Duets for Objects
A collaboration with Sally Dean
Duets for Objects is an inter-disciplinary and site-specific performance company by visual artist/ dancer Florence Peake and theatre artist/dancer Sally Dean. Duets for Objects delves into the immediate intimacy of sites - where artists and the work in turn evolve with each new space they inhabit. As highly accomplished choreographers, teachers, and experimental artists, Dean and Peake draw from their rich individual artistic backgrounds and practices working directly with the environment/ context/ site; audience relationship; objects/ materials and subjects/ histories from the site itself. This collision of elements is handled poetically - creating poignant, intensely vibrant, visually strong and highly immersive work.
The beginnings of this project were funded by Chisenhale Dance Space Artist’s Research Grant (London, 2006). Performances have been held at a wide variety of architectural sites: Chichester University (Chichester, SVAPA Research Presentations, 2006), Robert Howard Theatre at The Place (London, 2008), Coventry Cathedral (Summer Dancing 2008), Elsewhere post-war junk Museum (North Carolina, USA, 2009), TAP Gallery (Essex, 2010), Christ Church Spitalfields in the Crypt (London, 2006, 2010), Chelsea & Westminster Hospital (London, 2010). A film version by Britt Hatzius was presented at Toynbee Studios (London, Outsider Dancing, 2007).
Photo by Britt Hatzius
Photo by Blake Mason
Photo by Blake MasonDuplicated Other
A film and object installation extracted from an artistic residency at the post war junk museum Elsewhere in North Carolina, summer 2009. In collaboration with a family of 'ghosts' inhabiting the third floor of the museum, this work translates traces of the immaterial through flesh, the viscerality of site and the embodiment of objects.
Duets for Objects navigate an inter-play between two sites, the Christ Church Crypt and Elsewhere's third floor. The duplication of site and bodies overlap transient histories and the physicality of architecture, resonating with the legacy of Hugenot cloth production in Spitalfields and the life, death and resurrection embodied in the history of the Crypt.
Photo by Clare Lewis
Photo by Clare Lewis
Photo by Clare LewisAt Sea
In collaboration with accordion player Annabelle MacFadyen, Duets for Objects collected objects washed up from the Jurassic coastline, relocating them to the south end art gallery TAP, and then adapted the work for Chelsea and Westminster hospital. In huge plastic ball gown dresses made from coloured dust sheets, this trio set adrift for a two-hour performance. Shifting islands of pebbles and rusty shipwrecks culminated in the transformation of the musician into seaweed monster with a conch for French sea songs.
Florence Peake and Sally Dean's performance of Duets for the Crypt was a highly original and imaginative series of evocative and surprising scenes, in which the two dancers juxtaposed many elements of theatre to great effect. There was a dynamic, often syncopated, flow of energy throughout; and each scene was punctuated by powerful visual images. The balance between moving and still images always felt just right. There was simultaneously a highly formal and a completely random feel to the work. The way in which quite ordinary objects - cups, a book, a chair - were used as part and parcel of the movement compositions meant that there was a sense of narrative, without there being a linear story. The objects often took on an unexpected life of their own - not only did the dancers make use of the objects, but it seemed at times that the objects made use of the dancers.
The theme of inside and outside, or internal and external which inspired the work, was explored in many different ways. This work was resonant in the way that dreams are resonant. Images were vivid, yet fleeting. Spaces were carefully defined - by light, colour, objects and dancers - and then one scene simply gave way to another, defining a different space. There was an instinctive logic to the way the piece unfolded, each scene having its own rhythm and emotional quality, sometimes underpinned by music, sometimes by speech, sometimes just by ambient sounds. The performers worked with the space of the crypt very deliberately, and the effect was to awaken and enliven a potentially cold and dead performance space by giving value to every nook and cranny.
Peake and Dean bring complementary qualities to the work, both in terms of their backgrounds in visual art and theatre respectively, and in terms of their equally strong but very different stage personalities. At the same time that the two performers have seemingly effortless technique, their work emanates an honest, human quality. This combination, plus the tasteful artistic sensibilities of the two, make their work unusually fresh and satisfying to witness.
2007, Katya Bloom, PhD, CMA, SrDMT
Teacher of Movement at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London