Deep Light -- Dancing the Silence
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Exploring the hidden gesture of deep light through dance, music, embodiment and Celtic wisdom. Part of the Sanctuary on the Fault Line 'Dancing Lost Gestures' programme.
Saturday 13 September: An evening performance of two dances by Isadora Duncan and live music and dance by Murmura.
Sunday 14 September: a workshop of embodiment, Celtic wisdom and Isadora Duncan choreography.
Book the performance: https://meditatiocentrelondon.org/events/deeplightsaturday/
Book the workshop:
https://meditatiocentrelondon.org/events/deeplightsunday/
Deep Light is a performance evening and workshop day shared by dancers moving with the legacy of dancer Isadora Duncan and the live music and contemporary dance group Murmura.
Audience may attend the performance, workshop day or both.
Together we will unearth the gesture of ‘deep light’. A quality, perhaps a liberation, a steadiness, that integrates in the dark, in slowness, deep in the peat bog and deep within us; through experience, silence, time and the body.
The performance
Will move us with ‘deep light’ with three works: Isadora Duncan’s Marche Funabre, Murmura’s Burial and Duncan’s Ave Maria.
Ave Maria is one of the first dances Duncan made after she took a break from performing following the tragic loss of both her young children. The dance has the strength of lightness, a surprising steadiness, a deep support, and a glow that is breath taking in the context. Reminding us that when we keep meeting life’s experience, however challenging, in a contemplative, embodied way, grace can awaken. This will be danced by Rachel Elderkin, Betsy Field, Debbie Allan and Hayley J S Matthews. Directed by Isadora Duncan legacy teacher Barbara Kane.
Marche Funabre, preceded Ave Maria, in which Duncan had a premonition of the tragic loss of her children. This will be danced by Debbie Allan, Hayley J S Matthews and Rachel Elderkin. Directed by Isadora Duncan legacy teacher Barbara Kane.
Burial explores integrating and repairing moments of suppression, calling in a resolving moment for our ancestors who were persecuted as ‘witches’. A live music and dance performance by Murmura with Hayley J S Matthews, Alistair Simmons, Marina Avetisian and Jocelyn West. On vocals, flute, drone, harmonium, percussion, violin, electric guitar and contemporary dance.
The performance includes drinks and a light supper.
The workshop
The workshop will run 10:00 – 15:00. Led by dancers Debbie Allan, Hayley J S Matthews and Isadora Duncan legacy dancer/teacher Barbara Kane. Simple and open to all levels. We’ll begin preparing our bodies for support and yielding. We’ll continue by exploring Celtic understandings of ‘deep light’ and some embodiment. And finish by learning and dancing a little of Duncan’s Ave Maria together.
Through these two events we will remember together that dance and music are a way to deeply digest and express life. Experiencing that dance and music are able to say things we have no words for, hold us, and move us through things we cannot move through alone. We hope to touch and move our sorrow, suppression and grace, burgeoning our belonging.
Deep Light has been visioned and invited by dancer, musician and Rolfer Hayley J S Matthews.
You can read biographies of the artists who will be sharing Deep Light below.
Murmura – make territories of ambient music and dance. Founded by multidisciplnaire husband and wife duo Al H M Simmons and Hayley J S Matthews, often with collaborators. In this duo Al is drummer, guitarist and drone player player. Hayley is dancer, flutist, vocalist, imaginer. Murmura spawns from a strong need to be re-created. To re-form worlds. For our bodies, minds, connections and landscapes to be re-stored. They harvest contemplation, fugitivity, radical simplicity, connections to and becomings of wildness and their marriage, which falls them endlessly.
Barbara Kane – Artistic Director of Isadora Duncan Dance Group, studied Duncan technique and repertoire in New York (1970-79) with Lillian Rosenberg, Julia Levien and Hortense Kooluris. Since 1980 Kane has learned further aspects of the Duncan work in Paris with pupils of Lisa Duncan, in Munich with pupils of Elizabeth Duncan and in Moscow with pupils of Isadora Duncan. She was member of the New York based Isadora Duncan Centenary Dance Company (1976-79). In 1985 Kane co-formed the Isadora Duncan Dance Group (London/Paris) and continues to teach, lecture and perform throughout Europe, North America, and Japan. Kane has taught and coached the dancers on Duncan’s work that you’ll see in Saturday’s performance and will be teaching in Sunday’s workshop.
Jocelyn West – Jocelyn is a vocalist, violinist, pianist, harmonium player, collagist and teacher. She worked with David Lynch on an album of music by Hildegaard von Bingen, Lux Vivens. She has made several albums with the renowned medieval music ensemble Sinfonye led by Stevie Wishart. As a solo artist, Jocelyn recorded her remarkable debut album Salt Bird. She is a collage artist, exhibiting in London, and teaches music privately in London. She has been working with ‘Murmura’ in making sound-score ‘Burial’.
