Warr Pavilion in May 2018.

Full information at http://www.florencepeake.com/