Here is a small selection from the film material of Bodies of Water. 

Camera/edit Katie Keeble, Dancer Ria Uttridge.

Live Art Festival and Symposium, Theatre Academy, Helsinki, Finland June 2009

pht Ellie Keeble - performance / Rock Church

pht Katie Keeble/Zach McCollough - rehearsals

pht Ellie Keeble/Kat Gould - performance / Riverbank

pht Kat Gould/Ellie Keeble - Contemporary Art Gallery / performance

pht Kat Gould/Ellie Keeble - performance / Rock Church

pht Kat Gould - market square / train lines

pht Ellie Keeble - Rock Church / performance

pht Katie Keeble - city centre / Harakka Island

pht Katie Keeble / Zach McCullough - Harakka Island / rehearsal

pht Katie Keeble / Ellie Keeble - memorial / performance

pht Ellie Keeble - Theatre Academy / market square

pht Ellie Keeble / Kat Gould - market square / performance

Arriving in Helsinki on the Saturday, we were performing on the Monday, having one day to have a look at the city and grasp our bearings, it was great to see Helsinki by day and by night!

Here are some photographs from Helsinki, by photographer Ellie Keeble, fine artist Kat Gould, percussionist, Zach McCullough, and myself, during our time in rehearsals, performance and exploring the city.

For the performance I played with the projector in the performance space, moving the image around and exploring the effects it created together with the movement and sound. 

The projected images were created together with Andy Wood, editor/film maker, and myself, where we selected photographic images as well as moving image cut directly to the electronic sound. The sound was a recorded composition of electronic sound, violin, Mardyah Tucker, and live percussion, Zach McCullough, by composer Timo Tuhkanen. The atmosphere of the images, sound and live performance invited the audience into the landscapes and waterscapes projected, to experience for themselves the environments created, asking them to discover where they are.

The festival and symposium at the Theatre Academy, was of international artists working in many different disciplines, ranging from visual artists, live artists, performance artists, dance artists, social-engaged artists and installation artists, it was an amazing experience for me to see so many different pieces, and ideas of work. 

I really enjoyed meeting the MA students at the Theatre Academy, whom are studying issues in performance art, performativity, corporeality, and events, and together with invited artists gave lecture based discussions of their work, and held discussions surrounding different themes of performance, including presence and disturbance; interactivity, autonomy, and automatism; and on documentation and performativity. 

I was attending the presence and disturbance, and Zach the interactivity, autonomy and automatism discussions, and although only there for a few days it was fascinating to talk with everyone in the group about each others work and the ideas we are looking into and our processes so far with answering our own questions within these topics.

I look forward to keeping in touch with the artists I met in Helsinki and hope to continue to talk about our work together. Many thanks to the organisers and everyone at The Theatre Academy, Helsinki, Finland.

still images from Norfolk Shoot...

dancer Ria Uttridge

photography Ellie Keeble

stills from film shoot in Norfolk...

some stills from our shoot in Norfolk, dancer Ria Uttridge explores the landscape, environment and surroundings and camera Katie Keeble explores focus, frame, texture and colour...

more to follow...

rehearsal at Dance Research Studio with Katie and Ria

here one dancer is improvising around themes and images of an open space they have chosen of an environment they enjoy to be; whom they are with, feelings and senses of being there, whilst the other dancer is playing with the frame of the camera, where the dancer is in frame and following the dancer with their own use of breath to move together through film and dance. This is preparation for our filming day in Norfolk with Ria dancing and responding to the immediate environment, with thoughts and memories of work we have been researching with our bodies, ideas and concepts so far...

dance/moving image Katie Keeble and Ria Uttridge

research day in Norfolk 

Images from our research day in Norfolk, exploring the landscapes and environments at locations in Norfolk. Ellie and I played with different images and moments in time with choreography, as well as 'of the moment' responses to where we were and the surrounding spaces we encountered. we were interested in the locations we found on the day, as places we can return to at a later date for filming, as well as images that can be projected in co-ordination and connection with a live dancer in performance.

photography Ellie Keeble

sharing with Critical Pathways and our initial stages of collaborating with photography ~

during our research and process in creating the material for the first sharing of work, we had been working with photographer Chris Daly in rehearsals. Chris came into the studio with us in one of our rehearsals and captured the essence of our research and movement material. i really like the photographs from that day, and have posted them on the blog pages. my thoughts of inviting a photographer to work with us in the process was to have images of movement material that we can feed back into our creative process in creating material. in a similar structure of creating material in improvisation with images and ideas reflecting through the movement.

in rehearsals we explored feelings and thoughts that we had experienced through the last two days before our rehearsal, also keeping awareness in our bodies in layers of structure and space, and in the spacial relationships we are creating.

we sketched three moments in time where we felt a connection with each other in space, and also noted three movements each that resonated for us in our own movement material.

these 12 moments that appeared in our improvisation continue to develop as movement material, and for the sharing with Critical Pathways, we selected one movement, one spacial orientation and one photographic image each to work with in performance. 

Ria chose the first photograph above for its movement and connections in our legs, feet and knees, and i chose the second photograph for the detail with Ria's right arm movement in the frame, and the imagined movement in her torso. 

we worked with Timo in the music and decided to select 5 mins from the original music score that would work well with our material, this was the ending of the original score that is quiet and rhythmic in electronic soundscapes. our feedback from the choreographers in the group was that of the soundscape gave an enhancing feeling in the landscapes in the movement material, and throughout different places in the music gave our material a new landscape visual in space. this is very positive response to continue working on these ideas in the future.

photography Chris Daly

we hope to continue collaborating with photography and movement in our process in researching movement material for bodies of water.