Hayley J S Matthews – Hayley J S Matthews is a multidisciplinaire; contemporary dancer Advanced Rolfer, flutist and vocalist. She was awarded the Thea Barnes Legacy Award, an award of female leadership in dance across the UK and US in 2020. And in 2021 was nominated for ‘Women in Dance Awards’, UK. She makes territories of dance, moving image and ambient metal music as Murmura, with husband Al H M Simmons and other collaborators. She creates and dances solos, ensembles and movements as Ensemble Dans-Tank, and works as freelance dancer and collaborator. She runs practice as an Advanced Rolfer in London, Norwich and Leeds. In 2020 Hayley founded Sanctuary on the Fault Line, an earth-wide fugitive dance movement, liberating dance into a wild feminist paradigm. Much of her current dance work takes place in the woods, her sound scores and dances emerging from the re-wilded body and mind of this Sanctuary on the Fault Line practice.
Rachel Elderkin – Rachel is a freelance dance artist, facilitator, writer and dramaturg. She is founder of Dance Dialogues, a platform for expanding conversations around dance. Experienced across dance and dance theatre, Rachel has performed for film, commercials, outdoor, immersive and site-specific works, for varied choreographers and within her own creative practice. Creatively, Rachel is interested in exploring the meeting points between dance, writing, and embodied practices. She has been supported by Lincoln Arts Centre (Innovate Artist 2023-24), DanceEast Makerspace, with research residencies at FABRIC/iC4C (2021/20), as a participating artist in SystemsLAB 2018 & 2019 (Freddie Opuko-Addaie for Dance Umbrella) and through Arts Council England DYCP grant programme. Rachel was a selected artist/mentee on the AWA Dance Mentorship Programme 2020, which focuses on supporting the leadership development of women in dance, and she is an associate artist with English National Ballet teaching on their Dance for Health programmes.
Alistair Simmons – Al is a drummer, guitarist, photographer. He makes territories of sound, visuals and dance with wife Hayley J S Matthews and collaborators as ‘Murmura’. He is also a passionate fly fisherman.
Betsy studied ballet from age 5-15 before obtaining a degree in Pharmacy. After marrying John and having their four children she resumed ballet classes and studied contemporary, jazz and tap, performing at various venues and dance festivals. On moving to London in 1999 she joined the Company of Elders based at Sadler’s Wells and with them travelled to many European cities( including the Venice Biennale) and Japan to promote the benefits and joy of dance for elderly citizens. She also performed with several London based contemporary dance companies including a project with Akram Khan at the Royal Festival Hall. Betsy discovered Isadora Duncan dance after working with Barbara Kane at Sadler’s Wells in 2000 and is privileged to have been able to study and perform with her company since then.
Debbie Allan – In 2021 Debbie joined the Sanctuary on the Faultline International Dance Network founded by Hayley Matthews. Through Hayley’s lab, Dancing a Path through the Crisis, she was introduced to Barbara Kane and the dances of Isadora Duncan. In 2022 Debbie joined the Isadora Duncan Dance Group (IDDG), travelling with them to Greece and Munich in 2023. Debbie has performed in both community and professional settings through five decades of dancing. In 2009 she completed an MSc in Dance Science at Trinity Laban, going on to work as a freelance researcher and evaluator on creativity-based projects with many dance companies, including WMRD and balletLORENT. She is an accredited Somatic Movement Educator in Body-Mind Centering and is passionate about inspiring more embodied approaches in dance and in life generally.
Marina Avetisian – Marina Avetisyan is a London based singer-songwriter. Her own music is a blend of sweet, mellow melodies that are dreamy and ethereal. Marina touches listeners with her distinctive, soulful voice and heart soothing lyrics . Marina has been working with ‘Murmura’ on bass, percussion and vocals in the making of the sound-score ‘Burial’.
And a little about Isadora Duncan – (1877-1927)
Isadora embodied her time as well as a vision of the future. She liberated dance from its confines and elevated it to a new art form. She utilized music to inspire the meaning in her dance. Duncan used the body, intellect and emotion to explore and express. Isadora Duncan influenced artists such as Cocteau, Fokine, Rodin, Stanislavsky and the great English stage designer, Gordon Craig. Duncan felt that the child should have art as their first experience and expression. Her first school was opened in Berlin, Germany. Six of her original pupils followed her throughout her life. Four of them, Maria-Teresa, Anna, Irma and Lisa kept the tradition alive. Barbara Kane and Francoise Rageau have studied with Lillian Rosenberg, Julia Levien, Hortense Kooluris, Madelaine Lytton and Odile Pyros- all of whom were pupils of Isadora’s pupils. Thus we can today see the Art of the Dance of Isadora Duncan.
Get Tickets
Saturday 13 September: An evening performance of two dances by Isadora Duncan and live music and dance by Murmura.
Sunday 14 September: a workshop of embodiment, Celtic wisdom and Isadora Duncan choreography.
Book the performance: https://meditatiocentrelondon.org/events/deeplightsaturday/
Book the workshop:
https://meditatiocentrelondon.org/events/deeplightsunday/
Deep Light is a performance evening and workshop day shared by dancers moving with the legacy of dancer Isadora Duncan and the live music and contemporary dance group Murmura.
Audience may attend the performance, workshop day or both.
Together we will unearth the gesture of ‘deep light’. A quality, perhaps a liberation, a steadiness, that integrates in the dark, in slowness, deep in the peat bog and deep within us; through experience, silence, time and the body.
The performance
Will move us with ‘deep light’ with three works: Isadora Duncan’s Marche Funabre, Murmura’s Burial and Duncan’s Ave Maria.
Ave Maria is one of the first dances Duncan made after she took a break from performing following the tragic loss of both her young children. The dance has the strength of lightness, a surprising steadiness, a deep support, and a glow that is breath taking in the context. Reminding us that when we keep meeting life’s experience, however challenging, in a contemplative, embodied way, grace can awaken. This will be danced by Rachel Elderkin, Betsy Field, Debbie Allan and Hayley J S Matthews. Directed by Isadora Duncan legacy teacher Barbara Kane.
Marche Funabre, preceded Ave Maria, in which Duncan had a premonition of the tragic loss of her children. This will be danced by Debbie Allan, Hayley J S Matthews and Rachel Elderkin. Directed by Isadora Duncan legacy teacher Barbara Kane.
Burial explores integrating and repairing moments of suppression, calling in a resolving moment for our ancestors who were persecuted as ‘witches’. A live music and dance performance by Murmura with Hayley J S Matthews, Alistair Simmons, Marina Avetisian and Jocelyn West. On vocals, flute, drone, harmonium, percussion, violin, electric guitar and contemporary dance.
The performance includes drinks and a light supper.
The workshop
The workshop will run 10:00 – 15:00. Led by dancers Debbie Allan, Hayley J S Matthews and Isadora Duncan legacy dancer/teacher Barbara Kane. Simple and open to all levels. We’ll begin preparing our bodies for support and yielding. We’ll continue by exploring Celtic understandings of ‘deep light’ and some embodiment. And finish by learning and dancing a little of Duncan’s Ave Maria together.
Through these two events we will remember together that dance and music are a way to deeply digest and express life. Experiencing that dance and music are able to say things we have no words for, hold us, and move us through things we cannot move through alone. We hope to touch and move our sorrow, suppression and grace, burgeoning our belonging.
Deep Light has been visioned and invited by dancer, musician and Rolfer Hayley J S Matthews.
You can read biographies of the artists who will be sharing Deep Light below.
Murmura – make territories of ambient music and dance. Founded by multidisciplnaire husband and wife duo Al H M Simmons and Hayley J S Matthews, often with collaborators. In this duo Al is drummer, guitarist and drone player player. Hayley is dancer, flutist, vocalist, imaginer. Murmura spawns from a strong need to be re-created. To re-form worlds. For our bodies, minds, connections and landscapes to be re-stored. They harvest contemplation, fugitivity, radical simplicity, connections to and becomings of wildness and their marriage, which falls them endlessly.
Barbara Kane – Artistic Director of Isadora Duncan Dance Group, studied Duncan technique and repertoire in New York (1970-79) with Lillian Rosenberg, Julia Levien and Hortense Kooluris. Since 1980 Kane has learned further aspects of the Duncan work in Paris with pupils of Lisa Duncan, in Munich with pupils of Elizabeth Duncan and in Moscow with pupils of Isadora Duncan. She was member of the New York based Isadora Duncan Centenary Dance Company (1976-79). In 1985 Kane co-formed the Isadora Duncan Dance Group (London/Paris) and continues to teach, lecture and perform throughout Europe, North America, and Japan. Kane has taught and coached the dancers on Duncan’s work that you’ll see in Saturday’s performance and will be teaching in Sunday’s workshop.
Jocelyn West – Jocelyn is a vocalist, violinist, pianist, harmonium player, collagist and teacher. She worked with David Lynch on an album of music by Hildegaard von Bingen, Lux Vivens. She has made several albums with the renowned medieval music ensemble Sinfonye led by Stevie Wishart. As a solo artist, Jocelyn recorded her remarkable debut album Salt Bird. She is a collage artist, exhibiting in London, and teaches music privately in London. She has been working with ‘Murmura’ in making sound-score ‘Burial’.
Hayley J S Matthews – Hayley J S Matthews is a multidisciplinaire; contemporary dancer Advanced Rolfer, flutist and vocalist. She was awarded the Thea Barnes Legacy Award, an award of female leadership in dance across the UK and US in 2020. And in 2021 was nominated for ‘Women in Dance Awards’, UK. She makes territories of dance, moving image and ambient metal music as Murmura, with husband Al H M Simmons and other collaborators. She creates and dances solos, ensembles and movements as Ensemble Dans-Tank, and works as freelance dancer and collaborator. She runs practice as an Advanced Rolfer in London, Norwich and Leeds. In 2020 Hayley founded Sanctuary on the Fault Line, an earth-wide fugitive dance movement, liberating dance into a wild feminist paradigm. Much of her current dance work takes place in the woods, her sound scores and dances emerging from the re-wilded body and mind of this Sanctuary on the Fault Line practice.
Rachel Elderkin – Rachel is a freelance dance artist, facilitator, writer and dramaturg. She is founder of Dance Dialogues, a platform for expanding conversations around dance. Experienced across dance and dance theatre, Rachel has performed for film, commercials, outdoor, immersive and site-specific works, for varied choreographers and within her own creative practice. Creatively, Rachel is interested in exploring the meeting points between dance, writing, and embodied practices. She has been supported by Lincoln Arts Centre (Innovate Artist 2023-24), DanceEast Makerspace, with research residencies at FABRIC/iC4C (2021/20), as a participating artist in SystemsLAB 2018 & 2019 (Freddie Opuko-Addaie for Dance Umbrella) and through Arts Council England DYCP grant programme. Rachel was a selected artist/mentee on the AWA Dance Mentorship Programme 2020, which focuses on supporting the leadership development of women in dance, and she is an associate artist with English National Ballet teaching on their Dance for Health programmes.
Alistair Simmons – Al is a drummer, guitarist, photographer. He makes territories of sound, visuals and dance with wife Hayley J S Matthews and collaborators as ‘Murmura’. He is also a passionate fly fisherman.
Betsy studied ballet from age 5-15 before obtaining a degree in Pharmacy. After marrying John and having their four children she resumed ballet classes and studied contemporary, jazz and tap, performing at various venues and dance festivals. On moving to London in 1999 she joined the Company of Elders based at Sadler’s Wells and with them travelled to many European cities( including the Venice Biennale) and Japan to promote the benefits and joy of dance for elderly citizens. She also performed with several London based contemporary dance companies including a project with Akram Khan at the Royal Festival Hall. Betsy discovered Isadora Duncan dance after working with Barbara Kane at Sadler’s Wells in 2000 and is privileged to have been able to study and perform with her company since then.
Debbie Allan – In 2021 Debbie joined the Sanctuary on the Faultline International Dance Network founded by Hayley Matthews. Through Hayley’s lab, Dancing a Path through the Crisis, she was introduced to Barbara Kane and the dances of Isadora Duncan. In 2022 Debbie joined the Isadora Duncan Dance Group (IDDG), travelling with them to Greece and Munich in 2023. Debbie has performed in both community and professional settings through five decades of dancing. In 2009 she completed an MSc in Dance Science at Trinity Laban, going on to work as a freelance researcher and evaluator on creativity-based projects with many dance companies, including WMRD and balletLORENT. She is an accredited Somatic Movement Educator in Body-Mind Centering and is passionate about inspiring more embodied approaches in dance and in life generally.
Marina Avetisian – Marina Avetisyan is a London based singer-songwriter. Her own music is a blend of sweet, mellow melodies that are dreamy and ethereal. Marina touches listeners with her distinctive, soulful voice and heart soothing lyrics . Marina has been working with ‘Murmura’ on bass, percussion and vocals in the making of the sound-score ‘Burial’.
And a little about Isadora Duncan – (1877-1927)
Isadora embodied her time as well as a vision of the future. She liberated dance from its confines and elevated it to a new art form. She utilized music to inspire the meaning in her dance. Duncan used the body, intellect and emotion to explore and express. Isadora Duncan influenced artists such as Cocteau, Fokine, Rodin, Stanislavsky and the great English stage designer, Gordon Craig. Duncan felt that the child should have art as their first experience and expression. Her first school was opened in Berlin, Germany. Six of her original pupils followed her throughout her life. Four of them, Maria-Teresa, Anna, Irma and Lisa kept the tradition alive. Barbara Kane and Francoise Rageau have studied with Lillian Rosenberg, Julia Levien, Hortense Kooluris, Madelaine Lytton and Odile Pyros- all of whom were pupils of Isadora’s pupils. Thus we can today see the Art of the Dance of Isadora Duncan.
Get Tickets
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